The University Paris-Nanterre, the French National Centre for scientific research (Cnrs) and, for Sapienza University, the Department of Communication and Social Research, has launched an international project which aims to gather and file pieces of collective memory from the neighbourhoods during isolation, through a photo-essay of businesses and shops. The researchers have been monitoring photographs on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook for several weeks, with the hashtags #VitrinesEnConfinement and #VetrineInQuarantena.
They have already collected many pictures showing desolate landmarks in lockdown cities. The shops' silent voice narrates the crisis through their signs placed on windows and shutters, sometimes bare sometimes remarkable.

How do we talk about quarantine? What phrases, what words do we use? How does a city change during a medical emergency? And what documents, what material will we keep to remember this experience in the future? The study, coordinated by Marzia Antenore for Sapienza University, focuses on these questions.
This project allows each citizen to reconnect with the external world when they go out. Each contribution comes with a date, address (street, city, town), typology (shop, public area, window) type of activity, and transcript.

Signs that talk and communicate with people in the neighbourhood use different kinds of communication. Some of them fully show the emotional connection existing between the shops and people living in the area.
The study also highlights the differences in how people experience the lockdown depending on the country. The researches have collected photographs from in Italy, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Turkey, USA and the UK.

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