AESTHETIC CREATION IN THE PANDEMIC

THE BAKHTINIAN EVENT AND THE AUDIOVISUAL METALANGUAGE OF MYTHIC QUEST

Abstract

Audiovisual art travels through new spaces of reproduction and reconfiguration in the pandemic context of social isolation: film and television series providers seek to accommodate the new dimensions of consumption in this industry and to reformulate audiovisual art-making. This article investigates an audiovisual production in its thematic and structural treatment of the pandemic condition, finding support in the thinking of Mikhail Bakhtin, tending to the notions of architectonic, event, aesthetic activity, and secondary genre of discourse. The episode “Quarantine” of the series Mythic Quest is analyzed in relation to its social period of production (2020, the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic). Audiovisual metalanguage becomes an articulation of the relational nature of the work and potentiator of the occasional and emotional-volitional tone of the object, bringing it closer to what Bakhtin calls the uniqueness of the event.