Upstream the Cold Chain

Project leader: Jesper Alvaer | Advisor: Johan Holst

Single Channel Video, 2017

Following a group of young scientists / healthcare professionals from their practical health work in the Global South to a conference on Global Vaccination in Norway, this single-channel video gathers local narratives on vaccine access — specifically the experience of navigating the temperate supply chains that are needed for vaccines to remain effective — and juxtaposes footage from the Global South with so-called “first world” footage in order to consider the “cold chain” both practically and allegorically.

Images by Ramos Mboane.

Rethinking “Upstream the Cold Chain” in the Era of Covid-19

“Is it ok that I walk with you?”
“Yes, come along,” the other replied.

They started to move in a slow circle, as if going for a walk, and continued:
“Where are we heading?”
“We are going back to the village.”
“What to do there?”

“Look: there is a goat coming this way. It seems to carry something.”
“Yes, it has a letter around its neck.”
“I will have a look.... oh, I forgot my glasses. Can you please read it? What does it say?”

The other took up the challenge and invented a letter from the goat: “Go across the river and take the smaller path to the village. We are having other guests, so wait and watch from the hill until you get more information”.

Rethinking Upstream the Cold Chain three years after its initial production, I see the film as a methodological creative device that enables discussion on vaccine distribution and access, allegorically and materially. Using structural global inequality as a starting point for poetic or artistic investigation, the project highlights the degree to which the era of COVID-19 has confirmed and further widened gaps in terms of access and distribution and consolidated once more those implausible movements upstream.

— Jesper Alvaer, August 2021