作者 Author／官妍廷 Kuan Yen-Ting
Chinese Version
2019年末，罹患不明肺炎的患者在中國武漢確診為新型冠狀病毒（以下簡稱新冠病毒）感染，幾經追查，武漢華南海鮮市場被視為新冠病毒擴散的發源地。透過飛沫及接觸傳染的新冠病毒引發殊傳染性肺炎（Coronavirus disease 2019，以下簡稱COVID-19），隨著各式旅行途徑，新冠病毒迅速席捲全球，多個國家持續出現大規模且持續的人傳人感染。世界衛生組織遂將COVID-19列為全球大流行病（pandemic），而其所引發類似流感的症狀、強勁感染力和高度致死率使得全球超過兩億五千萬人確診、超過五百萬人染疫死亡。新冠病毒爆發初期，自中國為始，世界各國紛紛進入緊急狀態，除了實施邊境管制外，亦頒布境內人民之行動限制令。包含臺灣在內，許多國家要求入境旅客進行五至二十一日不等的隔離檢疫。從邊境管制、城市封鎖到隔離檢疫、隔離治療等不同層次的防疫措施，皆是設法將病毒隔絕於健康（或未染此疫）的群體之外，雖能降低病毒散播及傳染的機會，但防疫措施也引起諸多對於人權限制、隱私侵犯和監控的疑慮，更甚者則觸發集體恐慌、獵巫等情結。儘管新冠肺炎疫苗迅速開發問世，隨之出現的陰謀論、否認疫情及反疫苗者，仍是全球疫情的大破口。因疫情引發的種種效應皆涉及生命治理之議題，國立臺灣師範大學英語學系教授黃涵榆在〈病毒、例外狀態、危脆性：當前生命政治情境的一些反思〉[1]一文中即梳理疫情期間引發的全球哲學家生命政治論戰，並反思當前生命政治情景。
爬梳歷史上的流行病，公元前五世紀爆發的雅典大瘟疫終結古希臘文明；十四世紀的鼠疫在其後的幾個世紀反覆流行；同樣超過千年歷史的還有天花病毒引起的天花；而工業革命後開始活躍的結核病、流行性感冒、伊波拉病毒出血熱、愛滋病、非典型肺炎（SARS）乃至目前疫情仍在延燒中的COVID-19，沒有人可以自外於傳染病的流行，毋寧提供藝術家想像真實死亡的契機。文藝復興文學家薄伽丘（Giovanni Boccaccio, 1313-1375）在此期間以瘟疫為背景，寫下了百篇寫實主義小說並集結為傳世經典的《十日談》（Decameron），義大利文藝復興畫家提香（Tiziano Vecelli, ca. 1488-1576）以其作品〈聖殤〉（Pieta）描繪當時肆虐威尼斯的鼠疫（提香最後也感染並死於鼠疫，而無法完成此件作品）。托馬斯曼《魔山》（The Magic Mountain）、卡謬《鼠疫》（The Plague）、孟克〈患西班牙流感後的自畫像〉（Self-Portrait With The Spanish Flu））則為近代以傳染病為背景的創作經典。過去我們透過藝術創作捕捉病體微弱的靈光，隨著十八、九世紀以來實證科學的發展，人類以光學顯微鏡發現了病原體的存在，疾病不再出自不可見的罪孽和業力。在當代藝術中，以病毒和疾病為創作動機的作品不在少數，而在藝術、科技與科學的聯集範疇中，透過藝術家和科學家的合作，更進一步揭示重大疾病對於社會和文化層面的影響和隱憂。延續上述兩股討論，本文將從英國生物藝術家安娜‧杜米崔（Anna Dumitriu）在疫情期間創作的作品《庇護所》（Shielding）檢視疫情期間「隔離封鎖」防疫措施揭開的生命政治難題。
庇護所
英國生物藝術家安娜‧杜米崔接受布萊頓大學（University of Brighton）「藝術／數據／健康衛生」（Art/Data/Health）研究計畫委託，與當地家暴防治組織RISE合作，以該地區的家暴數據進行創作。在計畫初期爆發的新冠肺炎也提供藝術家更多靈感，最後創作了作品《庇護所》。《庇護所》是由數十張迷你尺寸的床鋪模型組成，每張床上放置有手工縫繡及染製的迷你枕頭及寢具。單看袖珍可愛，但數十張床鋪整齊排開，彷彿是發生緊急危難時的集中收容所。事實上，這件作品的原型確實就是以新冠肺炎在中國武漢爆發初期，倉皇搭建用來收治肺炎患者的方艙（臨時）醫院。作品中的袖珍小床亦是按照方艙醫院中的病床尺寸及外觀，以3D列印的方式製作，其上的寢具則是由杜米特里手工縫繡、染色，最後再浸漬以新冠病毒提取的核糖核酸（RNA）。在杜米崔的創作中，常見她將縫紉、刺繡及染布等具有陰性特質的傳統手工藝與駭人的病原體結合，例如2014年創作的《浪漫病洋裝》（The Romantic Disease Dress）和2018年的《瘟疫洋裝》（The Plague Dress），前者是將製作連身裙的布料浸漬在造成肺結核（亦稱浪漫病）的結核桿菌提取的DNA中，後者則以鼠疫桿菌DNA為創作材料。而在《庇護所》中，這樣的做法更強調寢具織物的舒適感和病毒危險性兩種相互牴觸卻又同時存在的矛盾，如同封城期間，本該提供庇護功能的家屋卻成為暴力虐待的溫床。
隔離檢疫與隔離治療
若檢視杜米崔在作品《浪漫病洋裝》和《瘟疫洋裝》中環繞的疾病主題，曾一度大流行的肺結核以及鼠疫，必須透過隔離檢疫和隔離治療等措施圍堵病菌或病毒的擴散。歷史上最早施行的隔離檢疫施行於十四世紀的自治城邦拉古薩（今克羅埃西亞杜布羅夫尼克）。十四世紀時，人類史上第二次的鼠疫大流行肆虐歐、亞、非等地，是目前為止世界上規模最大的流行病。當時為了要保護沿海城市拉古薩免受鼠疫影響，從疫區港口搭船抵達此處的乘客及船員在上岸前都須前往鄰近的島嶼隔離檢疫三十日。[2]其他地中海沿岸城市諸如馬賽、威尼斯、阿馬爾菲、比薩等城市也陸續實施隔離檢疫政策。到了1448年，威尼斯元老院將隔離時間延長為四十日，義大利文的「四十日」（quaranta giorni）引申借代為隔離檢疫的說法因而誕生，亦是現代英語「quarantine」（隔離檢疫）一詞的辭源。[3]
