Revisiting “A Journal of the Plague Year” (2013) with Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero

C Magazine would like to congratulate Kate Whiteway on winning the 2020 C New Critics Award, and Olivia Klevorn on being named the runner-up. Now in its 11th consecutive year, this program gives C Magazine the opportunity to identify, support, and promote the work of promising new writers, who often become regular contributors. C would like to sincerely thank all those who applied, as well as the jurors of this year’s award: Jaclyn Bruneau, Amy Kazymerchyk, and Monika Kin Gagnon. Measures were taken to ensure that the identity of entrants remained unknown to adjudicators.

In early April, Para Site, the contemporary art centre in Hong Kong, hosted a livestreamed presentation with curators Cosmin Costinas and Inti Guerrero reflecting on their 2013 exhibition. The exhibition traced the cultural, political, and psychological effects of Hong Kong’s association with disease, from the 19th century to the present. Looking back at the exhibition during the current coronavirus pandemic was, for the curators, a “way to observe the present moment through a continuous past.” The presentation sensitively positioned COVID-19 within a specific historical lineage of disease and its effects on cultural production and political mobilization.