Emanuele Coccia in Fall Semester:
As in a fairy tale, the cities, to defend themselves from an invisible yet powerful enemy, have disappeared: they have gone into exile. They have declared themselves banned, outlawed, and now they lie before us like inside an archaeological museum or a diorama.
From one day to the next the schools, cinemas, restaurants, bars, museums, and almost all the shops, parks, and streets have closed, deemed uninhabitable. Social life, public life, meetings, dinners, lunches, work moments, religious rituals, sex, everything that opened once we closed the doors of our house became impossible. They survive only as a memory or as something that has to be constructed through complex and sometimes painful efforts: the calls, the direct GIS (geographic information system), the applause or the singing on the balcony. They all sound like mourning. We are mourning the disappeared city, the suspended community, the closed society along with the shops, the universities, the stadiums.
More here.