Quarantined Lives

International Perspectives of COVID-19 Between Psychology and Art

Riccardo Matlakas, Giuliana Attanasio

• Publisher: First Edition Design Publishing
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781506906430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Artist Monographs
• Index: Psychology

An international report on 2020, a year sadly marred by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to the testimonies of psychologist Giuliana Attanasio and artist Riccardo Matlakas, artists, doctors and scientists from all over the world (including Sadhguru, but also historical artists such as ORLAN and Stelarc) tell their ideas and experiences, each with a different eye on a drama that is affecting everyone without making distinctions.

Giuliana Attanasio, born in 1980, currently lives in Naples. She attended the University of Florence for a degree in Clinical and Health Psychology; after graduation, she started working nationally and internationally as a freelance practitioner in the clinical and forensic field. Before Quarantined Lives, she penned When Internet Sex Becomes an Addiction and co-authored From Sexual Violence to Femicide; she also writes for various national magazines and manages the YouTube channel "Direzione felicità".

Riccardo Matlakas, born in 1982, currently lives in London. Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, he completed a master's degree in Social Sculpture from Oxford Brookes University. On top of exploring the world of visual arts and performance, practising different dance styles and meditation are a constant. He has been featured in numerous international exhibitions: from the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea to the Biennial of Young Artists in Moscow and the Quadrennial in Prague. Riccardo was invited to mark the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Olympics and create artistic works between the South and North Korean border (DMZ). He defines himself as an inborn observer and poetically adapts the same philosophy to his own life. He continues to work internationally focusing on the spiritual and political liberation of humanity.

keywords: coronavirus, art, psychology, art and psychology, humanism, human growth, covid-19, 2020, artists, future, world, world issues

Chapter 1

Riccardo Matlakas

In this chapter, I will limit myself to describing personal experiences and impressions/reflections that relate to the period spanning the 2020 lockdown in England.

Throughout my artistic career, I’ve had the opportunity to travel extensively around the world to many countries. In some cases living there for many months; in places with vastly different customs, ways of life and problems to my own. Since my work as an artist very often employs notions key to anthropological research, I have always, with a natural curiosity, studied other cultures in-depth, even if the starting point that provides the freedom to experiment, is and always will be, art. Going beyond the question of aesthetics, I feel art as a way to understand life, human relationships, and uncover innovative techniques to develop my consciousness. Art becomes "discovering life" through my thoughts, as well as my way of being. Art is a language that heads straight to the essence, and kindles the emotions of others. In this way, I employ art to communicate in a universal language, intrinsically recognized by all human beings. We live in a world of vibrations, through which we communicate with each other. Visual art, writing, music, sport, passions, conversations, silences, absences and presences are all waves we perceive unconsciously and consciously. Art is present on a visual, auditory and perceptive level to create magic on all fronts as well as existing wherever there may be mystery, creativity, play, seriousness, and science.

Before the lockdown

Thanks to performances and art exhibitions, I have travelled widely for years, seizing the opportunity to develop a greater understanding of the many cultures that were previously unknown to me. My artistic endeavours furnished a valuable tool for coming closer to understanding the essence of other societies. In 2014, I travelled to the Gwangju Biennial in South Korea for a performance based on the Gwangju pro-democracy uprising of 1980. South Korea is now a free country, although it has faced long-standing repressive measures on many fronts.

To create my performance of the Gwangju uprising, I needed to identify as one of the civilians involved in the massacre itself. The performance called Idem Quod was created to mark the 2014 biennial. Idem Quod is a multidisciplinary performance that encompasses dance, performance, visual art and music. During the performance, I assumed an infant’s pose, the traditional stance in the Japanese dance Butoh and began a peal of inner laughter to symbolize birth and purity. After several minutes, the visceral laugh transforms into a mournful lament to symbolize growth and opening up to the adult world, full of adversities. To conclude, I play the grand piano of Korean musician Lim Dong-Chang (I added toy soldiers on the piano keys). The piece was to honour the people who fought for their freedom, starting with high notes and then low, to underscore life’s dramatic impact. A moment to connect with a people supposedly different from my own, yet could recognize themselves in me, a foreigner, who at least for a single shared moment, could become part of the local collective consciousness.