而相對於這種將接觸過某種傳染病的人隔開並限制其行動，以觀察其是否染疫的隔離檢疫措施，隔離治療（isolation）則是將患有傳染病與未患病的人分隔開來，以阻絕進一步的傳染。隔離治療的傳統始於中世紀歐洲和印度，當時痲瘋病（後正名為漢生病）的傳染到達顛峰，此症會導致患者接近毀容和殘疾，且具有高度傳染力，人們便在邊遠地區建立痲瘋院（leper colony）集中患者，並和健康的群體隔離開來。十字軍東征畫下了衛生封鎖線，阻絕了來自東方的痲瘋病源。這些痲瘋院隨疫情隱退後閒置，並在十七世紀紛紛轉型為收治瘋癲者的孤島，而瘋癲者也全盤承接了原先加諸在痲瘋病人的種種污名。對後世精神醫學論述帶來深遠影響的法國哲學、思想史學家傅柯（Michel Foucault）在《規訓與懲罰：監獄的誕生》（Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison）〈全景敞視主義〉（Le Panoptisme）一章中說明了西方對痲瘋病和瘟疫不同的治理方式。前者引致的隔離治療措施以二分法將群體分為罹患痲瘋病者及未患病者，而後者則建立一套規訓（discipline）權力系統，將人口和空間多重分隔，也就是每個人應該待在他們被要求停留的地方，以便接受監視及控制。[4]
城市封鎖
或許我們可以試著用傅柯的「規訓」措施來理解並反思當前的防疫措施。自疫情爆發以來，各國發布了程度不同的行動限縮令，並以封城、居家令、緊急狀態、暫停等不同措辭來表示城市封鎖的「例外狀態」。各式被列為「非必要」之產業（non-essential business）必須停業，除了居家上班、上課外，疫情熱區如荷蘭，更在今（2021）年春天迎來二戰後的首次宵禁限制令。這些政／禁令除了引發侵犯人權的疑慮外，疫情造成的恐慌更將弱勢族群暴露在人權危機之中，包含疫情對女性、年長者、無法居家工作和失業者的影響以及對外來者的恐懼和排斥。
在西方世界爆發初期，美國亞裔美籍女權者組織（Asian American Feminist Collective）即迅速出版獨立誌《亞裔美籍女權者抗體：冠狀病毒蔓延時代的關懷》（Asian American Feminist Antibodies: care in the time of coronavirus），刊物作者群為來自亞洲各國的女性專業工作者，除了傳達即時疫情資訊、反映美國當時由主流媒體形塑出的排華、恐外的社會氛圍外，亦收錄食譜、家暴自救、社會救援及性工作者援助等指南。但需要這些援助的族群，絕非僅限於美籍亞裔女性。祕魯從2020年三月中起實施封城禁令，截至當年度六月底為止，已有915位女性失蹤，其中高達六成六的失蹤女性為未成年少女。[5]印度更傳出收治於集中隔離中心（即方艙醫院）的14歲少女遭受性侵。儘管家暴及性侵案件的受害者不限於女性，但處於劣勢地位的女性占比高於男性仍是當代現況。
回到杜米崔的作品，《庇護所》即探討封城期間，因為無法外出而遭受家庭暴力的女性處境，以及在此語境下家庭作為「庇護」的矛盾。杜米崔創作這件作品的靈感來自英國現代主義文學家及女性主義文學先驅的維吉妮亞‧吳爾芙（Virginia Woolf）代表作《自己的房間》（A Room of One’s Own, 1929）。吳爾芙在《自己的房間》中寫道，「如果女人想要寫小說，那她必須要有錢以及自己的房間。」短短一句話道出一個獨立、安全的空間和經濟之於女性創造力的重要性，而這個安全空間的概念恰恰和倉促打造的方艙醫院形成強烈對比，如同城市封鎖期間，被要求待在家中以策安全，但對於家暴受害者來說，家屋卻是另一個危險的所在。而《庇護所》以武漢第一所方艙醫院的病床為模型，結合縫紉、刺繡和植物染布等傳統手工藝製作的縮小版病床，其娃娃屋袖珍尺寸也讓人聯想到易卜生批判當時的婚姻結構、開婦女解放之先聲的劇作《玩偶之家》（A Doll’s House,1879）。手製的小巧寢具實際上卻沾染造成這場大疫的新冠病毒，儘管安全無虞，也足夠讓觀者感到恐懼及強烈的矛盾。
大疫尚未有停歇的徵兆，不斷變種、提高感染率並突破疫苗防護的病毒仍隨航空旅行在全球流轉。而在疫情升溫期間，無法豁免於社交距離外的博物館、藝術展演活動相繼停擺，落入「藝術文化是為承平時代特有產物」思想窠臼的隱憂揮之不去。義大利當代思想家阿岡本稱醫學和科學儼然成為新興宗教。或許以人文道德關懷為核心、科技技術和科學觀念為媒材的生物藝術創作，能在全球大流行並期間扮演另類心靈紓困工具，並彰顯末日景觀中，促進藝術、科技與科學交互融會的重要性和急迫性。
本文獲國家文化藝術基金會、文新藝術基金會贊助現象書寫–視覺藝評專案支持
[1] 見https://mag.clab.org.tw/clabo-article/biopolitics-of-covid-19/ [2] 見https://www.twreporter.org/a/mini-reporter-quarantine-history [3] 義大利原文為quarantena，見https://www.etymonline.com/word/quarantine [4] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1995, 198. [5] 見https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/5/hundreds-of-peru-women-girls-gone-missing-during-virus-lockdown
English version
In late 2019, patients with unspecified pneumonia was found in Wuhan, China, and diagnosed as a contagious disease caused by novel severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus. After investigations, the Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was identified as the ground zero site of the spread of the novel coronavirus. The virus responsible for Coronavirus disease 2019 (hereinafter COVID-19), which generally transmits via airborne particles and droplets, is rapidly spread around the world