"May you live in interesting times," was the slogan of the 2019 Biennale in Venice. The last „normal“ before the world changed, before the pandemic swept over us and seemed to take everything apart.

An ancient curse has seemingly caught up with our present. Or is it just a part of human history that is repeating itself? Pandemics and diseases always intervened in societies, changed, killed and reshuffled everything. Is it different this time?

The last pandemic in Europe that was similar to, yet different from, Corona today was the Spanish flu then.
 

One of its most famous victims was the Austrian artist Egon Schiele - the virus did not stop at him either. He died in 1918, at that time there was no vaccination and one may assume that there were no state subsidies to facilitate the survival of the survivors.

Egon Schiele died, at the peak of his career, and a century later our society, ours in which we live today, is experiencing a similar scenario. Albeit, much more attenuated, nevertheless comparable. Is history repeating itself today in a modern way? Have we as a society learned and evolved or are we doomed to repeat ourselves?

We live in interesting times, don't we?