@Susanna Karlsson I was thinking more that it was the combination of having a lockdown but still being able to move about pretty freely outdoors that might have enabled it; so a situation where you're not supposed to be hanging out with people, no public places to hang out together, not being able to hang out indoors with people, so there's a desire to have hangout spaces and the sense that other people are around, combined with the relative freedom to move about, which makes setting them up possible. It seems like if there wasn't a lockdown at all, there might not be such a need for such social-esque spaces. I know that in DC, the feel of isolation really lessened once the public parks opened up at the end of last June and people began having 6-foot-apart picnics. Everything still felt weird, but but being able to see people socializing in person, even in masks and 6 feet apart, it felt more like being back in the world.

I think one practical reason why the installations were not seen in other places was that in the US, even in the places where we had lockdowns and curfews, during the day there were no limitations on movement outdoors, other than public parks often being closed and people not being allowed to gather in groups. So that allowed for (at least solitary) use of these domesticated public spaces, and it also allowed for people to take the time to set them up.

Thanks for a really interesting talk. It's so striking to me how different so many of these cases are from the US, where (at least in my neck of the woods) there are very very few government signs addressing covid precautions. So although I completely see how the discourse of the signs puts the onus on the individual, there's something that I think might be unmarked (and therefore naturalized/backgrounded) for a British reader, which is that the signs exist at all. As an American reader, the very existence of the signs conveys meaning and agency; when I look at these signs, I think, wow, there's a national health service, it's making its presence known in the landscape, and it has an orchestrated public health campaign. But of course I'm not the target audience, so maybe these things don't get communicated even in a subtle way. I also wondered about the poster that said "Protect the NHS from the Tory scum." Could you explain what's going on there? Is it common for a government agency to make that kind of blatant political statement? Did people comment on it at all? I'll be interested to hear (or read!) your perspective on these questions.

Thanks for your comments! I was thinking about the mask signs while watching Jannis Androutsopoulos's presentations comparing first wave and second wave signs in Hamburg. I don't know if you've seen it yet; he found that first wave signs were business's signs, requested mask-wearing, and positioned addressees as customers, while many 2nd wave signs were (municipal or regional) gov't signs, used the imperative form, and positioned addressees as citizens. In the DC/US mask signs that we looked at, partly the issue is that mask-wearing in general was/is so politicized in the US, but watching Jannis's presentation, I also realized that it's an example of the downscaling of government functions to the local level. Certainly in DC, and my guess is also throughout the US, government masking and social distancing signs in public spaces are virtually non-existent. So I think what's happening is that this regulatory discourse is getting picked up by Business Improvement Districts and individual businesses -- and in taking up the discourse, they are take up the concomittant imperative form, and orient to people as both citizens and customers. Here's two examples from signs put up by the neighborhood Business Improvement District: It's also interesting to see how many presentations basically the same social distancing icon turned up in! I wonder if that comes from the WHO.

Sorry everyone, I accidentally sent the wrong file above (that was just the powerpoint.) Here is the video version.