ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic that emerged in early 2020 disrupted the lives of billions of people across the globe. As governments stipulated periods of lockdown to halt the spread of the virus, the rhythms of working, social, and family life came to a jarring halt. The global health crisis and resulting periods of quarantine have dramatically impacted the landscape of performance-making. The context of quarantine and self-isolation demanded that performance change, in some ways quite radically, in order to exist. The intrinsic connectedness of everyone’s lives has been harshly exposed, illustrated by the way the virus has spread from country to continent, with no concern for borders, or boundaries. Instead, Performance in a Pandemic aims to capture a sense of immediacy, recording the experiences of artists, curators, and academics responding, sometimes in real time, to extraordinary new circumstances.
