The Forensic Annotation of a Fever Dream: an Ongoing Atlas of COVID-related Memes

This exhibition/installation is made of a set of online-generated meme classics referring to the recent COVID-19 pandemic, in their variations, interconnections, and conceptual/historical dynamics. Formally, it takes the shape of a hybrid between a mind map and a forensic chart. Pandemic-related memes have been chosen as root content, given the context of particularly intense and focused online activity from which they emerged. Besides displaying the original items, the exhibition engages in their epistemological and historical referencing, annotation and connection. The primarily online nature of the source references is rendered tangible in the exhibition/installation, gradually occupying and saturating the locus. Memes are printed, drawn and photographed in a range of formats and media, and annotations/connections are made using handwriting and various forms of tape (including unspooled magnetic tape from discarded VHS cassettes).