Of all the mediums that have been utilised during lockdown (all of them, basically) film has been the most surprising. Amateur shorts are of course omnipresent, with short films like this from YouTuber Blake Ridder portraying the human journey, or rather descent of contracting coronavirus. And this, a harrowing look at the Coronavirus as a cure for a now absent society that all but broke the earth and took off to colonise Mars. It offers quite a lot to mull over with its themes of environmental and societal decay — especially considering its only 7 minutes long (contains distressing images so click with care).

But two of the better films come from established directors. First is Ben Berman's self-proclaimed 'first comedic short film created in COVID-19 quarantine’ — ‘The Follow Up’. The concept is a strange one and follows the director, as a kind of meta-documentary, as he looks for affirmation from a series of celebrities from the Cameo website — a market place for birthday messages from stars like Lindsay Lohan and Steve Guttenberg. The short film throws in quite a few familiar faces and uses a computer as a storytelling space as it explores all too familiar themes of isolation.

But the most escape-worthy of the lot is Shazam!' director David F. Sandberg’s ‘Shadowed’, that follows actress Lotta Losten (and the director’s wife) through 3 minutes of surprisingly creepy and highly enjoyable horror set in the couples’ house. And for those wanting to learn how Sandberg achieved such dark cinematic magic, there’s a ‘behind the scenes’ video that goes into the technical detail of how they acted, shot and edited the film with such limited resources.

One of the most surprising news segments over the past few weeks has been, for me, that while people spend more time at home, music streaming is down. Hinting that for many, music is a backing track to long commutes and evenings in the gym. But unsurprisingly, this hasn’t deterred musicians from writing music. There have been plenty of big names in the chorus line of Corona-music, from the obvious releases, such as Lauv’s 'Miss Me,’ written in isolation, and the poignant collaboration between Jack Savoretti and his fans over Instagram 'Andra Tutto Bene’, where he asked fans in Italy to send lyrics and inspiration for a new song.

But what of the lesser-known efforts?

It, unfortunately, hasn’t all been good. Delving into the pits of the thousands of songs released has been something of a journey into a particularly odd rabbit hole. A COVID hole. The too-many-hundreds-to-count songs that have appeared on Spotify, either titled “Coronavirus” or some variant on the theme, or by one of the dozens of new artists with Corona or COVID in their names are mostly copy-and-paste hip hop, techno, ambient, metal, and yada yada — making it clear, at least, that COVID 19 knows no genre. But of them ‘Survive The Quarantine With Relaxing Ambience’ is perhaps the oddest: two hours of relaxing meditation music by no other than Coronavirus. But it isn’t all bad, some like Russian YouTuber Vitalya Al’batros have taken to humour with Russia VS Coronavirus, and DJ iMarkkeyz turned Cardi B’s coronavirus rant into this.

In response to not being able to tour (a primary source of income for most musicians), the brilliant Tiger Lilies, having been confined to isolation have written, recorded and released an entire album as a suitably cynical reaction to the whole situation. The band, who are known for their wacky, theatrical music and creepy themed stage-shows, fuse cabaret, jazz, punk and dark humour with biting falsetto vocals, to create an album — ‘COVID 19’ — of 17 songs filled with cheerful sanitary advice, melancholic satire, maniacal wit and creative introspection layered within their whimsical, accordion-filled cabaret music. 

Subversive artist Banksy was always going to pop up during the epidemic. It just seems right. If anyone can see the potential of a world interrupted, it’s Banksy. But what does a street artist do when they have no street to paint their art on? They move the art to the bathroom, but of course. And Banksy’s bathroom trompe l’œil piece is as typically sardonic a portrayal of lockdown life as one would expect, with cheeky black and white rats climbing around the walls of the bathroom, playing havoc with the mirror and loo roll, and generally abusing the amenities whilst having a great time at the expense of humanity on pause.

But Liza Lou has taken a slightly different approach, taking inspiration from an old comfort blanket to create a community art project — Apartogether — in which artists and Instagrammers make comfort blankets with the long term plan to “hang the blankets like banners,” as a “record of our days and time and a kind of monument to this extraordinary moment” (New York Times).

Instagram has birthed numerous hashtags during the lockdown, with #coronaart and #isolationcreation offering some of the better artworks and photography from the community. While photographer Tahmineh Monzavi took this beautiful image from her window in Tehran, as one of a group of photographers capturing moments from the pandemic as a part of the captivating Covidtimes_project.

Fusing both music and video, pop stalwart Grimes released the visual and audio assets for her dreamy ‘You’ll Miss Me When I’m Not Around’, specifically for fans to play with during lockdown, leading one fan to fuse together a charming Animal Crossing music video from the assets.

And while the fashion world has been all but shut down by the coronavirus, a veritable army of brands have turned their creative forces to face masks — many of which are donating to charities and healthcare providers (particularly groups/brands like LVMH, Gucci and Prada), or simply trying to keep their businesses afloat. On the design side of things, Alan King sells both disposable first aid masks and this all black vegan python mask, while bridal-designer Katie May has made a small collection of masks (including this sparkly pink disco ball mask), and donates 3 utility masks for each sale.

And finally, Polka-dot obsessed veteran artist Yayoi Kusama has penned a poem cum open-letter intended as a message of love to humanity and a stand of defiance against the Coronavirus. Read it here.