Swarm by Patrick Corrigan

Issue 173

“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.”  — Albert Schweitzer 

As a child growing up in rural Ohio, I remember a desire to be with people. Our closest neighbors lived miles away; it was during our harsh winters that I became aware of the need for and function of human relationships and communal belonging. The slow movement of time within this expansive childhood space yielded my fascination with what it means to be emotionally fulfilled through one’s connections to both oneself and each other. 

Today, that sense of belonging I once thrived upon is waning. The dissociative impact of technologies—such as social media, the internet, and handheld devices—lay bear our disintegrating human bonds and physical communities. 

Swarm observes and addresses a culture engineered to intentionally distract each of us, serving to further alienate and isolate within an increasingly growing, inhuman, and entropic infosphere, itself now a proxy for the teeming, interactive physical spaces of my youth. 

I long deeply to regain and regrow the connections necessary for us to live fully actualized and community sustaining lives. 

Patrick Corrigan (he/him) lives and works in Los Angeles, California and Kyoto, Japan.
patrick-corrigan.com | @patrick.s.corrigan