Auto-Haunt

In an increasingly privatised and financialised healthcare environment, Auto-Haunt interrogates the sick and disabled body’s relationship with technology, ritual, and spiritual mysticism by juxtaposing the tangled networks of fascia and internet webs – which impact each other invisibly yet deeply.

Articulating arms are a signifier of the automated administration of care provided in medical institutions while technological screens show internal (the body) or external (life beyond sick beds) worlds, alienating and othering the sick body into abstraction. The videos highlight how the commodification of health, the perception of sickness, and the self-optimisation mandate consume and collapse in on themselves through their various on-screen representations.

The work is guarded by two Sheela Na Gigs made from scrap materials important to the survival of sick and disabled people. The history of understanding or misunderstanding the Sheelas apotropaic uses is reflected in our understanding of birthing and recovering bodies. 

Our health and bodies are entwined with digital interference from utero to death. As well as video, the work includes the ancient Derbyshire practice of welldressing, creating images with natural materials to offer a message, in relation to the appreciation of water. Inside a small phone case is a welldressing of a digital native in utero with the phrase ‘wish me luck’.  

The doom scroll tells the story of personal medical abuse, commonly experienced by many marginalised folks, burnt into medical paper. 

Steaming crants' sit or maiden's garlands sit on the floor. 

Video: Alessandra Plaza
Sound Design: Hang Linton

Supported by Arts Council England.