Hi Ruth, Thanks for the direct query! I am finding it easy to get wrapped up in "tracking current events" and losing my perception of things local, or internal, in all the rush, so yours is an excellent reminder to check-in so to speak on what I often overlook.
Things change so much every day that adaptation is very ad-hoc, but overall my situation is toward the normal end of the spectrum for now. My family and friends are all safe, though like everyone we worry about those we know who are more at risk and are helping them however we can. I'm fortunate to be able to work from home but several family members and friends (some in health care) cannot. Perhaps my circumstances can be summed up as typical for many in the not-yet-hardest-hit places in the US, i.e. that we are preparing with both trepidation and resilience in varying ratios. As an artist and writer, I do feel that an event of historical proportions has occurred that will be transformative to a greater or lesser degree in many spheres of society. I'm more aware of the power of words and images to harm as well as to help, to support or to undermine well-being, to clarify or distort, and of the pressure this places on my own choices. There is so much that I cannot control, and yet I still find the aesthetic process and all it entails to be a source of guidance and resilience. In late 2018 I began forming a research group to study the inter-relations among art, meditation, neuroscience, and networks from a transdisciplinary perspective, with a focus on medical principles including the Hippocratic ethos. This is energizing in some respects, but extremely daunting and humbling in others because the group is still in early planning stages -- well short of having any deliverables -- and the current crisis is so large, with so much uncertainty. Although I am not great at practicing it I have found the Hippocratic ethos to be one that helps me to understand how to guide my own actions, or at least to bolster my hopes that there are feasible precedents for finding responsible and practicable guidelines in my own actions. Many thanks for all that you do at Netbehavior and for being a space of shared resources in a challenging time. Very best wishes, Max Notes: Jacques Jouanna, “Hippocratic Medicine and Greek Tragedy,” 2012, https://brill.com/view/book/9789004232549/B9789004232549-s005.xml +++++ Health care and Buddhism: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6330872/ +++++ Medicine Ways: Traditional Healers and Healing https://www.nlm.nih.gov/nativevoices/exhibition/healing-ways/medicine-ways/medicine-wheel.html ________________________________ From: NetBehaviour <[email protected]> on behalf of Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, March 23, 2020 11:41 AM To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> Cc: Ruth Catlow <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] How is everyone? Thank you for the news Annie, Helen, James, Edward, Ann, and Alan, It seems we are all most preoccupied with trying to work out what is correct behaviour - including how to negotiate our feelings towards the situation and each other. The details from all of you are fascinating and helpful. More please :) And Annie, please can you put a time zone on your Distant Feelings events. Warmly Ruth On Mon, Mar 23, 2020 at 11:39 AM Annie Abrahams via NetBehaviour <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi all, In France we have been in confinement for about a week. I myself even longer, because I am at risk. In Holland they are slacker, which I thought to be "stupid" - there is also very much attention to and interest in "the economy" that must go on. France, although also trying to keep "it" up, seems a bit more social. At least that is what I conclude when reading online journals from both countries, the tone is different. I thought the Dutch a bit selfish. But after this week I am not so sure anymore they didn't take the right option. Dutch people still seem to be optimistic, just going on, almost happy, while some French friends are starting to show signs of depression - lack of contact, lack of being able to use the body, too immersed in the screen, that also gives solace, so even more immersed ... it is very difficult when you don't have a garden .... What seems to be important (part of a solution) is to use online connexions, not just to talk, but to try to find ways to do something together. Last Saturday I assisted in an improvised poetry reading. It was energising. Stay safe all Annie Ps >From this week we organise weekly Distant Feelings (Friday 16h) and Distant Movements (Wednesday 16h) sessions of 15 min. Open to all. intra/rupt/rompre https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/invitation-intra-rupt-rompre/ intra/rompre/rupt https://aabrahams.wordpress.com/2020/03/19/intra-rompre-rupt/ On Sun, Mar 22, 2020 at 11:11 PM Helen Varley Jamieson <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: here's an update from aotearoa new zealand: we are officially at "level 2" alert, which means social distancing, no non-essential travel, all community spaces like libraries, swimming pools, etc are closed. schools are still open, but it is being hotly debated whether/when they should also be closed. so far all covid19 cases are still connected to overseas travel, but it's tracking up quickly & there must be community transmission even if it's