Debate around the politics of litter explored by Rosemary Shirley in her essay Keeping Britain Tidy: Litter and Anxiety 2016 have prompted me to take a closer look at my own reactions to what I find on my walk. My submission to the Instagram Open Call Under(cover) takes photographs of discarded tissues from the first days of The Covid-19 Lockdown and contrasts them with an audio track of natural sounds in a 2 minute slide show.
Litter in a rural context is not tidied away and it is evidence of the urban invading the rural. This human littering is potentially spreading the unseen virus. Human behaviour is at the heart of what is happening. Why do people think it’s okay to leave their microbes lying around? My reaction is typical of what Rosemary Shirley identifies as the anxiety and even fear created by the presence of litter in the countryside.
In the pandemic the unseen has become a “hyperobject” or overwhelming event as Timothy Morton explains in the second episode of his BBC Radio 4 program “The End of the World has Already Happened”. He is referring to catastrophic weather events brought on by climate change but this event also qualifies. The photographs used in my slide show contrast the dirty tissues with the spring sunshine and wild flowers. The audio uses birdsong and wind only, with no sound of cars or planes. The natural world is getting on with Spring.
Observations of nature’s reaction to lockdown is continuing with a series of images of seedlings growing where normally they would be run over by recreational vehicles.
Liz Clifford 
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