THE YEAR IN HELL

DISSOCIATION became its own kind of norm in 2021 as we surrendered to the glitchy fits and starts of lockdowns and liberations, waiting to resume the old habits of life. “We are all deep in a hell each moment of which is a miracle,” wrote the Romanian philosopher E. M. Cioran. If there is no after this afterworld, how do you do the present? In the pages that follow, hannah baer and Monica Huerta reflect on this year’s hell and how they met it. Whether trespassing into the “lawless underworld” of rave space or practicing “nostalgia and aspiration” in a YearCompass pamphlet, these authors describe finding new choreographies, new ways to dance across the eerie limbo of pandemic-time.