#anthropause

My father used to tell us that after the plague hit,

the world was never again the same.

The first thing was that the streets were empty

at night, the taverns dark, restaurants with patios

of empty tables in the dead of winter. Only the

supermarkets were milling with masked buyers

like refugees from a distant, rusting millennium.

Foxes started wandering the streets, and bears

rooted through the steel bins of burger joints,

and deer strikes by cars plummeted as if given

a reprieve by Congress like some stay of auto

execution as any and all wildness was forgiven.

The air was cleaner, and birdsongs woke the

dying each morning like a cacophony of song

unheard for generations; even fish tasted better

because they no longer guzzled oil or leftover

pharmaceuticals with toilet water enthusiasm.

The trees got their sway back, that steady gait

back and forth as if bobbing to the lost rhythm

of the seasons that for so long had been carbon-

hobbled, fire-sworn, and innocent forests sprang

from the ash-scape, free from ivy and insincerity.

Even the insects seemed kinder, honey tasted

sweeter, but then they invented an anti-bug,

and it eradicated the virus, and humanity came

roaring back, so much so that they overcorrected

(always the problem) and destroyed it all.

Who won? I asked him. The humans, he said,

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic sparked radical changes in the way life was lived around the globe. With the rapid reduction in human mobility, short-term environmental improvements were seen across the world. Work and social routines were altered, and political action to reduce case numbers seemed to open a window of opportunity for socio-environmental change in a post-pandemic world. Inspired by conversations around the “COVID-19 Anthropause,” this paper probes the lived experiences and reflections that emerged in the pandemic pause. Three years after the onset of the pandemic, many initial environmental gains have been limited. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 Anthropause has brought human–environment relations into new light, sparking introspection and forms of broader social critique surrounding what kinds of socio-political courage and structural change is necessary to achieve new post-pandemic realities. Our research shows the heterogeneity of experiences of the Anthropause, highlighting the ways that uncritical engagement with the concept can obscure overlapping structural inequalities, and reinforce harmful binaries around the presence and absence of humans in nature. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative data from Latin America and Europe, we enrich debates over the implications of the pandemic for human–environment relations and underscore the need to attend to radical forms of difference amid any global environmental concept.

Iris Film Collective is excited to announce member Zoe Kirk-Gushowaty's film installation for the City of Vancouver's public art series "Platforms: We Are Here, Live". 

Zoe's work, “Upstream”, will be presented on the VanLive! video screen, at Robson and Granville, from March 7 through April 2nd 2022, screening once an hour at random times all day and night with a dedicated slot at 12 noon.

“Upstream” explores one of British Columbia’s main natural and industrial arteries, the Fraser River. Beginning at the mouth, in the wetlands of the Fraser River Estuary, and moving upstream, the film follows the Fraser River’s historical, industrial and ecological bends, in the context of the recent slowdown in human activity linked to COVID-19.