Virulent Zones (2020)

- PICKED BY EMILY-
February 2021

Virulent Zones reads like a detective novel uncanny in its timeliness to collective conditions today, as it follows the travails of scientists across continents, trying to locate the origins of viral pandemics. One hypothesized origin came to be identified as Poyang Lake, the largest freshwater lake in China, where the co-presence of wild migratory birds and domesticated farmed ducks is thought to intensify conditions for viral reassortment and mutation. Yet, the pandemic epicenter, as Fearnley finds through his ethnographic forays, may not be best conceptualized as a local place.

Between the tracking of viruses at microscopic and planetary scales, scientists and their ideas are displaced again and again across Chinese poultry farms, international laboratories, and changing technologies for surveillance and mapping. Along the way, boundaries shift between formal politics and banquet tables, wildness and domestication.