Art against corona (and AIDS, Trump and Brexit)

Only corona news again today. I wish I had started a corona blog! Please take this as further research on the new petitite bourgeoisie's cultural politics. This is an American writer hitting up in teh Graun

Why are the rich and famous getting coronavirus tests while we aren't? 

 over the past, terrifying week – a week which has set the foundation of modern life shaking like the San Andreas fault – we have seen a slew of beloved celebrities solemnly, dutifully announcing that they have received a positive test result for Covid-19. Idris Elba, Tom Hanks, Kevin Durant, Daniel Dae Kim [who he?]... these celebrity Covid-19 tests have happened alongside a broader failure to test everyday citizens and residents in the US and the UK, including medical workers, those in at-risk groups, and those experiencing serious, even hospitalization-requiring symptoms.

Strategically allocating tests [permitting all sorts of lobbying] would save countless lives; allocating tests on the basis of wealth and access will mean lives lost across every socioeconomic demographic.

Testing is just one part of the class story unfolding...The wealthy and the powerful are counting on us not paying attention.

Right sort of question, of course, but no equipment to answer it (rich and powerful = celebs)  and a barely concealed vested interest  ('strategic' allocations).

There is also this coming from the Dead Arty fraction of the npb 

Feeling overwhelmed? How art can help in an emergency by Olivia Laing 

Long before the arrival of Covid-19, the speed and contents of the news had made me feel almost overwhelmed with fear. Faced with a flood of images that includes migrant children in cages, melting glaciers and forest fires, it has felt impossible to process information, let alone assess the best way to react....a superabundance of potential threats – running from Islamic State to nuclear war, the rise of the far right, Brexit, environmental catastrophe and now a global pandemic – is matched by a dearth of time in which to process them [classic npb reaction to risk]...Logging into Twitter or following the rolling news has meant being trapped in a spin-cycle of hypervigilant anxiety.

Empathy is not something that happens to us when we read War and Peace. It’s work [luvvie!]  for which art can, however, provide us with radiant materials. ..One of the pleasures of Bleak House is that it’s a drama about the act of information-gathering itself, slowly and laboriously producing clarity and order out of lies, misinformation and occlusion....As the poet Anne Boyer observes in a much-shared essay about coronavirus, “fear educates our care for each other... I am not the least bit afraid of this kind of fear [sic], for fear is a vital and necessary part of love.”

As examples of this therapeutic art stuff:  

In 1989, the American artist and Act Up activist David Wojnarowicz posed for a famous photograph. He gazes furiously at the camera, his lips sutured with five loose stitches...the image possesses an uncanny power. 

Or:

Inside, there was lavish evidence that a horrible crime had been committed. Mendieta was tied to the table, half-naked, her underwear around her ankles. Blood dripped on the floor. The students stayed an hour and for the entire time she didn’t move a muscle.

And:

The night before Trump’s inauguration, I saw the trans poet Eileen Myles read their own version of a presidential address at the London Review Bookshop ...I have the same feeling when I look at photographs by Wolfgang Tillmans or read a novel by Ali Smith. I had it when I went to see my friend Rich’s degree show at Goldsmiths and he’d made dozens of ceramic razor clams and anemones, downed planes and nubbly coral reefs.

At the end of a long piece is this:

 Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency by Olivia Laing is published on 16 April by Picador (RRP £20). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com. Free UK p&p over £15.