Cirrus@Austlit

'This paper reflects on the impact of lockdown in Sydney on artists and creatives. We share our personal story of how we imagined our lives would be before COVID-19 and the changes we observed after entering in pandemic mode. Intertwining images taken with a mobile phone and text, we offer our observations on the evolving new language that appears around us in supermarkets, on walls and on the footpath: signs determining social interactions and affecting behaviour. We also touch on the idea of how writing can bring us home and make us feel closer to our languages and countries of origin. We underline theatre’s importance to tell stories from the time of the pandemic, when governments have been found wanting due to lack of care of the most vulnerable, in particular First Nations peoples. We reflect on the need for reinvention, accepting change, reassessing our human values and making present our links to the natural world. As the pandemic takes us from one stage to the next, we suggest that creativity is the one possible space that offers relief and hope and opens up possibilities to make sense of our new reality while contributing to a collective sense of humanity. (Publication abstract)

'I was meant to spend the first half of 2020 on research study leave at the University of Cologne. My partner and I rushed back to Australia in mid-March, disrupting our plans and forcing me into a new working paradigm. The disruption wound up sending me into one of the most productive periods of my career. In this article, I reflect on how my privileges—­both earned and unearned—­have contributed to a boom in my academic work at the same time that it has wreaked havoc on the entire sector. I also reflect on how COVID-19 has exposed and exacerbated inequalities in Australian universities.' (Publication abstract)

'This creative piece of non-fiction was written in response to the challenges of everyday life in the early weeks of the pandemic in Australia. I wanted to convey the emotional economy of experiences—the longing, sense of loss, traces of guilt in processes of remembering and storytelling, particularly when these feelings might seem unjustified and self-indulgent.'  (Publication abstract)