Pandemic Objects in Practice

The project applies (design) ethnographic methods to investigate how the pandemic shaped everyday hospital life. The results will be presented as a special exhibition for the medical collection of the Inselspital Bern.

Factsheet

Situation

Covid-19 has brought changes to hospitals and produced stories that are both significant to present-day medicine and impossible to capture in a few years' time. "Pandemic Objects" has documented and archived some of these changes through objects and their related stories.

Pizzaschachtel
Was hat eine Pizzaschachtel mit der Pandemie zu tun?

Course of action

In collaboration with Laura Haensler, artist and designer at the Zurich University of the Arts, a number of different locations and clinics were visited to collect "Pandemic Objects" and their relevant stories. The project follows an interdisciplinary approach and pays particular attention to the hospital as a whole and highlights the importance of infrastructure sectors such as cleaning services, hotel services, facility services and laundry for the hospital's daily operations and its interrelated workflows. The collected objects and their stories were prepared for the archive of the medical collection and published as part of a special exhibition.

Festbank
Was hat eine Festbank mit der Pandemie zu tun?

Looking ahead

The special digital exhibition will be officially opened on 27 June 2023 in the sitem-atrium and will be complemented by a corresponding on-site exhibit.