Responding to the Covid-19 Pandemic: New Meaning of Images
April 30, 2020
As I begin this writing, I have exactly 6 hours and 30 minutes left until the mandatory self-quarantine, which was imposed on me upon arrival in South Korea from New York two weeks ago, is lifted. It means that there will no longer be phone calls from the city office in Seoul that is monitoring my movements based on the GPS location of my cell phone. GPS is activated via a self-quarantine monitoring phone application that I was required to download to my cell phone before exiting the airport. The phone calls come regularly, asking for my health information and condition for the day. Last time, when they called me after I moved from the kitchen to the living room, it hit me just how closely my every move is being monitored. I understand this surveillance is in place to prevent recent travelers from breaking South Korea’s mandatory quarantine due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and escaping to outside before the required time period, but it feels strange and uncomfortable. This isolation, the complete prohibition to leave the house where I am staying, has changed my perception regarding images, and the quality of life images bring to our experience as human beings.
As soon as I landed at the Incheon International Airport in Korea on April 11, 2020, I was taken to a walk-through testing station, where a doctor administered to me a Covid-19 test, then straight to the place where I have been quarantined for the past 14 days.
I have been staying at my fiance’s parents’ empty apartment, as they are working and staying elsewhere. My only social interaction with people (besides my boyfriend, who traveled with me and so also has been in quarantine with me) through Zoom, Facetime, and other video conferencing apps, as in the two images above. I have been socializing solely with images of people — friends, loved ones, and classmates — projected onto the little screens of my devices. I can see what they are doing in the moment, but I am unable to identify minute sentiments or feelings that would usually be reflected in their gestures or eye movements. Real life interaction and socialization with friends, family, and other people provides a sense of intimacy — a means to understand each person better and provide apt reaction or interpretation for it. There is a sense of tactility, and an energy that communicates unspoken messages, which plays a big part in impressing upon others and resonating with them. These qualities are completely annihilated in video call interactions. There is only a one-dimensional view of what we perceive when we are looking at moving image of the people we are interacting with.
It may be important to note here that I haven’t seen my friends or family for almost a year, as I have been abroad at graduate school in New York. The picture above was taken from the balcony of the quarters where I’m quarantined. I am talking on the phone and waving hello to my parents, who “visited” me after I arrived, coming to stand on the sidewalk below this building so they might catch a glimpse of me. I’ve been interacting and socializing with them in this way since my arrival, since no direct contact has yet been allowed. I realized that this glimpse of each other was also in fact an image that we perceive. It was an image because I was visually perceiving the message they were attempting to communicate with their hand gestures and body movements. Every time I meet them this way, I assume that they can’t have a distinct visual of me — in comfortable nightwear and unbrushed hair — from this window because my image of them, from the distance of four stories up, is also never distinct. But whatever image they do have of me and whatever image I have of them is all we have to work with at the moment. It is all we have of each other. I am in a situation where I must believe in these images. I am limited in my ability to sense their emotions through expressions, gestures, or movements of body, hand, or face parts. The sense of tact and energy that flows and plays part in face-to-face interactions are no longer there.
All of what my eyes perceive have become images. My entire interaction with nature and the natural world has been through this small bedroom window. It has become a regular ritual for me to sit by the window, to sit and stare at the empty blue sky and feel the sunlight on my bare skin. I put my hand out to feel the calm wind flow through my fingers. This is the way I have been interacting with the natural world. The image of the world that is available to me has become a full panoramic sensory of experience, perceived by all five senses through this window.
When my eyes recently turned red, with intense itchiness and pain, amidst all the Covid-19 pandemic, I had a thought that perhaps this occurrence of unfiltered images is what is actually more dangerous for us. Having to constantly consume images for hours everyday from a small screen and having limited access to the outside world and physical connection can not be healthy. Even more so, during the pandemic, I realized that we are all constantly perceiving and consuming images every waking moment. Not just traditional visual works like painting and photography but in the sense that we can not rest our eyes for just one minute to “not perceive.” If not on our mobile phones, we are reading or looking at something. Our eyes are restlessly consuming information by taking in the visual images of what our minds direct our eyes to see. Small screen interactions become annoyingly exhausting and interaction with the outside world becomes valuable. Everything in the natural world and everyday surroundings come alive as representations communicating to us and showing us their existence — their value. The fact that we are able to perceive them in real form is priceless. Images have already inundated us. The Covid-19 pandemic simply provided the opportunity for all of us to realize that.
