The much-anticipated Covid vaccines arrived in Australia with eerie autonomy. Reports of the AstraZeneca arrival took care to mention that it landed at 9:30am on an Emirates flight, and the Pfizer vaccine’s arrival was depicted in the media like a celebrity touch-down with the same strange energy and cultural significance as the 1969 Moon landing. The odd-shaped parcels were held together with layers of plastic; red, black and blue trailer netting; and DHL packing tape on top of a plinth. On their website, DHL proclaim to be “safely delivering each precious jab into the arms of people everywhere”. Footage of its arrival revealed the precious shipment awkwardly gliding into view at the airplane’s open cargo door, pulled across invisible automated floor tracks, abruptly jolting to a stop before readjusting and lowering itself onto the tarmac on a forklift with no operator in view. It was seemingly untouched by human hands before mechanically spinning on its axis and disappearing on the back of a trailer pulled by DHL chauffeurs. This footage appears on @rrealartt’s Instagram page in the form of an IGTV video as a complement to their current and second exhibition, Jab.
Audrey Schmidt is a writer and Melbourne Personality.
