Mirko
Winkel

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Mirko Winkel is the coordinator of the mLAB. The artist and curator teaches at the University of Bern and other places with the aim of synthesizing art with scientific research and socio-political concerns.

Susan
Thieme

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Susan Thieme is professor of Critical Sustainability Studies at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern. She brought the Global Science Film Festival to Bern and co-developed the Social Learning Video Method. She is co-founder of the mLAB.  MORE

Carolin
Schurr

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Carolin Schurr is professor of Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. As a feminist geographer, she has developed and experimented with affectual and visual methods to grasp the emotional effects of globalization processes on our intimate lives. She is co-founder of the mLAB.  MORE

Alexander
Vorbrugg

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Alexander Vorbrugg is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. His research interests include visual forms of research and science communication. He is part of the coordination group of the mLAB. MORE

Laura
Perler

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Laura Perler is a postdoctoral researcher in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. In her research she investigates inequalities in relation to reproductive technologies and the Swiss asylum system. In her projects she uses audiovisual approaches and collaborates with artists. Together with Mirko Winkel, she is currently organizing a traveling exhibition on egg donation. She is part of the coordination group of the mLAB. MORE

Stefan
Brönnimann

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Stefan Brönnimann is a professor in Climatology at the University of Bern. His research focuses on weather and climate reconstruction, climate models, climate dynamics, effects of volcanic eruptions on climate and climate and society interactions. MORE

Elisabeth
Militz

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Elisabeth Militz is an Assistant Professor for Social and Digital Geographies at the University of Innsbruck. As a feminist political and cultural geographer, her focus lies on global/intimate relations and digital transformations. She experiments with affectual and feminist digital methodologies for human geographies. MORE

Adrien
Mestrot

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Adrien Mestrot is a professor in Soil Science at the University of Bern. Part of his research topics is analyzing the biogeochemistry of soils under global change to improve environmental health and food production.  MORE

Nora
Komposch

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Nora Komposch is a PhD student and assistant in Social and Cultural Geography at the University of Bern. Her research interests are geographies of the body, care and reproduction, migration and labor, and politics of the global intimate. MORE

Prisca Pfammatter

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Prisca Pfammatter (she/her) is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern. Her research explores the experiences of queer farmworkers in Switzerland, using dance-based methodologies to examine the intersections of gender, sex, sexuality, and social sustainability in agriculture.

Johanna
Paschen

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Johanna Paschen is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. Her research interests include social and environmental justice, transdisciplinarity and artistic research. In cooperation with the Academy of the Arts Bern, she is involved with the research project EcoArtLab. MORE

Luca
Tschiderer

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Luca Tschiderer is a PhD student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. His research focuses on alternative practices of work in health- and care related contexts. As part of his PhD project he uses social learning videos as a participatory method towards workers inquiry. MORE

Sarah
Hartmann

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Sarah Hartmann is a Postdoc student in Critical Sustainability Studies at the University of Bern. Her research looks at issues around work, transnational mobilities and future transformations in healthcare from a critical sustainability perspective. MORE

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Residency
2023
health care
3D LIDAR scanning
Dominic Schwab
forced migration
Wanda Spahl

Residency: GEOGRAPHY OF GHOSTS

Wanda Spahl and Dominic Schwab  

In this video, Wanda Spahl and Dominic Schwab provide insight into their experience with the mLAB Residency Geography of Ghosts in Spring 2023.

 

Mapping multiple media/meanings of healthcare for refugees

GEOGRAPHY OF GHOSTS. Mapping multiple media/meanings of healthcare for refugees is a collaboration between the social scientist Wanda Spahl and the architect Dominic Schwab. The project discusses social science research about forced migration and health in a hybrid media geography. A narrative landscape of (psycho-)geographies and personal maps unfolds refugees’ and healthcare practitioners’ experiences. Spatial data captured through 3D LIDAR scanning technologies merge with personal stories, political statements and conceptual thoughts. The project attends to the in/visibility of refugees in the public (healthcare system), to their place in liminal space, and ultimately to the digital experience of these through the lucid, spectral and inconsistent documentation of spaces and materialities by artistic usages of digital mapping technologies. Furthermore it discusses the epistemological potential of 3D LIDAR scanning; also through further developing the method of Spatial Sampling that integrates online accessible digital assets with site-specific data, and thus creates a more general understanding of the forced migration and health that abstracts from the concrete contexts of subjective experiences.

“As residents at the mLAB, we are interested in discussing scientific questions through a transdisciplinary approach and through finding novel modes of combining different methods. We experiment with different research strategies and a variety of media to provoke friction and communicate scientific findings in an unconventional manner. By combining spatial data with spoken narratives from Wanda’s interviews with refugees and healthcare workers we aim to create Spatial Narratives. Previously to our residency in Bern, we spatially documented healthcare institutions and asylum accommodations in Vienna, which we will interweave now with voices in German, Somali, Dari and Arabic. A real time game engine serves us as a digital tool for experimentation and as a stage to tell the Spatial Narratives in a multiple media installation to a wider audience.”

 

 

Wanda Spahl is a social scientist. Her research interests include social studies of health, biopolitics, digitalisation, critical migration studies and artistic research. She is enrolled at the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ongoing PhD on forced migration and health, in September 2023; results partly published in EASST Review and Bioethics). From 2020 to 2022, she was a researcher in and co-leader of the international and longitudinal qualitative interview study “Solidarity in Times of a Pandemic“. From 2018 to 2022, Wanda Spahl was a university assistant at the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Solidarity (CeSCoS), Department of Political Science, University of Vienna.

Dominic Schwab is an architect, teacher and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. He holds a master degree in art and architecture from the Academy of Fine Arts and is a faculty member at the ./studio3, Institute for Experimental Architecture at the University of Innsbruck. Currently he is pursuing a PhD with a research focus on the spectralities of media-technologies and how they inform a spatial design practice that reflects on architecture in the age of archives. He is co-founder of the Vienna Architecture Summer Schooland SOAP,some online architecture practice, which aims to explore the architecture of the World Wide Web. His work has been widely screened and exhibited, including Ars Electronica Barcelona Garden 2021, AUT Innsbruck 2021, Greenwich Heritage Gallery London 2016, Wien Museum 2016, Rundgang Academy of Fine Arts Vienna 2016/17/18 and others.

In 2022, Wanda and Dominic co-founded PARABOL – Verein für künstlerische Forschung.