Paper short abstract:

Recurrent discussions in Visual Anthropology have considered filmmaking as a mode of theory construction. In this presentation, I show how the popular genre of Corona videos can become a mode of theorising the pandemic, through the lens of visibility/invisibility.

Paper long abstract:

During the lockdowns of spring 2020, short videos became a popular means of reflecting on new experiences of quarantine and social distancing. Passed around on social media platforms, downloaded in microseconds, and stored on smartphones where they became nested amidst other videos and photos, Corona videos brought about smiles amidst anxious circumstances and reflected meaningful forms of expert and folk knowledges about the pandemic.

The genre of the Corona video, I suggest here, can be appropriated by anthropologists to create their own cinematographic interventions. If understood through the lens of visibility/invisibility, the genre can even become a mode of theorising the pandemic. I illustrate this idea through the short films that were created by my students in the graduate course “The Politics of (In)visibility” at the University of Vienna. Their films mimic the popular form of the short Corona video in brevity, style, and format, but also intervene by exposing some striking patterns of visibility/invisibility in conversations around the pandemic.