Re: 12th Planet Smog City Download
Celena Holtzberg
Where the Air Is Not So Clear
During the early 1900s, Mexico City, Mexico, was known for having some of the cleanest air in the world. Author Carlos Fuentes wrote a novel about the city in 1959 and called it Where the Air is Clear. Today, however, Mexico City is one of the smoggiest places on Earth.
Undercover
During the Great Smog of 1952, coal pollution blanketed the city of London, England. More than 4,000 people died from respiratory ailments as a result. The smog was so thick that the city had to shut down roads, railways, and the airport. Robbers used the cover of smog to break into houses and shops.
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Art always finds a way, even when everything has been put on pause. In this multimedia piece, journey with dancers, musicians, and philosophers across Iceland during the lockdown and explore the question: What is the meaning of the great stop, the apausalypse?
Once I did an experiment in Reykjavk. I convinced the mayor to turn off all the city lights for half an hour while an old astronomer talked about the stars on national radio. The idea was to bring back the starry night to children who might never have seen a deep black sky. When the lights were switched off, many things were revealed. When the lights went out, the sound of the city also dampened. People began whispering; neighbors met in the soft autumn darkness and gazed into the sky. It took six years to convince the city to do this: to turn off the lights so we could see the stars for half an hour.
Our first interview was with Sigrur orgeirsdttir, professor of philosophy. She spoke about The Decameron, a story by Giovanni Boccaccio that took place in a villa outside Florence in 1348 while the Black Death ran through the city. The story is about ten young people taking shelter to escape the plague. They tell stories for ten days while the plague passes through. Sigrur told us she felt strongly that we need stories to understand what is happening.
We did not think too much about it. But after days of intense filming, we loaded everything into our video editing software to see what we had captured only to find we had inadvertently captured ten people telling us stories over ten days of filming. We had filmed some kind of a modern Decameron, and while we were at it, the days had passed in a flash, the peak had flattened, and the city was opening again. We had captured a moment that, hopefully, will never occur or be captured again.
As we drove around the empty streets of Reykjavik to meet the artists, we listened to the news: Up to 2000 people, almost 1 percent of the employed population, had lost their jobs in that single day. Most of them were connected to the airport and Icelandair. Tourism had become a significant section of our economy in recent years, bigger than the fisheries or any other industry. We had been experiencing a boom ever since the Eyjafjallajkull eruption put Iceland on the map as a tourist destination. Officials declared that our borders would open on the 15th of June, but it was hard to say when people would be ready to travel again.
To our surprise, the Icelandic government had shown professionalism and competence in managing the COVID-19 pandemic. All its decisions were science-based, and the orders did not come through politicians but from daily meetings with our Chief Epidemiologist, the Director of Health, and the Chief Superintendent for the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police. A very likable and humanistic group, they gave strict orders but emphasized individual responsibility.
At the time of this writing, May 12th, we have had seven days without a new coronavirus case, down from 100 per day at its peak, and children are hugging grandparents for the first time in two months. Our intensive care units never ran beyond capacity, and the survival rate of those patients was exceptionally high. Of almost 2000 cases, we had 10 deaths, about a 0.5 percent death rate. Those who were diagnosed with COVID-19 were told to stay home, but they received a daily phone call from the hospital, and as soon as symptoms got worse they were called in.
Because of this, Icelanders feel grateful for the lives saved and the mitigated suffering. Most of the population has shared the experience of feeling stuck at home, missing the older people in their life, having all the kids around, lost opportunities, the unpredictable future, mass unemployment, fear of a second wave of the virus, and the uncanny weirdness of everything.
Sometimes it seems like Icelanders are more in their element during times of crisis than during boom years. After a thousand years of living on one of the harshest places on Earth, there is this deeply embedded feeling in our genetic memory that something is going to happen, eventually. Older women shake their heads during a good sunny day and mumble: This good weather is a bad omen. And they are right. Just over the horizon, there is always a winter frost or a cold summer, an epidemic taking the lives of up to 30 percent of the population, an avalanche, a volcanic eruption, a massive storm killing the livestock and drowning hundreds of fishermen, or an earthquake. Now a small virus has kicked us off track. We have to rebuild and rethink. Strangely, we knew this time would come. We had been joking about the tourist boom. How will we use this hotel when the bubble bursts? Elderly home? Artist residency?
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