Kingdom of the Ill:
Second chapter of TECHNO HUMANITIES (2021-2023)

Kingdom of the Ill seeks to respond to the current debate on health and illness, contamination and purity, care and neglect by asking how and by whom a body is defined as healthy or sick. The title of the exhibition is a critique on American author Susan Sontag’s work Illness as Metaphor (1978), which investigates the relationship between the individual and the contemporary social, corporate and institutional systems that influence our experience of healing and well-being.

In what ways do welfare systems and corporate assistance determine healthcare, and how can we question common definitions of good health? In times of a global pandemic, increasing social anxiety, rising healthcare costs, increased monitoring of medical information, and growing precarity under the creative class, can we still say we are truly healthy?

The Berlin-based artist Ingrid Hora has created the newly commissioned sculpture Collective Effort for the Museion Passage. The work features a collection of unique imprints in clay from volunteers and professionals in care work in the region. Curated by assistant curator Frida Carazzato, Collective Effort is a monument to the intangible networks of civic engagement and acts of trust that fuel initiatives such as the multi-year research project CHRIS (Cooperative Health Research in South Tyrol). Conceived as a collaboration between the Institute of Biomedicine at Eurac Research (part of the European Academy in Bolzano) and the South Tyrolean Healthcare Authorities, CHRIS features a growing DNA bank that aims to advance the role of preventive medicine within the aging population of the Vinschgau Valley in order to understand the occurrence and development of common diseases.

Kingdom of the Ill accumulates expressions of an important time in which serious malpractices have come to light, a period that has led us to re-imagine fundamental healing methods, support networks, well- being and friendship. The public programme for the exhibition will include talks, meetings, film screenings and a series of online and offline events organised as part of Museion Art Club, with the support of Museion Private Founders.