Isolation and Illumination

I included this video because in my own time practicing social distancing and social isolation, I noticed that my days and nights became dominated by two distinctive scenes, which is a rather harsh contrast to the variety of settings available to me normally. The first being the windows to freedom I had driving in the car to and from the grocery store, or occasionally to go through the drive through. The second is my home, or more specifically the bedroom from within which I have to sleep, study, eat and entertain myself. Whilst I had access to several peripheral liminal zones between these two, such as the balcony outside my bedroom and my local walking track when walking my dog. The neon lights and empty spaces of the outside world through the car window, or through the layer of social distancing in the grocery store exemplify so much of the feeling I have experienced in isolation. I can’t quite pin down this feeling with a pithy phrase yet, but I found that the physical confinement to settings which became routine was so much more traumatising than the lack of social connection which was for me almost an over surplus rather than a lack as I am constantly surrounded by family with both my mother, brother and occasionally cousin being confined to a small cottage house. I feel like the whole world became this strange liminal space in which daily communal expectations were suspended without being overturned with new expectations, I never really got the sense of ‘the new normal’ that others have mentioned.

April 17, 2020 19:30

Madeleine Rowe

HUM404

University of Tasmania

A video showing the lack of traffic in Hobart CBD.

English Education--Universities

English Emotion

English Environment & Landscape

English Home & Family Life

English Social Distance

confinement

quarantine

isolation

walking

deserted streets

Personal Voices

Oral History

Children

Environment

University of Tasmania

06/06/2020

06/17/2020

09/06/2021

04/17/2020