“Invitation”: Experimental Encounters in Pandemic Times

Abstract

“Invitation” was the first of three experiment/artworks that make up “Scattered Subjects,” a program that probed subjectivity in environments reshaped by the COVID-19 pandemic. The article explains how working under lockdown conditions led me to expand the repertoire for studying one on one exchanges using ethno-artistic means. It describes how I imagined “keeping in touch” with individuals confined to their homes around the world by sending them artworks by post that reflected my Parisian living room. Sharing my environment in this “hand to hand” as a way of literally keeping in touch, I then asked them to photograph the artwork in their own environments. I posted the photographs to a dedicated website in a variety of formats that intimated a totality, or single process but never visualized it. Examining these responses, the never-fully-there artwork, some “invitations” that never reached their destinations and others I was able to revisit face-to-face after pandemic restrictions eased led to new ways of thinking about space, migration and the potential art for exploring distanced exchanges more generally. It also led to considering processes of subject-making.