Cité Fermée
Paris, March 14th I find myself glued to the screen to hear what Macron has to say. Earlier that day, the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg has decided to put Norway in a lockdown, will Macron do the same? I had to return to Norway before the boarders closed, and this became my project for the next five months:
a glimpse of the strong and beloved city, closed and empty. Paris has never seen any defeat like this one.
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020
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The lockdown left the city empty, I wanted to portray this in some way. The absence of life is equally terrifying and peaceful.
This panel is called L'empreinte which means print/footprint or trace. This is because this is a trace of somebody that has been here before and left their mark on the wall. We can see that the grafitti spells "Distance Sociale" and there is a crown in the S. The crown is of course a symbol for Corona.
Here you can se the construction site of Notre Dame, that burned april 2019. When I made this panel, it was almost exactly one year later in 2020. I considered the fire at Notre Dame as a bad omen. Later I learned that the tower that fell was supposed to protect Paris from plague according to superstition. In this Panel we can also see the padlocks, but here they symbolise that you are locked out of the construction. You cant go to work, everything has to wait.
The Structure of the film is based on a day in quarantine. In the moring the birds wake up, you drink your coffee. Then you can't go to work, unless you work in a health profession etc. So you end up counting ambulances and looking out your window. The parks are empty. The afternoon creeps in, and you can't stop working, because your boss is trying to contact you on your phone. The night comes and the time flys by and you didn't do anything today, and the only window to the outside are books and paintings.
Somebody is reading La Peste By Albert Camus
Si Calme
Le bruit d'une ville vide
Le silence du temoin invisible
Ici bas
le murmure du vent
le seul soufle de vie dans les espaces
personne ne sort, car la vie n'est plus.
Je ne suis plus.
20.04.2020
jour 37
Astrid E. Mork-Knutsen