Work Description

During the spring of 2020, in Toronto, David Cayley questions the Covid-19 pandemic and the way it is dealt with by Western countries. Based on the work of philosopher Ivan Illich, he asks if “the ontology of systems” we live in could have been the cause of this time of crisis. He warns against a certain denial of death, which “hides the other things that are going on – the mass experiment in social control and social compliance, the legitimation of telepresence as a viable mode of sociability and instruction, the increased surveillance, the normalization of biopolitics, and the reinforcement of risk awareness as a foundation of social life.” At the same time in Paris, following the introduction of lockdown measures to control the pandemic, the streets suddenly emptied. Sanitary measures, enforced by the police system have allowed the revving up – met with little resistance – of its security policy, which was introduced a few years prior with the Vigipirate plan (national antiterrorism security alert) among other things. The photographer Myr Muratet documented the silent city in his own way.