The trips became increasingly frequent, taking me around the world: Russia, Palestine, South Africa, Jordan, Ukraine, South Korea, the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the two Korea's, Mauritius, Armenia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Iran, the United States, multiple European cities and more.Some of the most iconic performances I took to urban spaces were: Sweet Thorn, Melting Borders, The Last Soldier and Pyjamas Party, which focused on the deconstruction of existing forms. I suggest that from our exposure to all these events, we are currently living a form of deconstruction. In “Sweet Thorn”, I created a 100-metre barbed wire structure adorned by 100 roses covering my whole body. During the hour long performance, I slowly cut pieces of barbed wire, while blowing white balloons with words representing everything I feel impacts negatively on society: racism, war, the economy, etc. The balloons, wedged between the barbed wire, exploded. With each broken balloon and barbed wire segment, I created an artificial flower that along with the roses, is gifted to passers-by, as a symbol of transformation. In the very act of giving, I freed myself from the barbed iron structure. In “Melting Borders”, I built a helmet that held 5 ice creams. Depending on the current country, I changed the colour of the ice cream based on the country´s flag. After about an hour of walking in the main cities or towns, the ice creams would melt into an abstract painting on my head and white shirt. The shirts, which I still keep, represent "sweet flags", namely abstract flags, now unbound from any direct references to a particular nation. The new flags have no race or origin, being the dissolved abstraction of the concept of national identity. A concept that does nothing but create walls.

In “The Last Soldier,” with an Armenian uniform loaned by a young soldier, on the Azerbaijan border, in Artsakh, Stepanakert to be exact, I walked in slow motion for three hours, holding a red tuff stone on my shoulder (part of a church destroyed during an Azerbaijani attack). This represented the rubble of past pains, whilst the white flower in one hand, represented hope for the future.The Last Soldier puts on display a young soldier’s most intimate part, not that of the fighter, but the one containing self-awareness, dreams and love. The last soldier will perhaps be the soldier who no longer serves a war, yet who, walking very slowly, will reflect on a better future society, free of weapons or wars. Even though I was alone during the performance, I felt part of a peace march, with the souls of all the war dead in procession behind me. Kharkiv in Ukraine was the site of my “Pyjamas Party” performance, where with the help of local people I sewed pyjamas for a WWII tank. After a period of technical preparation and a week of hard work, the tank was then dressed in a performance lasting two hours. From killing machine, it had transformed into a docile and slumbering being; the cathartic way of sending wars and conflicts to sleep. Upon returning from a long series of travels between exhibitions and performances, I felt a great need to stay at home and work in my studio, to reflect and enjoy some routine. This need for peace of mind then became obligatory as once back in London, the pandemic was spreading. Our planet also seemed to need rest, and a lockdown seemed preferable to a total break-down.

The start of lockdown was marked by panic: crowded supermarkets where for weeks many foods and products usually stacked on the shelves were unavailable. After weeks of eerily calm streets, the natural world put on its best performance, no longer trampled by the unconscious actions of the masses and the insatiable economy. As if the Universe had cocked a snook at us. The need for change is becoming increasingly urgent and our prayers seem to have been heard, although the need for this profound shift arose in the form of a virus. Before a change, you need a break from whatever you are doing. From this interval/pause, many other movements begin to surface, such as Black Lives Matter or the climate emergency as epitomised by Greta Thunberg. For many, adapting to slower rhythms and the travel limitations was difficult. After years of continuous wandering around the world, I had to pause and change the quality and form of living art. Every time I found myself taking a plane or another means of transport, I could not help but notice and feel the frenetic world within myself: all in search of something that is inherently inside us. Life, history, or perhaps nature, placed a mirrored wall before us, which caused us to stop, hopefully before leading towards a new meaningful horizon.

