Contamination as collaboration: Being-with in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

The global pandemic outbreak in 2020 was a disturbing experience for most people worldwide. The primary way of protecting human life was social distancing and lockdown, often forcing people to stay at home. The confinement made the fear and uncertainty grow bigger and bigger. Fortunately, the online connection was still as possible and essential as never before. The text is inspired by a series of remote meetings under the working title Viral Culture: Bio Art and Society, initiated by academic curator Claire Nettleton to put together people working in art&science area. Recordings of the Zoom gatherings complemented by notes and chat transcriptions served as intriguing storage of topics and ideas. This article focuses on the three threads: being-with (other humans, the virus and other non-human actors), caring without touch and the pandemic interpreted as a vast bio art project. All the archived materials, including the present article, will potentially function as historical documents in the future, showing how a specific group of transdisciplinary culture producers dealt with the global crisis in its first phase.