An Architecture of Chronic Illness
As we live longer, chronic illness and disabilities are becoming a greater part of our lives. Treatment, rehabilitation and experiences of chronic pain and immobility will be a reality for many of us, and increasingly so. In my work, I turn attention to patients living with these challenges today, to uncover a series of alternative and creative strategies we use to navigate our built environment. The landscape of care that I choose to focus on is a rehabilitation facility for people with rheumatic illness in Montenegro, where Norwegian patients have been sent by their government since 1976.
Author: Anna Ulrikke Andersen
Video by Anna Ulrikke Andersen.
Cast: Anna Ulrikke Andersen (includes a clip from a film featuring Abi Palmer)
Film clips included:
On Sanatorium (work in progress) Anna Ulrikke Andersen with Abi Palmer, 16mm;
X for Methotrexate (2019) Anna Ulrikke Andersen, 16mm, produced by Harvard Film Study Center;
Various photographs from Institute „Dr Simo Milošević” Igalo JSC, Montenegro, by Anna Ulrikke Andersen, 2017 and 2018.
All videos and images for illustrative purposes only.
Location: Halden, Norway
Anna Ulrikke Andersen is a Norwegian architectural historian and filmmaker, currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford. She holds a PhD in architecture from the Bartlett School of Architecture, where she looked at the window in the life and work of Christian Norberg-Schulz. In 2018/2019 she held a Fellowship at Harvard Film Study Center, where she began exploring filmmaking, sculpture, and essay writing as methods to investigate the architecture experienced by people living with chronic illness.
