Bird in Flight Prize ‘21 Finalist: Corona Rhapsody – Is This Real Life (part 2)

Rafael Heygster, Germany

Since the outbreak of the global Corona pandemic, we have often been confronted with the questions of what is actually happening around us. In the beginning, the situation felt like a surreal dream to me.

Part 2 of this ongoing Project (Part 1 was Part of the exhibition last year) documents life during the acclimatisation to the state of emergency. It examines the decline of the pandemic and the resulting normalisation of everyday life, questioning whether there is a possibility to „return“ to old normality at all, or whether the impact of the pandemic has caused not only temporarily but also lasting changes in our society. The work questions how the current situation is presented by the media and perceived by the public, to what extent this corresponds to subjective experiences, how the pandemic is possibly being instrumentalized for political purposes, and how we will remember the coronavirus crisis in the future.