Masks (medical/ textile) became symbols of the challenging times of the Covid-19 pandemic – confinement, uncertainty, and fear. Pictures of people wearing masks will be historical documents of this period. With time, they will have different meanings. Masks are meant to protect us from the virus, but used for too long they can also be dangerous for our health, accumulating everything coming from our nose and mouth while breathing and talking. After a few hours of wearing, they are soaked with body secretions and individual micro-flora. We should not absorb it back. Besides pictures of masks being worn, there are also masks lying in the streets. After usage, they become bio-hazardous trash. They are then anonymous; we can’t know who was wearing them. Maybe it was a coronavirus carrier or a person being sick with various illnesses.

In Spring 2021, I decided to collect masks from the streets of Berlin to use them as laboratory samples in the future. It was a specific activity of dealing with masks understood as an abject and a possible place of the virus location. Collected masks have been placed in laboratory test tubes.

At a certain moment, I realized that anonymous masks were not enough for my pandemic archive. I was curious about the people behind the face covers. I wanted to listen to individual stories, collect masks contaminated by personal biological material and memories from the Covid-19 pandemic. To do that, I had to organize meetings in person. It was essential after such a long time of confinement. Every participant was asked to sit in front of the camera and share a memory from the time of the pandemic. I did not ask questions; it was crucial to leave space and freedom for the stories. I gave the person a fresh medical mask to contaminate it while talking and breathing. After the talk, I took the mask to place it in the laboratory test tube and added it to the existing collection.