My project Energy Situated Bodies: Mapping energy and chronic illness from the North Sea to the Adriatic Coast will use critical spatial practice and curatorial methods to examine the relationship between energy and the diagnoses, treatment, and experience of chronic illness. From local therapy pools to the sunshine of the Mediterranean, heat and the energy that makes heat possible, are essential to informal and formal therapeutic practices and the experiences of people with chronic illness. Using energy as a conceptual frame also allows larger socio-political forces and structures to enter the work, for example, bringing into conversation disability activists’ critique of productivity and the underlying thermodynamic logic of the welfare state.
In my work I will be building an atlas of architectures, objects, and images which will then be narrated, captioned, annotated and intervened in by Norwegian people with rheumatism. My work contributes to the interdisciplinary research group An Architecture of Chronic Illness: A Critical Exploration of Norwegian Buildings and Bodies from Post-war to Post-pandemic (ArChro) which will examine key buildings and treatment sites, including therapy pools in Trøndelag and a rehabilitation center in Igalo, Montenegro.