The Pre- and Post-Pandemic:
February 20, 2023
“Each moment we spend fixated on our differences – rather than focused on our own accountability – is another moment wasted, and one that is defining the post-pandemic era.” ~ Lisa Wood
Pandemic Sheds Light:
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic unambiguously illuminated the severity of the ecological and humanitarian crises facing us and the planet today.
For the first time in history, a human-triggered event brought every country on earth to a standstill, serving as a monumental wake-up call for humanity.
United Nation IPCC 2021 Report:
In 2021, the United Nations released its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on the current state of the planet:
- CO2 is at its highest in 2 million years
- We have lost 60% of our wildlife population in the last 50 years.
- The last decade was the hottest in the last 125,000 years.
- In just over 10 years, we have lost as much forest as we have in the last 9,000 years.
- If earth’s temperature increases by 2 degrees Celsius, 500 scientists worldwide predict that we will lose 99% of all coral reefs and that we will have 3 billion climate refuges.
Marrow of the Moment:
Yet despite the alarm bells we continue to spend our energy, attention and resources condemning each other for our differences. We are hating more; we are more intolerable. It is the second month of 2023 and there have been 33 mass shootings in the United States to date.
Rather than address our own shortcomings, OR carbon footprints, OR habits of consumption, OR biases, we continue our fixation on the other’s choices and differences, and the crime that they are different from our own.
Tragically, we are perpetuating toxic mentalities in the face of pressing societal and ecological challenges that need our attention, energy and resources now.
Ultimately, our shared struggles will require us to put aside our differences and come together under a common purpose.
Pre-pandemic Work:
My interest in recording the natural abstraction of landscape environments began 8 years ago with Surface Surveys, a series of photographic studies of desert physiographies from around the world as they exist in their natural form.
Post-pandemic Work:
LWS post-pandemic works directly address our attention and habits in the present-day, within a post-pandemic world.
The studio is harnessing leading technologies to present new artforms that include innovative stores of value and utility – in response to the challenges confronting our civilization now.
“I do not see the world in the same way that I did before the pandemic.” ~ Lisa Wood