Corona Haikus - Poetics of compassion. Visual poetry and co-creation in virtual opening spaces as self-care and community-care

The COVID-19 lockdowns and the maxim of social distancing have not only been accompanied by an upheaval of all so far assumed certainties and our complex socio-cultural infrastructures – they have also brought along deep permutation in our personal, intimate lives. As closeness and connectivity are essential in times of cataclysm, and as the preservation and negotiation of the effects of crises and its consequences is one element in deal with stress and anxieties, the impulse to document and reflect one's experiences, to reset one's focus and to regain agency through (co-)creative practices and mutual care have gained momentum. This might be one reason why during the lockdown many virtual communities emerged, e.g. social media initiatives with a documentary impetus, as well as collaborative web-projects. The motives for engaging in such networks are various – and often, one and the same project serves different needs at the same time for different user-participants. Apart from the impulse to document unprecedented times as a coping strategy to face personal uncertainties, and apart from the impetus to share one's experiences with others and thus to create a feeling of connectivity, these projects are also means for mediated self-care: they are spaces to self-reflexively cope with a slow-downed and often also isolated lifestyle and to make social distancing more bearable. This contribution examines the potentials of co-creative documentary poetry/poetic documentary in times of crises, taking the participatory project Corona Haikus as an example – a project, which launched during the first lockdown in March 2020 as an artistic experiment repurposing the facebook platform and which later metamorphosed into a curated website. I will investigate which community needs have existed during the crisis, and how the collaborative project Corona Haikus answered them. The focus of the presentation lies on co-creation as a form of self- and community-care, on the visual haiku as a poetic and therapeutic form and meditative practice of creation, as well as the use of networked media, to create 'open spaces' (sensu Zimmermann & De Michiel 2018), to foster communicative connectivity and to inspire creativity – thus making social media networks social in the proper sense of the word. Conceptualizations of co-creation, participation, mediated mindfulness and the healing potential of creativity – especially visual poetry – will be supplemented by reflections on community building, agency in co-creative projects and media ethics. In this sense, the contribution is meant as an analytic investigation of the status quo but also as a glimpse on the potential quo vadis of collaborative, interactive documentary and its (new) functions a means for self-care and community-care. Corona Haikus curated website: https://coronahaikus.com Corona Haikus facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/226094118756231 Interview / Podcast with Sandra Gaudenzi and Sandra Tabares Duque on Kammerfilmmern & Mediales Rauschen: https://kammerflimmern.podigee.io/b10-corona-haikus Published in: https://trametrami.avinus.org/publikationen/8-202