As a family, we each had our daily routine, quickly wake up in the morning, grab breakfast, run to school, dash off to teach, prepare for a meeting, and so on. We were distinct units with intersecting patterns usually revolving around meals. But that was before the lockdown.
On March 12th, 2020, in the Netherlands, our lives, like so many others, radically changed. What felt like a distant, almost science fiction-like news story happening over there suddenly became a reality here too. Covid-19, a microscopic coronavirus named after the crown-like shape facilitating its efficiency to spread, ruptured the rhythm of our daily lives.
With restaurants, businesses, cinemas, bars, schools, and university buildings closed, we retreated into our home. We were in this together, but we were also in this apart from other friends and families. We were bound in our respective bubbles.
In this series of short diaristic reflections and animated gifs, Corona Chronicles captures glimpses of our family in a loop during the Covid-19 lockdown. The project is a meditation on routines, and peculiarities of our previously known dailies interrupted. With animations done by Cesare Davolio, script by Renée Turner, and music by Eliot Davolio; in other words, a family endeavor, we reflect on a moment when life was no longer taken for granted, but instead became a (gif)t.
Respectively glued to our individual screens, we teach while he learns.
Drawings by Cesare Davolio, words by Renée Turner and music by Eliot Davolio.