Last week I was invited to antibiotics awareness day at Greenwich and Lewisham Hospital by Angela Hodgson-Teall. The encounter looked beyond the containment and micromanaging of … bad bacteria/viruses – noted by the Yves Klein Blue Lagoon and the Island Republic signage – towards the roles of collective audience participation and evaluation. Drawing on the Nature of Empathy (Angela Hodgson-Tealls PhD), visitors, staff and clients (patients) were asked to empathise with the bacteria and draw ideas about their relationship with them. Drawings were exhibited in low-fi cardboard (banana) boxes, stacked up together with inside spaces facing the audience and conversations with all participants. Audiences collectively evaluated each others work and developed more communal discussions about the hospital and the awareness of the over use of antibiotics.
I had many discussions about language and the way that collective experiences can effect change. The drawing I made was of Grindr and Gonorrhoea and the problems facing sexual health with resistant bacterial infections.
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