Open AccessScreened screens screening: Boundaries and boundary-drawing practices during COVID-19
Author(s) -
Xin Liu
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of environmental media
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2632-2471
pISSN - 2632-2463
DOI - 10.1386/jem_00022_1
Subject(s) - boundary (topology) , covid-19 , embodied cognition , computer science , object (grammar) , face (sociological concept) , perception , aesthetics , human–computer interaction , artificial intelligence , visual arts , epistemology , art , sociology , medicine , mathematics , philosophy , mathematical analysis , social science , disease , pathology , infectious disease (medical specialty)
This short piece concerns the figure of the screen as a boundary object and screening as a boundary-drawing practice during COVID-19. The screen is understood of as a surface that filters, shields, protects, conceals, mediates, intrudes and on which images can be projected and made visible. This text links together and thinks through various instantiations of the figure of the screen, such as digital screens and face masks. In so doing, it makes visible the ways in which the digital, affective and embodied screens and screening practices shape the perception of and response to COVID-19 in various contexts, as well as the multiple and often contradictory ways in which boundaries of spaces and bodies are materialized and undone.