Pandemic Kink is a different online photographic gallery.

We are stalkers, we spend our lives observing people, spaces, even the smallest details.
Beauty is found in everything around us, however small or ordinary it may seem.
In this new brave world that we have been forced to live, a series of questions arise. But one especially is repeated over and over again. How to carry on with this life from 4 walls in a small apartment with few windows?

We debate between our previous lives, stalking our memories preserved in images that remind us that, beyond our 4 walls there is a whole world that wants to continue to be explored, observed. Although for the moment it is digitally.

And a new life, where the temples in India or the paradisiacal beaches of Thailand, are replaced by our neighbors hanging clothes, playing the guitar, having a barbecue.

This is an open project, to anyone who wants to join us on a journey that has just begun.

Collecting, documenting all the possible images of that world that we normally do not pay attention to, because it is too normal, too ordinary, too close. But if we look closely, we will find that there is much to explore in pandemic wildlife.

Living in capitalistic and patriarchal system during this pandemic has increased the need of a safe space in a form of allyship like never before. Inspired by Danielle Coke's illustration "Anatomy of An Ally", Vantiani and Valeriana explore the idea of a blueprint for an ally: how each and every one of us can be an active ally for each other through art that we wear or put in our space for other people to see.

The context of allyship here is not focused on one particular issue or group of people but instead it speaks for a variety of contexts and situations. We feel that there is always someone out there that feels unsafe or experiences feeling threatened simply because of their existence. Thus, the idea of an ally kit was born.

We began by writing a manifesto on what is an active ally is. At the end of the manifesto we ask people to put
their own manifesto points, since there is no one correct definition of being an ally, and it is a constantly evolving term. Being an ally is a process of unlearning, learning, and relearning.

From our own manifesto points then we picked 4, 2 points each, that each of us felt
strongly resonated, and turned them into artworks with each other's style. We also created our own logo for this kit based on our individual logos. We created posters, buttons and bandanas as they are the easiest to
wear and put on in a personal and communal space. Each kit is packed in a box which is also an artwork in itself.

We learned through this collaboration that although we both come from different country, we both feel the same way about violence and discrimination that occurs around us daily, online and offline. We hope this kit empowers and contributes to changing this.

This is paper to life as inspiration. Using hand-drawn work on paper and then animation to spark life, and in that also death and morning.

Goodbyes was created for the loved ones who never got to say their proper goodbyes due to COVID and isolation. In memory of the family, friends, and grandparents who never got to hug and touch their loved ones in their final moments. "The old man reminisces about the touch and affections from his childhood during his final days in isolation."

We found out that during the lockdown period we both had started to grow sweet potatoes in our house. Sweet potatoes are tasty vegetables which usually don't grow in our countries, but somehow both our plants were growing strong and healthy.

As we started brainstorming for our collaboration many ideas came to our minds, however our conversations still always went back on how our little gardens were doing. For both of us growing vegetables is a fascinating process of discovery of the natural world and a little freedom from the food industry. When taking care of a garden you enjoy watching your plants, harvesting them as well as making plans for what to grow next year.

We decided to create a blueprint of a garden. It's a garden of choices: as well as choosing what veggies and flowers to grow one can also choose which inner qualities to cultivate.

We saw the Blueprint as a copy and started researching our own environments as a blueprint to the environment of others. We created a mirror image of a photo that was sent to us. Mandy sent a photo from Australia and Iiris-Lilja responded to this by searching a photo, a place similar to the one in Mandy's photo. And vice versa. Finally Anniina created a piece of music from all of the photos, the final blueprint, a mirror we can listen to. A photo that was a copy of a place, is featured blue here. Like Alice went through the looking glass, we go through the photos and music like our very own blue looking glass. What is life, but a dream.

Talking about blueprints during this pandemic, we think the most basic thing is the collective spirit. The pandemic suddenly hit all sectors, causing everyone to experience its impact, including artists. Artists, like many others struggle between surviving and continuing to work. Many artists have changed professions or have even disappeared from the artistic process. We believe the blueprint of being an artist has shifted from simply imagining and creating work into helping each other maintaining mutual enthusiasm, motivation and inspiration for the work.

In our collaboration we explore our personal methods we use to keep up the passion for work. Cutnotslices describes the anxiety that always revolves in his mind, Hyde described and reminded us of how fun the art process can be, and Taquen describes the calm and happiness that we want to achieve. These three things are a process that we must go through in our work during this pandemic era.

It is important to constantly review what certain celebrations and historical figures who have been normalised, actually symbolise, and even more importantly go further and recognize the legacies they generated in territories, and identities. Every year we see yet another Columbus Day, celebrating the disruption..sorry, the "discovery" of The America's. And what an absolute TREAT that was for so many people, hey?

Sharing a language and a heritage, Brian and Claudia collaborated across the ocean to create a playful, interactive and downloadable exploration game for you to print up and use to reflect upon the true legacy of colonisation, and how we still reverberate with the inheritance of this era - whether it be advancing from its spoils, or struggling from its forced displacement and oppression.

Micro Mortal Zooms were a series of unique global conversations about death, decay and artivism, facilitated by Micro Galleries artists Janneke Hoogstraaten (NL) and Jessica Raschke (Au). Death is the one inevitable experience we all share, and not necessarily from COVID-19: the death of jobs, relationships, loved ones, pets, etc, but we really don't talk about it. Micro Mortal Zooms sought to break the boundaries to everything death-related through an interactive guided conversation with like-minded artistic souls and complementary moments of awkwardness, creativity and laughter.

This year, the pandemic feels like the most visible threat to our existence and our mortality is foregrounded every single day. Together we explored contemporary ways of opening up the conversation around death and the way we engage with uncomfortable things like human decay and decomposition. Personal and difficult universal topics that have been a subject of art since the earliest recorded cultures. From dramatic mythological scenes, post-mortem photography to the last moments of mortal subjects - often a grim but visual reminder of our numbered days.

And, although much time has passed, death is still one of the most pervasive themes in art history but very much hidden in our "Western" culture to the point of denial, as we did for many years with climate change. We believe that death shouldn't be denied now and that contemporary approaches and artistic interventions are essential for bringing back the conversation about death, mortality, and decay into mainstream culture. Micro Mortal Zooms, therefore, collaboratively explored and questioned:

· How can the arts engage contemporary concerns about mortality, dying and death?
· What is the role of the artist in 2020 and beyond?
· How can we shed light on death denial as artists?