Documenting Bodies: Epikris was the second part of the work Documenting Bodies  that started in 2010. In the medical and surgical archives of the General and Sahlgrenska Hospital in Gothenburg, I came across patient files that were no longer classified, dated from the 1930s. Narrated by medical doctors, surgeons, and post-mortem examiners, the journals contained the imprints of other people’s hurting bodies – suffering, aching, sore, feverish, sliced, drained, carried, broken bodies. My own experience of suffering from chronic pain, of vacillating between expectations, hope and despair, was there with the hurting realities of others, although I could not reach them. 

 

Adapted, a selction of the files were intertwined with data from scientific research papers, my own medical entries, and fictional accounts. The hybrid texts were then drawn on hygien paper which is used to cover stretchers and medical exam tables. The process of writing the rolls was documented on video and became yet another record of the work´s story, as well as a mark in the cartography of my own body in pain. An edition of an artist book, that contained the text in its entirety, was also made.