not yet confirmed. from what i can observe here (in dunedin, small southern university town), people are being quite sensible. there's no panic buying in our local supermarket, & the streets are quiet but not empty. just now on the radio there is an interview with some university students who are offering to bring groceries etc for elderly & people in isolation. community in action :) my 86-year-old mother is reluctantly staying home - all her activities like U3A & exercise class have been cancelled anyway, & her beloved library bus won't be coming to her neighbourhood. she has an abundant vegie garden & bursting freezer so no need to go out for a while! unfortunately my partner & i have to travel tomorrow - we're flying up to another small town in the north island to empty out the house of an uncle who died in february. at the moment, non-essential travel is discouraged but not forbidden, so we are hoping that we can get this job done as it's been a huge planning exercise. it's not a creative project, but i really resonate with ruth about furtherfield's situation - all of the planning that goes into it & then all of the work to change / adapt in such a rapidly changing situation ... it's exhausting & depressing. our lives as artists are precarious all the time so we're used to existing in a state of adaptability anyway, but now we're being pushed even further :/ i am personally pretty relieved that i was already having a self-inflicted freelancer's sabbatical for the first 6-months of this year, so i haven't got any work lined up to get cancelled. however the trip home is certainly not turning out the way i expected! & i have no idea whether i'll get back to germany at the end of july ... at least that is still a long way away, & we are a lot better off on these distant islands than in the middle of the epicentre! munich is in total lockdown & our house-sitters sent video of civil defence vans driving through deserted streets broadcasting instructions to stay indoors. quite surreal! take care everyone, & if you need some socially distanced social interaction, come along to the Pandemic Party in UpStage this evening - 8am monday morning UK time. https://upstage.org.nz/?event=pandemic-party-and-open-walkthrough h : ) On 23.03.20 07:51, Edward Picot via NetBehaviour wrote: Hi Ruth and everyone, Actually work hasn't been so bad. We've gone from mainly face-to-face consultations to what they call 'total triage' - nobody gets to see the doctor without him telephoning them first - within the space of a week. The nurse is still seeing people: you can't do things like blood tests and dressings over the telephone. But she has to wear the protective gear - face mask, gown, gloves - and change it once every few patients; and we've cancelled all the non-urgent stuff, like diabetic checks and asthma checks, the aim being to only have one or two people in the surgery at a time, not counting the staff. The local chemist has gone into meltdown. Everybody is panic-ordering their medication all at once. I went past the chemist on Saturday morning and the queue of people trying to get prescriptions was out the door. Lots of people are jumping ship from the local chemist to online pharmacies like Pharmacy2U, because the online pharmacies are set up to do home deliveries; but the elderly, who are the ones who really need home deliveries because they're the ones who can least afford to catch the virus, are least likely to make this move because they're the least techno-savvy section of society. There are other people who can help them out, though - 'social prescribing', which is where we direct patients to 'helping hand' agencies, has suddenly gone from being a peripheral thing to a front-and-centre option. Two things we're trying to get up and running are video consultations and remote working. We were given a laptop about a year ago by the Health Authority, which works off a VPN link, and the idea is that if you're at home and stick your smart card in it, you can log into the clinical system at the surgery and see patient records and do electronic prescribing and stuff just as if you were there. This would be brilliant, especially if David (the doctor) has to self-isolate at some point but still feels well enough to work - but the VPN licence has run out. We contacted the IT department to get it renewed once the crisis started to get serious, about ten days ago now, but of course they've been overwhelmed, so they haven't sorted it out for us yet. As regards video consultations - which would be really useful for things like people with rashes - we've managed to get these working via mobile phones, but it's very glitchy because the WiFi at the surgery keeps going wrong. Either it doesn't work at all, or it works with no internet connection, which has been pretty much how it's been ever since we had WiFi put in. The other option is to do video consultations on a desktop or laptop computer: there's a startup tech company called Nye, based in Oxford, which offers this for free, and we got it up and running on David's desktop, which is equipped with a USB camera - but then the camera immediately went wrong. This is pretty much how things work in the NHS. If the technology was in place and reliable, we could do a whole lot more. The most frustrating thing for me and David, I think, is the sheer volume of updates we're being sent. If I see one more email titled 