Expressing undergoing Diagnosis

Keywords: Socio-medical diagnosis, research through design and art, encountering the state,

This talk is a report from an ongoing research trough art/design project on giving expression to experiences of parents to children undergoing socio-medical diagnosis (udredning) including experiences of encountering ‘the state’ in this situation. The project’s current aim is transforming interviews with such parents into an interactive audio-visual art installation intended to provoke reflections and a broader conversation on the matter.
Today, Danish citizens has arguably become increasingly responsible for managing their various affairs in relation to the state. This is due to many causes, including digitalization. Such responsibilities arguably intensify in already emotionally challenging situations, such as e.g. undergoing divorce or being unemployed. Parents to children undergoing diagnosis express that they feel like becoming ‘project managers’ or ‘caseworkers’ for their children’s affairs and the lives of their families. The institutions with which they must engage quickly multiply and the state seems to be experienced as unexpectedly complex - more like a ’semiotic haze’ (Fabian Muniesa) rather than like a coordinated ‘whole’. Among other things, such parents become the main choreographers of an increasingly complex story of their child, which is important not only in their various encounters with institutions and for the trajectory of diagnosis and living with such, but also in managing relations to their families, neighbours, and friends.
This talk will present how this research and art/design project developed from initial ideas to the resulting art-installation, which it is the plan to make public in the fall of 2022.