Vanpiro esiten
Vanpiro Esiten attempts to solidify the COVID-19 pandemic years through pictures and text covering encounters with everyday landscapes or events whose meaning changed between 2020 and 2022, our personal surprise at finding ourselves in this situation and, more particularly, an examination of the quasi-mystical ideas that arose and developed during lockdown and in the following months.
Vanpiro Esiten vol. 1 focuses on exploring daily life during the pandemic’s earliest stage: lockdown, our mental state, the news and strange rumours that made the rounds on social media.
The zine’s first volume captures how a whole range of pseudoscientific beliefs, heavy with political meaning, appeared first on digital communication channels and later on the streets, growing into a fully-fledged movement of denial of the virus’ actual existence. This portrayal gathers all sorts of variations on this theme.
Click here to read a press release about vol.1.
As for Vanpiro Esiten vol. 2, it is an immersion into the strange ideas around the COVID-19 pandemic, which served as a magnet for that intangible entity which makes itself regularly known to society; a simple idea, absolute and attractive for any mystic narrative: the end of the world is near.
The news about the COVID-19 vaccine’s development were also submerged in this breeding ground of magical thinking which partly and unconsciously affected us during the perplexing times we were living through.
This volume is thus a semi-journalistic sounding line about the diversity of points of view (ranging from blind faith to almost supernatural dread) around the vaccine, captured through interviews with over 30 people.
Click here to read a press release about vol.2.
If you want a copy of either volume of Vanpiro Esiten, contact me.
