Drawing COVID-19. The Viral Image

Abstract

The Prime Ministerial Decree of 9 March 2020 has caused the spread of social campaigns (#corona-virus, #iorestoacasa), whose ‘pandemic’ effect has influenced the collective imagination more than the COVID-19 virus which, spread all over the world, has changed everyone’s life globally. In a hyper-technological era, this microscopic virus has shown that even evolved communities are fragile, questioning many false certainties. The society of the global image has reacted and, as a symbolic language, has responded with countless forms of visual and multimedia communication (magazines covers, cartoons, comics, video clips) to spread new messages on social networks or television channels: to stay home, to renounce social life, to use quarantine to rediscover forgotten activities.

This contribution examines the topic from a social and graphic point of view, analyzing contexts and languages such as: the proliferation of photographic images of deserted cities, which have portrayed the same places with different eyes and effects; the manipulation of the iconic and/or rhetorical force of artistic masterpieces or cinematographic titles, reinterpreted according to inspirations due to coronavirus psychosis, or of well-known advertising brands to obtain ironic puns with an equally ‘viral’ effect; the redesign of the logos of famous multinationals in the name of the rule of social distancing; the creation of video clips to analyze, through the now usual video call screen, problems and typical behavior of the quarantine. The goal is to confirm how quickly the communication of the visual image on social channels was a favorable condition for learning the rules and behaviors to observe during the pandemic.