It is all of humanity that has been turned upside down. More than a year and a half after the start of the Covid-19 crisis, the consequences of the pandemic are still being felt on the daily lives of populations. Even if the time has not yet taken stock, several initiatives around the world have emerged to collect and analyze testimonies and studies on the health crisis. In France,
Covid-19 Ad Memoriam Institute, created a few months ago and partially funded by the World Health Organization (WHO), has set itself the goal of collecting “memories” of the pandemic.
To achieve this objective, the Institute attached to the University of Paris is launching this Thursday the “Crisis stories” application to collect the ordinary and extraordinary stories of each citizen, and open the dialogue around the health crisis. “It’s an online application that presents itself as a platform for sharing anecdotes, texts, images, music … It’s a bit like a social network,” an Instagram of the pandemic “, which goes allow people to go and tell their stories, and where they will be able to access content posted by others, ”explains Paul Duan, designer of the app and president of the NGO Bayes Impact.
Beyond this platform, the objective is therefore to create a real “collective memory of the pandemic”. 20 minutes asked Laëtitia Atlani-Duault, anthropologist specializing in humanitarian crises, and member of the Scientific Council who heads the Covid-19 Ad Memoriam Institute.
Many French people want to forget the period we have just experienced. Why is it so important to remember this?
It seemed obvious to us from the start that it was essential not to forget. It is important to understand what happened, and what we are still experiencing today. We will have to draw a balance sheet, a lesson from the major crisis that we have experienced. And our goal is to offer everyone the possibility of being able to share their experience of the pandemic and, in return, to have access to the experiences of others, in order to participate in a better understanding of what happened. .
This is why, with our partners – research institutes and universities, worlds of health, law, associations, cults and the arts – it seemed essential to us to collect, archive and analyze all these testimonies, ordinary as well as extraordinary, which constitute the individual and collective memories of the pandemic. This epidemic is not just about deaths, tragedies. By launching this digital platform, we also want to collect the happy experiences of this crisis, with the inventions born during this particular period, certain positive teleworking practices, new rituals… There will not be only bad memories of this epidemic.
“The objective is to strengthen the prevention of future health crises, which may arise from epidemics, natural disasters, conflicts or political violence”
Is the creation of the Covid-19 Ad Memoriam Institute and the “Crisis Stories” digital platform also a way to expand sources of information and fight against conspiracy?
The exclusivity of mass data collection should not be left to the media, to the courts – which are seized of the management of the crisis -, to parliamentary inquiries or even to the political authorities. Our choice is to use digital tools and social science techniques to provide a space to which researchers, but also all citizens, can refer, a space of data accessible to the general public on our experience of the pandemic. The experiences of all of us, including those who have been called the “invisible ones of the pandemic”, are essential, and the multitude of realities of the situation that we have all experienced, differently, over the past year, must be recognized and addressed. forward.
Providing access to reliable and neutral data on the pandemic is to allow dialogue for a strengthened democratic process. However, this dialogue is key because it makes it possible to ask the question of the meaning of public policies and future priorities. It will also, it is hoped, make it possible to strengthen preparation for future health crises, which may result, for example, from epidemics, natural disasters, conflicts or political violence.
According to you, the Covid-19 has caused an “anthropological break”. Has the pandemic changed humanity?
This is one of the major questions at the heart of the Covid-19 Ad-Memoriam Institute. What have we experienced? What are we going through? We all agree in saying – especially about the first confinement – that we went through a singular moment, which for some may even mark a moment of rupture but which, in any case, questions everyone. But how to define this singular moment? How did we deal with it? And how to prepare for further upheavals in the future? This is one of the questions that will have to be explored. And, for that, the testimonies of all – and not only of those who are put forward and relayed about this pandemic – are essential.
Why not eventually open a real museum on the Covid-19 pandemic?
We have started a collaboration with the Mucem (Museum of European and Mediterranean Civilizations, in Marseille) on this subject. They began to collect objects related to the Covid-19 pandemic for a few months, objects of containment. While our project concerns the construction of an exclusively digital place of memory. We wonder to what extent we can imagine pooling the data that we each have collected. Our two projects can therefore be complementary, and we are currently discussing how we could, in the near future, pool our strengths.