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Thinking about the medicalisation of the home space

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This week I have been thinking about the medicalisation of the home space when you are chronically ill. The AI technology on google photo is incredibly accurate when recognising faces, places, objects, animals, typical spaces and so on. But when I search “hospital” photos of me in hospital and photos of me at home in bed come up. I have assistive devices such as bed tables, ipad stands and medical devices in this space and my phone’s AI technology recognises this as a medical space.

I have been thinking about this in relation to thinker Foucault’s concept of heterotopias which I will explore further in another studio post.

Content warning: the image below shows images of someone in hospital.

A collage of screenshots from google photos of Charlie Fitz. In each photo she is either a patient in hospital or at home in her bed. The images are taken over a 6 year period, which can be seen from the various dates.

Charlie Fitz

Charlie Fitz is a UK based sick and disabled artist, writer and medical humanities postgraduate at Birkbeck, where she is a recipient of a Wellcome Trust studentship. She is a member of Resting Up Collective and of the arts practice group TRIAD³. Her multiform projects broadly explore experiences of illness and trauma. She worked as the engagement assistant for ‘Coming Out’ (2017) was on the activist panel consulting on curatorial and learning strategies for the ACC exhibition ‘Woman, Power, Protest’ (2018) both Arts Council Collection(ACC) Exhibitions at Birmingham Museum & Art gallery (BMAG). She was a guest speaker at Robinson College Feminist Society at Cambridge University, presenting on Feminist art & activism (2019). The same year she produced her first joint exhibition ‘Radical Acts of Care’ (2019) in collaboration with Oscar Vinter. The exhibition was hosted online and in person in London and Manchester. Fitz had work in Profile Gallery’s ‘Virtual Exhibition'(2020), Oddball Gallery’s ‘Locked/Down'(2020) and ‘See You At Home'(2021) by Able Zine x Kiosk N1C. She currently has artwork in the virtual show ‘Exhibition: Work in PROGRESS’ by Triad³ and has an upcoming group show for women’s history month called HYSTERICAL in aid of UN Women UK and Mermaids Charity. She has had short fiction, nonfiction, poetry and visual art published.

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