Ode to Vulnerability is a performance lecture that employs the artist as polyphonic narrator. The lecture is given at the former administrative quarter of Upsala hospital and asylum (later Ulleråker mental hospital). Today, the building houses the Museum of Medical History in Uppsala.

Drawing from authentic patient records and journaling, the audience encounters individuals who spent time admitted to the hospital’s asylum for the chronically ill. The art text describes possible scenarios from the patients’ lives and recounts individual struggles for autonomy and self-affirmation, elements seldom found in official records. Contemporary examples, auto-fictional features and testimonies from individuals with experience of in-patient psychiatric care tie the present together with the past. Ulleråker as site – currently undergoing an urban redevelopment process – is outlined using suggestive writing, audience engagements, and by looking critically at the tools and presentation of psychiatric health care systems. By looking closer at the daily routines, meal menus, and work duties at former Upsala hospital and asylum, the lecture draws attention to processes of normalization in contemporary care practices. The working conditions of health care personnel and the close bodily contact between staff and patients are discussed. Apart from examples of patients’ resistance and violation of the status quo, the lecture performance provides the working masses (the audience) with a starch-filled snack.