Pillows are physical–technical artifacts. We refer to auxiliary material in a gravitational world that, in various health care settings, helps to keep patients in varying positions with the aim of preventing the development of pressure sores, to provide a  means to relax the limbs and body, and to establish the possibility that patients can adjust their position in relation to the world.

Pillow research builds on our ethnographic work (see: 2004-2007 Topographies of the possible) and designs technological artifacts and investigates the irreducibility of the intricate relationships between care and technology and its decisive role of enacting the care for a syndrome. It describes our attempt to introduce artifacts (“pillows”, “transitional objects”) into the world of long–term care of severely disabled people. The (artistic) tinkering with those artifacts within the clinical context should create experimental conditions that contribute to the emergence of unexpected situations and relations between actors involved.

The project is funded within the  Translational Program of the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF)

Shared Inc. operated by xperiment!

2008 – 2012 Pillow research. Multiple diagnoses and hidden talents

A pillow helps to make the transition or the relationship between me and the world more pleasant and cushy, softer and smoother: more pillowy. Irrespective of whether we think of the obdurate world of objects that we stumble across by leaving the protective envelopment of the uterus or by entering our sleeping berths; or whether we think of the elusive world of thoughts and dreams that we rarely visit without the company of a pillow - or several pillows – which may  themselves become, now and then, important and active parts of those worlds. In a sense, one could argue that pillows are part of our bodies and souls.

some Images