Coronavirus and our existence

2019-2020, years marked by invisible entities with a high risk of contagion that can affect an individual´s health and life. It is precisely the risk of contagion that created panic: the fear of contact with other human beings, fear of the other and everything external to us. If we looked at each individual as one looks at a cell, we would think that all individuals, including every other element present in nature, create a gigantic, immense being. In such case, we would be an integral part of a body that we are unable to even see, yet in which we play a key role. The art of life´s mechanism. Broadly speaking, if a cell of our “immense body” falls ill, we too can be affected. If a person suffers, and not only due to illness, but any other reason, then we too suffer.

This gigantic human being, which includes us all, submits to the law of cosmic fractals: human beings reproduce on different scales, yet are always similar to the original, which many would view as God. Hence, every human being that makes up the greater human, of which we are a part, is self-similar: each part of the system is similar to the other, while maintaining its own individuality. The same theory applies to Brownian motion; to the motion of gas cells and galaxies. It is a law that seeks to regulate chaos: similarities between people attempt to stem the circumstances. The Persian poet Saadi Shirazi, in one poem, entitled Bani Adam, expresses this concept succinctly:

Adam´s children are limbs of one body,

since in their Creation, they are of one essence.

When life and time hurt a limb

Other limbs will not be at ease

If you have no compassion for the suffering of others,

you cannot consider yourself a human being.¹

I discovered this poem thanks to a recent working trip to Iran, as I could explore the very rich Middle Eastern history brimming with art, music and poetry. In Iran, the population has a passionately poetic and literary sensitivity and I was also able to learn more about Zoroastrianism. Namely, the worship of Mazda (Ahura), an ancient religion based on the teachings of Zarathuštra and the epochal struggle between good and evil: a cosmic conflict impacting not only on humanity but the entire universe. It is precisely against this conflict, which generates chaos, that fractal theory can intervene.

I wanted to introduce said themes for connecting to a vision of this astral body that encompasses all that we live/experience: the visible and invisible.

The core philosophical values of the Mazda cult are:

• positive thoughts and words, alongside positive actions;
• sexual equality;
• care for the environment;
• -work and charity;
• condemning subjugation between humans and cruelty to and sacrifice of animals.

Hence, Mazda not only seeks equality between different human beings, it also underscores our bond with all other lifeforms, the elements surrounding and part of our lives.

All characteristics that I consider the basis for conscious humanity connect across the principles of multiple religions. Like many past cosmologies, the four elements (air, water, fire and earth) are seen as the basis of life. Ritualism, made manifest in gestures, is humanity attempting to delimit the conflict between good and evil; a liturgical premise that lies at the heart of performance art.

Acolytes of Zoroastrianism did not worship the elements, but rather paid respect. An understanding that now seems almost forgotten: all the elements are part of us and the basis for life.

Today's politics also often forget the relationship of humans with the environment, in trying to erase our true nature through economic reality, which has increasingly warped humanity´s true basic needs.

Instead of as a body with a soul, we should imagine ourselves as souls with a body. This ideological inversion could create a different attitude towards life, our relationships with others and the key aspects of our existence. The change of course would also change the approach and perception that many of us have of death. I often think of Benoît Mandelbrot theory’s, which connects Chaos Theory to cosmic fractals. I feel that his theories illuminate glimpses of our existence and alongside quantum science could reveal life’s secret mechanisms to humanity. Mandelbrot argued that the self-similarity of small living beings to the original model naturally counteracts chaos.

Having travelled extensively thanks to my art, I’ve had the opportunity to learn the belief systems and traditions of other cultures. This also entailed exposure exposed to the tragic realities behind political and religious conflicts, inequality, hunger, and poverty. All these characteristics have led me to think of society’s pre...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
• Riccardo Matlakas
• Chapter 2
• International Perspectives
• Chapter 3
• Giuliana Attanasio
• Bibliography
• About the Authors
• Notes