Viewed in terms of biological laws the COVID–19 pandemic is an open and shut case. Viruses that cause plagues have always existed. You just have to combat them, as best you can. It’s the usual fight for survival, this time in the age of technology. A task for pragmatists, nowadays called experts. As a medical issue it really has nothing to do with other problems of civilisation. And certainly not with culture.

Yet there is something illogical about this scientific logic. Why, as a consequence of the third SARS epidemic within the last seventeen years,
do all the bigwigs of the art world suddenly declare their desire to fly less, from the über-curator Hans Ulrich Olbrist — who, in addition, never wants to eat meat again — to museum directors such as Sam Keller, Hermann Parzinger or Yilmaz Dziewior? Why, out of the blue, are other key movers in the international art market like Jerry Saltz or Lorenzo Rudolf writing manifestos calling for an end to greed and the capitalist mindset? And what is it about the corona crisis that drives flighty celebrities like members of the tinfoil hat brigade to spread crude conspiracy theories about how Bill Gates wants to use vaccines to inject people with fluid chips so a secret cabal can turn us all into zombies?

Have all these quite contrary protagonists been inflicted with apocalyptic visions and now recognise the virus as divine punishment for our sins, a sign of satanic machinations? Like our national trainer Jogi Löw, do they interpret the plague as revenge exacted by the “earth” incarnate, now finally and furiously bridling against the impositions of humanity? Or what do climate targets, economic logic and conspiracy theories about elites drinking children’s blood have to do with infectious viruses, which were already present in the original primeval chemical soup from which all life has developed?

It may be that all the hazy unease that has bubbled up to the surface in response to the Covid threat has its source in the most important debate of our time, which unfortunately no one really wants to hold: the debate about the growth economy. Because the now widely available knowledge telling us that uninterrupted economic expansion will destroy the global basis of existence of flora and fauna has, as yet,altered very little about the fact that most people are simply going about business as usual. The reason why bad conscience and fears haveso forcefully and suddenly erupted in the international cultural community might lie in the image of a steep curve.

For many people, the graphic depiction of an accelerating rate of infections that increase exponentially if no countermeasures are taken vividly brought home what “exponential growth” actually means. Each unchecked increase that periodically grows by a factor x inevitably ends in catastrophe. So on seeing graphs with these exponentially increasing rates of infection and death, maybe it dawned on some people how closely this curve resembles the tion of exponential rates of economic growth, and whatthat means for patient Earth.

For what we credulously marvel at as the sucacessful course of our economic model and what, following the slump brought on by the lockdown measures, is once again being celebrated unreservedly in every talk show and newspaper op-ed as the panacea of economic recovery — well, the new, sharply rising rates of growth—in fact betokens the progressive scrapping premium for the ecological system, global justice and the future of our children and grandchildren. Or to cite the dissenting economic philosopher Kenneth E. Boulding, who once remarked so pointedly: “Everyone who believes in indefinite growth […] on a physically finite planet is either mad or an economist.”

In any case, a lot of people in the cultural sphere have with true fervour suddenly noticed that the crises that have befallen our society at ever-shorter intervals— whether “financial”, “climate”, “corona” or “intellectual” crisis—all have a common denominator which is more than symbolic in character. This is why in the midst of the medical and economic crisis such pronouncements fundamentally calling for new priorities to be set in all realms of human co-existence are suddenly enjoying a boom. Out of the blue, artists, architects, curators and critics are all writing and talking about “modesty”, “solidarity” and “rational consumption”. In verbal terms, just now everything is under review.

At least, wherever sufficient financial reserves were available, the corona holiday has given some an opportunity to take stock of themselves. However, in the case of the majority of creative artists around the world, the spectacular failure of governments to help self-employed creative people in the same way as they did major companies has, more or less of its own accord, brought the subject of naked existence to the fore. But there too, to behold the hypocrisy of growth economies pledging “quick and unbureaucratic instant support”—as in Germany—has led to the realisation that a ruthless, profit-driven economy and the welfare state are surely incompatible. One of the most concrete shifts towards a fundamental challenge to current system thinking is evidenced in the growing clamour for unconditional basic income and the abolition of the intimidating bureaucracy of Germany’s “Hartz IV” unemployment benefits.

In the intimation that the world is teetering on the brink (to wit, on that of a giant waste heap) the malaise within culture is grasping for plausible explanations for what appears to be out of order and what ought to be changed. Architects are debating how in future they should go about planning and building urban environments now that ecological considerations have been compounded by epidemiological constraints. Curators, theatre and festival directors are ruminating how the embarrassingly large ecological footprints of their events could be minimised without wholly calling into question such travel intensive formats as biennials and international festivals.

And in some cultural niches, the recurring outbreaks of SARS on animal markets have in deed amplified talk of COVID-19 being just one of countless episodes demonstrating the destructive impact of meat consumption. That a foodstuff which covers only seven per cent of human energy needs requires 75% of the world’s agricultural land for animal feed should make all reasonable people question the absurdity of our society’s consumption habits—yet almost everyone prefers to avert their eyes to it. Indeed, even in
educated circles self-denial and practical consequences seem too much of a struggle.

This is why in the course of the crisis the many thoughtful commentaries about all the things that need to fundamentally change, be it in
culture, politics or the world at large, give only muted cause for euphoria. For every contemplative gallerist, such as Marc Glimcher, head of New York’s Pace Gallery, who following his infection with SARS cast doubt on the commercial art market’s entire uncultured system of self-enrichment, there are hundreds of others who during the corona furlough preferred to keep working at profitably expanding their digital sales formats.

And if you directly ask cultural organisers how once the climate-friendly shutdown has passed they’d like to contribute to facilitating cultural exchange with less consumption of the world’s resources, here too one finds that personal status egoism overrides conscience. Indeed, the answer one usually gets—even if squirmingly convoluted—is: not at all! The reason? Because flying and mounting big events to encourage massive numbers of cultural tourists to fly are so crucial for intellectual exchange in the world that this simply outweighs climate targets. Let the others save the world, for goodness’
sake. We’ve already done the talking.

With its loyal resumption of the capitalist
philosophy of self-interest, which is busy turning the planet into a ball of waste, the cultural world is currently squandering the opportunity placed in its path by COVID–19 to finally talk fundamentals. But maybe in the longer term
the deep shock will foment discontent within culture that spills over into system-relevant questions about how we wish to live and keep ourselves in such a way that we can do it credibly and with personal consistency. It would be so good if didn’t first take yet another pandemic with the deadliness of the Ebola virus in order to finally recognise that exponential growth is at the root of all fundamental crises in our era. And not just of viral reproduction.

Till Briegleb works as a journalist and author in Hamburg.