This article appears in VICE Magazine's Means of Production issue. Conceived of pre-COVID-19 and constructed during it, it explores the organization and ownership of our world.“Make something out of nothing” is an age-old adage, but it’s rare that art spawns from a vacuum. For the majority of creators, work has to come from something, and inspiration is often sparked by a new something—a new place, new subjects, new things.
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While much about the experience of living on earth during the COVID-19 pandemic is new for the majority of its residents, the novelty is not necessarily inspirational: For those of us at home, most of what we see each day hardly changes, with the same walls surrounding us day after day. The streets may be there, but their difference is emptiness, not additive in nature. So for our Means of Production issue, we asked writers and photographers from around the world to share what they are producing out of their limited lives, to show what they are creating in an environment that is so different in its sameness. What they sent back are photos that are arresting in their mundanity (a trick of light, a simple still life), and in what they lack—the regular physical connection that makes us all feel whole and human. Instead, they remind us of another old saying, “something out of nothing”’s twin flame: Necessity is the mother of invention.
Dayna Evans, Paris, April 10
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Claudia Zalla, Milan, April 1–April 28
I had prepared long to-do lists, which due to laziness or little time on my hands I used to always postpone; then I found myself installing a ceiling lamp that had been abandoned in its box for months, and I Marie Kondo–ed my sock drawer and wardrobe.
It’s these simple, however necessary, actions that led me to start a visual diary: a collection of still life shots that through straightforward objects narrate my daily experience; days made of goals deemed banal on the surface though already part of a routine that didn’t make me feel useless anymore.
For hours on end, I would observe the sunlight moving inside my house. I found closure in watching the 8 a.m. sun rays touch the chair in my bedroom, or noticing how the building in front of my window mirrors the afternoon light, going through the leaves of my balcony’s jasmine tree and casting funny shadows on the living room walls.
I miss nature, in each of its forms, and more than anything I miss the freedom of getting in touch with it on my own terms. But I miss having a drink with my friends, too, or dinner, and my family and my boyfriend, who live in another region. Situations and faces I used to take for granted have today become my biggest wish.
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I’m not sad today, maybe just a bit worried about what comes “next.” I just want to roll up my sleeves and try to embrace the learnings I’m gaining from this surreal moment, hoping it’ll work.
Eda Yu, Los Angeles, April 7
Ka Xiaoxi, Shanghai, January–April
Everyone became a good cook, and cared about family, friends, and people around. All of a sudden, it seems I understand a better meaning of life, what is important and what is not.
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Theodore Afrika, Cape Town, April 22–29
Francisco Garcia, London, April 17
To be honest, I’m a lucky man. I live near enough to the same bit of semi-suburban South East London I’ve always called home, full of scenic (now sadly shuttered) cemeteries and a more than ample amount of public greenery. The general mood is strange, but how could it really be anything else? I miss the theoretically limitless possibilities of social life, even if I miss its predictability even more. I’m getting through my reading list and making headway with my work, which I’m also very thankful to have enough of. My partner is a big part of my continuing sanity, and as the weeks bleed into probable months, it’s good to know that I’ll always have someone else to subject to my cooking. The nights are the weirdest part of the day. Things weren’t built to be so quiet around here—when did anyone have the time to stop and stare up at the stupid pink moon poking through the increasingly full looking trees? Most of all, I’m increasingly alarmed at how sentimental all this isolation is making me.
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