Reading Rämistrasse #43: Leila Peacock on Have Sanity at Last Tango

Sense is fashioned and not innate, meaning is wrenched from randomness, just as sanity is also a constructed state that must be carefully maintained but is always vulnerable to the indifferent flux. We have likely all been working hard on maintaining a grip on sanity this past year, in the face of a seismic breakdown in the parameters of daily life. All shows right now are infused with pandemic weirdness. There is a sense of transgression in even standing in an art space after being bludgeoned for months with the behest to ‘stay at home’. Everyone is emerging slowly from their hideouts, twitching awkwardly. But there is a need to start to process our collective experience of the great viral vagueness. To get a handle on the dimensions of the suffering that has occurred, while grappling with dismay at the politicians fumbling in the shadow of the reaper, an ugly vaccine nationalism and unimagined new manifestations of social alienation. Our collective sanity is clearly ailing as the novelty of the new normal wears thin and the pandemic grinds on.