Christian Schiefner - France

The sound project Isolation Postcards was initiated on the 15th of April and completed on the 3rd of May amid the global lockdown peak of the COVID-19 crisis. During this period of time, all the participating artists were in a national situation of forced isolation.

The project aimed to create a chain of communication between artists and musicians living in various countries and working in the field of art, sound and music. The first artist in the chain was required to compose a sound postcard within approximately one day, then invite and send this to a selected artist in another country. The process was repeated by each participant in the chain until the sequence of postcards came full circle.

By appropriating the idea of the postcard as a holiday snapshot, Isolation Postcards encouraged each artist to explore their current confinement and personal experience in this space within one short piece of 2-5 minutes. In contrast to experiencing and sending the image of a strange distant land to friends and family, each participant was faced with the possibility of sketching and offering something more familiar and ordinary, but potentially more authentic and imaginative.