Our Collective Body
Artistic Research, Installation
Dec 2022
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Our Collective Body is a speculative clinic that offers
collective therapy sessions to address and heal work
fatigue experienced by the digital working class. In each
session, participants identified their personal pain points
on a shared body diagram and then, following a Chinese
medicine framework, blended ingredients to address the
symptoms of each other.
The recipes were symbolic and embodied ways of caring for each other while naming the systemic issues behind our fatigue. In the absence of unions and collective support structures, workers often feel alone and turn to individual treatments for issues that are actually common. Using the body as sensor, how can we relate to each other’s pain and reflect on the working conditions of the digital working class as a whole?
The Chinese medicine serves as a tool for conversation to reframe care beyond the individual and toward a more collective, systemic approach. Working with
a traditional medicine practitioner, six recipes were developed, as metaphors for workspace inequality. One example: an astragalus plum soup addressing the idea of creative energy as a resource — often extracted and depleted in capitalist structures. What would it mean to reclaim that energy not for productivity, but for healing, nurturing, and mutual support?
Each participant leaves the session with a doctor’s note – a tool reimagined not for individual sick leave, but for collective therapy and reflection.
The recipes were symbolic and embodied ways of caring for each other while naming the systemic issues behind our fatigue. In the absence of unions and collective support structures, workers often feel alone and turn to individual treatments for issues that are actually common. Using the body as sensor, how can we relate to each other’s pain and reflect on the working conditions of the digital working class as a whole?
The Chinese medicine serves as a tool for conversation to reframe care beyond the individual and toward a more collective, systemic approach. Working with
a traditional medicine practitioner, six recipes were developed, as metaphors for workspace inequality. One example: an astragalus plum soup addressing the idea of creative energy as a resource — often extracted and depleted in capitalist structures. What would it mean to reclaim that energy not for productivity, but for healing, nurturing, and mutual support?
Each participant leaves the session with a doctor’s note – a tool reimagined not for individual sick leave, but for collective therapy and reflection.
