Decameron Row, Artists From Around the World Share Stories of Isolation Within a Single Virtual Neighborhood

Decameron Row is a wonderful community project in which 100 different artists from around the world share their stories of isolation during this incredibly challenging period in time. While the physical locations of each artist are disparate, they are all brought together in a virtual neighborhood. Each interactive window of a building presents the one-minute work of a different artist.

100 renowned artists from around the world contribute one-minute videos to an online streetscape of clickable windows that form a collective record of this unimaginable year.

New windows will be filled in weekly and will provide a view into many different parts of the world.

New videos will continue to launch one building each week throughout the summer until all 100 windows on Decameron Row are illuminated as a testament to this year. Come back each week to discover more surprises from artists in Africa, Asia, North and South America, Europe, and the Middle East.

Decameron Row was created and produced by Itamar Kubovy, Stefanie Sobelle, Juan Diaz Bohorquez, Joe Szuecs, and Sherry Huss.

Decameron Row is an experiment in community. We’ve been deliberate about diversity and geographic variety, but we’ve chosen to be guided more by intuition, the generosity of others, and happy accidents than by curatorial intention. The result is a quirky and incomplete record of this strange time. We hope you find it diverting. New videos will be added weekly through the summer until all the windows are occupied.

The project was deeply inspired by The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio‘s 14th Century story of ten young people who tell 100 tales told over 10 days in order to stave off the loneliness and isolation of living in quarantine due to the Black Plague. This same sense of isolation resonates with so many nearly seven centuries later.

Their stories gave them solace. Since, in this moment, [the] global community cannot meet under one roof for comfort and insight, we wondered, how could we gather people from all over the world into one neighborhood, onto one street, where they could share their disparate responses? In this idiosyncratic, virtual place, the curious could click on a window and peek into each others’ lives, much like we had already been doing with one another.