By Noelle Muni, Staff Writer
On Oct. 12, 2022, Schmucker Art Gallery hosted a gallery talk to celebrate the unveiling of their newest exhibit featuring the digital Decameron Row. The project was created by Imaginary Places, a design collective composed of producer Itamar Kubovy, engineer Joe Szuecs, designer Juan Diaz Bohorquez, community builder Sherry Huss, and producer Stefanie Sobelle who is also an associate professor of English here at Gettysburg College.
The diversity of the project’s creators is reflected in its content. The project is inspired by the 14th century work “The Decameron” which tells the stories of 10 friends over 10 days weathering the Black Death by quarantining, squatting together in abandoned villas, and telling each other 100 total stories. Telling these stories and having an excuse to engage creatively with one another, despite the conditions surrounding them, not only entertained them but helped maintain connection in a moment that seems inescapably lonely and dismal.
Examining this work during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic led the friends at the heart of Imaginary Places to wonder, “what would a ‘Decameron’ look like now?” So, the seeds of the “Decameron Row” were planted. Over the course of that lonesome isolated spring of 2020, the members began reaching out to fellow artists and friends and asked them to share “short, intimate video postcards of their experiences in lockdown.”
The result now lives as a digital archive that takes the form of a 2D apartment complex. When the viewer’s mouse hovers over a window, it is labeled with the artist who “lives in” that digital room—whose project is housed there. A simple click allows viewers to experience 100 unique COVID stories, much like the original “Decameron”. The project is an archive, an artifact, and an artistic work of its own.
In Schmucker Art Gallery, “Decameron Row” can be viewed on a projected screen, and visitors have full control of the mouse that allows them to view each window at their leisure, exploring the digital apartment buildings and meandering as they choose.
The exhibit also offers supplementary materials in the immediate 3D space such as two custom bookshelves that house 70 published works that have been written or worked on by artists included on the row. All the materials on display are owned by Musselman Library and will be available there following the closure of the gallery exhibit. Also provided is a bibliography of published works created by the artists (including those not physically present in the gallery space) as well as a playlist of music made by the included artists and musicians.
The gallery exhibit additionally features a project that can be viewed on the opposite wall of “Decameron Row” made retrospectively by many of Sobelle’s students. Footage and photographs of the students’ COVID quarantine experiences were edited together by Sobelle herself, providing an interesting contrast to the “of the moment” nature of “Decameron Row’s” features.
“Decameron Row” is an “imaginary place” that remains suspended in the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is a window into not only the digital habitats of the included artists, but the way that we connected to one another in that moment; how art brings us together and how community and art can be so crucial to our survival. Even in moments where we could not see each other in person, could not go to our studios, and when the world feels as though it has been turned upside down, our drive toward community and creation will find a way. We gather how we can. We create what we can. It is a testament to the human condition.
You can view the Decameron Row project digitally here: https://decameronrow.com/main or at the Schmucker Art Gallery until Nov. 1, 2022.