through various travel methods. The World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic in March 2020 and as of the end of 2021, the pandemic has caused more than 250 million cases and 5 million deaths. In the early stage of the outbreak, starting from China, countries around the world, declared a state of emergency, imposing border controls and restrictions on travel within their borders. Many countries, including Taiwan, required travelers to stay in quarantine for five to twenty-one days. From border control, lockdown, quarantine to isolation, these measures attempt to prevent the spread of virus and seek to isolate the virus from the healthy (or uninfected) populations. While reducing the chance of virus transmission, theses measures have also raised concerns about human rights, privacy violations, government surveillance, and in some serious cases, giving rise to collective anxiety and witch-hunting. Despite the rapid development of vaccine for COVID-19, the conspiracy theories, COVID deniers, and the anti-vaxxers remains the major breaches of those measures. Various concerns raised by the pandemic are related to issues of the administration of life. Huang Han-yu, a professor at the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, reviews the global bio-political debates among contemporary philosophers during the pandemic and reflects on the current situation of biopolitics in his article “Virus, State of Exception, and Precarity: Reflections on the Contemporary Biopolitics.”[1]
If we encapsulate epidemics and pandemics in history, there were the plague of Athens, which devastated ancient Greek civilization in the 5th B.C. The 14th century plague was a recurring epidemic in the following centuries. Earliest smallpox evidence dates to more than 2000 years ago. Tuberculosis, influenza, Ebola virus disease, AIDS, SARS, and even COVID-19, which is still in the process of spreading, have been active since the Industrial Revolution. No one can escape from the threat of epidemics and pandemics, and it rather provides opportunity for artists to picture death in reality. The Italian Renaissance author Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) completed The Decameron, a collection of 100 realistic tales based on the Black Death. Titian, a Venetian painter during the Renaissance, dramatized Christ’s death in his renown yet unfinished painting Pietà. The painting was left incomplete at his death of a fever in 1576, while the plague raged in Venice. Also, literary works including The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, The Plague by Albert