'Covid-19 - urgent - for immediate action' I'm going to do an act of violence. You physically cannot keep up with all this stuff when the phone is constantly ringing and you've got a million other things to deal with. And the lack of testing is frustrating too. We've got a nurse who's been off for a week with Coronavirus-style symptoms, but of course we don't know whether it really is the Coronavirus or not - so if she comes back to work and then gets another sore throat, she'll have to self-isolate for another week. On the other hand in some ways it's kind of exhilarating. Suddenly we've been given a licence to ignore all the bureaucratic crap we usually spend our time struggling with, and that's quite liberating; and the pace at which we've managed to reorganize our services, with a lot of cooperation from the patients, it has to be said, has been startling. On a personal level my main concern has been shopping. I go to bed worrying about whether I'm going to be able to get any food in the shops the next day. I've done all right so far, but I normally don't get up to the Co-Op, which is our local supermarket, until after three o'clock, and by that time there's virtually nothing on the shelves; so I've been having to dodge out of work and make special trips up there at about 9.30, once I've got somebody else to cover the front desk. The other thing is that my demented Mum is in a care home a few miles from here, and they've closed their doors to visitors, so instead of going to see her twice a week, all of a sudden I'm not seeing her at all, which is a big change to my routine. You do get very fed up with the stupidity of the public at times, especially where things like panic buying and panic ordering of prescriptions are concerned. You think to yourself 'This is what we're like now - people have been brainwashed to be consumers, not citizens - they don't know how to act responsibly towards one another any more'. Then you come across people who are being really unselfish and helpful towards one another, and you realize that things are a lot more nuanced than that. And when I do get up to the Co-Op, everybody's giving everybody else elbow-bumps and making jokes about the state of things, and you think to yourself 'Oh well, at least there's one good thing about Britain - we do have a sense of humour'. You find yourself chatting to strangers, and you feel closer to the people who you already know, because there's a sense of all being in it together. Then something really annoying happens, or you have to deal with somebody who's being completely self-centred and unreasonable, and you're back to wanting to throttle everyone again. Edward On 22/03/2020 15:14, Ruth Catlow via NetBehaviour wrote: Hello all, This last couple of weeks have been full of chaos and uncertainty for us in the UK - and much longer for others. The sudden shut down is clearly distributing immediate and extreme hardship very unevenly. I personally found the indefinite postponement of Furtherfield's 2020 'Love Machines' programme last Monday (in the week we had planned to announce everything) incredibly hard to do, and to handle. I know we will adapt and find another way to make things work, but that doesn't stop it being incredibly disappointing, frustrating and disorientating. I'm now starting to adjust but I wanted to share this personal (non-life-threatening) experience with you because I would like to hear more from everyone about how the Corona virus is effecting them, so we can build a better picture, beyond the numbers and the public announcements, to understand how things are changing. And most of all it would just be good to know how everyone is doing (from regular contributors to all lurkers). Warmly Ruth -- Co-founder & Artistic director of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab +44 (0) 77370 02879 Furtherfield disrupts and democratises art and technology through exhibitions, labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free thinking. furtherfield.org<http://www.furtherfield.org/> DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web 3.0 technologies research hub for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now. decal.is<http://www.decal.is> Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205. Registered business address: Carbon Accountancy, 80-83 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9ET. _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour -- helen varley jamieson [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> http://www.creative-catalyst.com http://www.upstage.org.nz _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour -- Co-founder & Artistic director of Furtherfield & DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab +44 (0) 77370 02879 Furtherfield disrupts and democratises art and technology through exhibitions, labs & debate, for deep exploration, open tools & free thinking. furtherfield.org<http://www.furtherfield.org/> DECAL Decentralised Arts Lab is an arts, blockchain & web 3.0 technologies research hub for fairer, more dynamic & connected cultural ecologies & economies now. decal.is<http://www.decal.is> Furtherfield is a Not-for-Profit Company Limited by Guarantee Registered in England and Wales under the Company No.7005205. Registered business address: Carbon Accountancy, 80-83 Long Lane, London, EC1A 9ET.
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