Plague Column - Pestsäule
Vienna, Austria Dedicated 1694
“Art in Lockdown”
Collage by Nathan Wyburn
The Lord said to Moses, “Make a snake and put it up on a pole;
anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”
So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.
Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.
Numbers 21:8-9 (NIV)
In 2016, I was introduced to Pestsäule, the memorial monument to “one of the last big plague epidemics in Europe”. It was a short introduction that seemed remote to my experience. Now, I have a new appreciation of the importance of memorials particularly as they relate to the uncontrollable events in our lives.
I would suggest that we have some real work ahead to respond and create icons of the Covid19 pandemic. The United States used existing memorials to remember 400,000 deaths with flags, lights and songs. We have told stories of lives lost on social media as we all recounted how our lives have changed. How will we capture in a more permanent way the meanings of these moments? What icons will work across the multiple cultures effected by this pandemic? Where will the new art and knowledge take us as a world? It could be a time of great creativity, a pandemic renaissance.
Healing memorials are effective places of active remembering that help us see and create in new ways! So even as the “endgame” is still unclear, memorializing the healing responses are a critical component of this pandemic’s history.
Thanks be to God for places and images that heal.
Marvin
References
Plague Column, Vienna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plague_Column,_Vienna
Joe Biden holds memorial for 400,000 Americans who have died of Covid-19
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/19/biden-coronavirus-memorial-us-deaths-ceremony
Sonnevend J. A virus as an icon: the 2020 pandemic in images. Am J Cult Sociol. 2020 Oct 6:1-11. doi: 10.1057/s41290-020-00118-7. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 33042541; PMCID: PMC7537773.
Art in Lockdown
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-the-incredible-art-created-in-lockdown-11987230
How Pandemics Wreak Havoc—and Open Minds
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/07/20/how-pandemics-wreak-havoc-and-open-minds
Hage, ML(2021). All is Grace.
http://healingagents.blogspot.com/2021/01/all-is-grace.html
Kofman, A; Kantor, R; Adashi, EY
Potential COVID-19 Endgame Scenarios: Eradication, Elimination, Cohabitation, or Conflagration? https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781945
