iz paehr

Coding / Weaving Clinical Letters

A website artwork is presented on a tablet in an exhibition space with violet lighting. The website features a clinical letter titled 'MRT of the head at' with the date blocked out. This letter is generated from multiple letters, and each new part is indicated by a scissor icon.

Website artwork developed with Lisa Ness as part of the Sicktopia exhibition with Sickness Affinity Group at ACUD Gallery, Berlin 2024. Photo: Christina Zück.

This work can be experienced live on the website soma-archives.net. Clicking on the refresh button generates a new medical letter.

This website artwork generates subversive medical letters based on excerpts of the letters that members of Sickness Affinity Group have received. Weaving our stories together via code, we confront the patterns and power imbalances embedded in medical letters. As sick and disabled folks, we know that data about us is stored on hospital servers, such as descriptions of our symptoms, diagnosis and treatment plans. These letters hold power, as doctors may value their seemingly objective truths more than our lived experience.

A website presents a medical letter in German. As this letter is a collage of multiple real medical letters of members of Sickness Affinity Group, some parts of the letter are blacked out. Some words in the letter have icons of scissors in front: these indicate where parts of different new letters start.

In a cozy exhibition space, multiple people engage with the art works and talk to each other. On the left, there are tablets showing web artworks, and from the right side a violet semitransparent curtain falls softly into the frame. Six people and one dog are sitting and lying on cushions, one person in a wheelchair is watching a film, and the leftovers of a cake are on a table.