Camus, and Edvard Munch’s painting Self-Portrait With The Spanish Flu are a few of the classics works based on contagious diseases. In the past, we intended to capture the faint aura of the diseased ones through artistic creations. With the development of empirical science since the 18th and 19th centuries, scientists had discovered pathogens through optical microscopes. Hence, illness was no longer bound by invisible sin and karma. In the scope of contemporary art, many artworks are inspired by viruses and diseases. While in the collaboration between artists and scientists, they further reveal the impact and hidden worries of major diseases on the social and cultural levels. Continuing the mentioned discussions on pandemics, this article attempts to navigate through the biopolitical conundrums reveals by COVID-19 measures from “Shielding,” an installation work by British bio-artist Anna Dumitriu during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Shielding
British bio-artist Anna Dumitriu was commissioned by the University of Brighton’s Art/Data/Health program to collaborate with Brighton-based domestic violence charity and to create a work based on data of domestic violence in the region. The outbreak of COVID-19 at the beginning of the collaboration project also inspired Dumitriu to realize the work Shielding. Shielding is consisted of dozens of miniature beds, with handmade pillow and beddings. The installation looks adorable like furniture of a doll house; however, with dozens of beds lined up neatly, it somehow reminds the viewers of those temporary hospitals built in Wuhan in China. In fact, the miniature beds were 3D printed based on the hospital beds in the temporary hospital that were hastily built to shelter COVID-19 patients in the early stage of the pandemic in Wuhan, China. And the bedding was hand-embroidered and impregnated with SARS-CoV-2 RNA. In Dumitriu’s works, it is commonly seen that the artist combines traditional feminine crafts including sewing, embroidery, and dyeing with horrific pathogens, such as The Romantic Disease Dress (2014) and The Plague Dress (2018). In the former work, Dumitriu impregnated the fabric with the extracted DNA of killed Mycobacterium tuberculosis (TB, also known as Romantic Disease), while in the latter work, the dress was impregnated with the DNA of Yesinia pestis bacteria (Plague). In Shielding, the work emphasizes the conflicting qualities between the comfort of the bedding and the danger of the virus, as in the case of lockdown, when the house that is supposed to provide shelter becomes a hotbed of domestic violence.
