Engaging with the Great Pandemic War: Citizens, Artists, Academics

Authors

  • Stephen Alomes RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1344/co20223325-41

Abstract

Facing the Australian experience of the global Great Pandemic of the virus SARS-CoV-2 (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome CoV-2), known as the resultant disease, Covid-19, many citizens, including artists, writers and academics, engaged through analytical and creative works. Many of us have become 'citizen scientists', different from "Facebook Certified Experts”, denialists and anti-vaxxers who declare that they have "done my research" ... often on YouTube or Google sites. Seeing “Our Pandemic Zeitgeist”, a warlike experience, through the lens of my own engagements as a prose poet diarising our stories, a painter escaping the pandemic, one of several researchers advocating better health policies, and a trench warrior against Facebook pandemic fantasists, this account offers a distinctive perspective.

Author Biography

Stephen Alomes, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

Adjunct Professor Stephen Alomes, RMIT University, Melbourne, is a contemporary cultural/ political historian and comparativist researcher, an interpretative artist, through expressionist painting of populist leaders (Trump, Putin, Orban, Johnson, Morrison), and has written contemporary prose poetry since 2015. His six books on Australian political/social nationalism and cultural history include A Nation at Last? He co-edited comparative books on Australia and France, and Australia and Japan and has written articles on populism—France, Italy, Japan and Australia. Our Pandemic Zeitgeist poetically explores the everyday stresses of the pandemic (Ginninderra Press, 2020), differently responded to in his expressionist art (www.instagram/stephenalomes).

Published

2023-02-17