Dear reader,
At the risk of reiterating something you’ve heard ten times today: it has been a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic and Colorado College declared its transition to online learning and working. There isn’t space here to adequately begin to talk about the cost of the pandemic and its mismanagement, but I will say I’m slowly starting to feel its end become tangible.
Only now am I beginning to understand how profoundly many of us have adapted our behaviors over the course of the last year. I’ve almost gotten over that weird feeling that I’m talking to a wall or soliloquizing every time I’m on a Zoom call; I have dreams where I find myself maskless and panicked in the middle of a grocery store. The little mannerisms and performances that used to come with moving through the world (a student trying to catch someone’s eye in class, an essential worker interacting with the public without fear of illness) have been rescripted. Anabella Owens writes about such a rescripting in her article about the intersection of privilege and vulnerability—those without the privilege of avoiding in-person work are forced into a position of socially-imposed vulnerability, drawing class and racial divisions ever more stark.
Courtney Knerr writes about a more literal form of performance in their article about the frustrating cycle of queerbaiting, a practice in which pop music performers profit off of queer audiences by maintaining ambiguity about their own sexuality, and the many ways it harms queer people. Zeke Lloyd asserts his distaste for performative activism and his peers’ other disingenuous Instagram performances. We’re republishing a 2010 article about purity balls, an odd bit of performance art layered with fibbery that originated here in Colorado Springs.
These writers have honestly expanded my awareness of the small and large performances woven deeply into the world around me—hopefully they’ll do the same for you.
From my soapbox to yours,
Kat and the Cipher Staff