Quarantine and Isolation
If we look at the two themes of The Romantic Disease Dress and The Plague Dress, people had to implement measures such as quarantine and isolation to stop the spread of the viruses. The earliest quarantine was imposed in the Republic Ragusa (current Dubrovnik in Croatia) in the 14th century. In the 14th century, the second plague pandemic ravaged Europe, Asia, and Africa and was by far the largest pandemic in human history. To protect the coastal city from the plague, ships arriving Ragusa from infected ports were required to stay at anchor for thirty days before landing.[2] Other coastal cities such as Marseille, Venice, Amalfi, and Pisa also imposed quarantine policy one after another. In 1448, the Venetian Senate extended the span of quarantine to forty days and the term “quarantine” was derived from the Italian word “quaranta giorni” (forty days), which is also the origin of the word “quarantine” in modern English.[3]
In contrast to quarantine, which separates people who have been exposed to an infectious disease and restricts their movement to check if they are infected, isolation is the measure that separates patients of contagious diseases from those who are healthy to prevent further transmission. The practice of isolation began in medieval Europe and India when leprosy (later known as Hansen’s disease) reached its peak. Leprosy would cause disfigurement and disability and it was highly contagious. Thus, people established leper colony in remote areas to concentrate patients and isolate them from healthy populations. Later, the Crusades blocked leprosy’s way spreading from the East. The leprosariums were left unused after the epidemic stop. In the 17th century, those leprosariums were transformed into shelters for the lunatic, who took on all the stigmas that had been imposed on lepers. French philosopher and historian of ideas Michel Foucault, who had a profound influence on later psychiatric discourse, described the different approaches to the treatment of leprosy and plague in the chapter “The panopticon” (Le Panoptisme) in his book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Surveiller et punir: Naissance de la prison). The former led to a division of the population into those with leprosy and those who were healthy, while the latter established a discipline system of power and required people to stay where they were asked to stay to be monitored and controlled.[4]
Lockdown
Perhaps we can try to comprehend and reflect on the current COVID-19 measures in terms of Foucault’s “discipline.” Since the outbreak of the pandemic, countries around the world have implemented restrictions on different levels with various wording for the “exceptional state” to describe lockdown, such as shutdown, stay-at-home order, state of emergency, and PAUSE(as in New York State on PAUSE). Non-essential business have been shutdown, and in addition to Work From Home and home schooling, virus hotspot such as the Netherlands had its first curfew ever since World War II in Spring in 2021. In addition to raising concerns about human rights violations, the panic caused by the pandemic has exposed vulnerable populations to human rights crises, including the impact on women, the elderly, those unable to work at home, and the unemployed, as well as the fear and rejection of foreigners. In the early stage of COVID-19 in the Western world, the Asian American Feminist Collective soon published a zine, Asian American Feminist Antibodies: care in the time of coronavirus. The contributors were Asian women professionals. In addition to conveying immediate information about the pandemic and reflecting the xenophobic and anti-foreigner atmosphere shaped by the mainstream media in the United States at the time, it also contains recipes, domestic violence self-help, social assistance, and sex worker assistance. However, those who were in need of such assistance were not limited to Asian American women. As of the end of June of that year, 915 women had gone missing in Peru since the city was shut down in mid-March 2020, and as many as 66 percent of those missing were underage girls.[5] In India, there have been reports of sexual assault of 14-year-old girls admitted to isolation centers. Although the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault are not limited to women, it is still a contemporary reality that women are more likely to be disadvantaged than men.
Dumitri's Shielding explores the situation of women who are subjected to domestic violence during the lockdown because they were unable to go outside, and the contradictions of the family as "shelter" in this context. Dumitri was inspired by Virginia Woolf's masterpiece A Room of One's Own (1929), a British modernist and pioneer of feminist literature. In A Room of One's Own, Woolf wrote, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” This short sentence speaks to the importance of an independent, safe space and economy for women's creativity, and this notion of safe space is in stark contrast to the hastily built temporary hospital, which, like the city lockdown, is required to stay at home for safety, but for victims of domestic violence, the home is another dangerous place.
The pandemic shows no signs of stopping, as viruses that continue to mutate, increase infection and vaccine breakthrough infection continue to circulate around the world with air travel. As the pandemic heats up, museums and art exhibitions that cannot be exempted from social distance are shut down, and the fear of falling into the rut of the idea that "art and culture are unique products of a peaceful era" persists. The contemporary Italian thinker Agamben said that medicine and science have become emerging religions. Perhaps the creation of bio-art with humanistic and moral care as the core, technology and scientific concepts as the medium, can function as an alternative tool for spiritual relief during the pandemic and highlight the importance and urgency of promoting the interaction of art, technology and science in the apocalyptic landscape.
[1] https://mag.clab.org.tw/clabo-article/biopolitics-of-covid-19/ [2] https://www.twreporter.org/a/mini-reporter-quarantine-history [3] https://www.etymonline.com/word/quarantine [4] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan, New York: Vintage Books, 1995, 198. [5] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/5/hundreds-of-peru-women-girls-gone-missing-during-virus-lockdown
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