Back to the Fractured Future

Remembering Sisyphus frames a lament about our penchant for self-destruction, notes Mario D’Souza.

- Mario D’Souza

An informal network of creative practitioners came together from around the world to share stories. Strangers to each other initially, they began to gather each week, virtually as the world in isolation turned to the interwebs. Each contributor presented a score that explored the meshing of the personal and the communal. What emerged was a take on psychological, social and political conditions performed on distinct spatial planes.

Called Decameron-19, the project took its name from Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, where ten characters isolating in an abandoned villa outside Florence during the Black Death of 1348 told each other stories to navigate time. Taking this premise and the pandemic as the backdrop these Decameronistas mapped their localities and exchanged their experience of making work under difficult conditions like lockdowns and repressive regimes. Using the collectivity offered by the Internet as a tool for mapping sites and recording histories, the project offered the possibility of impromptu relationships and momentary friendships towards shared futures.

Decameron-19 was an initiative that was part of a show that explored ‘lessons in uncertainty’ from the 12th of November to the 31st of January at Sunaparanta Goa Centre for the Arts, Panjim, along with eight other artists.