Design for a Dissemunization Station

Artistic Collaborators: Patrick Mahon and Annemarie Hou

Two printed tent structures accompanied by an ambient sound program; a sound montage of vaccine and pandemic news reports; and three photo montages mounted on display tripods 

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Our project is dedicated to the idea of designing and producing a prototype for a portable sculptural structure that suggests multiple uses regarding vaccines. A foldable, decorated information booth that could be sited in ‘public’ contexts such as airports, or even possible ‘access’ to vaccines, or a structure for other as-yet-unimagined uses, the Dissemunization Station invokes real-world issues, but as an artwork, it has a propositional or even fantastical character that enlists imaginative responses. Designed in consultation with an architectural designer and sound technicians, the piece can be engaged by several participants at once, and houses headphone-access sound elements as well as projects ambient sounds. The subjects of the sound elements are: (1) Broadcast news regarding moments in the history of modern vaccine usage and related issues; (2) Conversations among artists, and also public health students, about vaccine promotion and the creation of public perceptions; (3) an “inner body soundscape” based on the imagined progress of vaccines through the body. Three panels picturing alternate uses for
the Station are displayed adjacent to the structure.

Rethinking in the Era of Covid-19
 
The project, Design for a Dissemunization Station (D4DS) was developed as a setting for “experiential engagement with the subject of vaccines and its complexities in a twenty-first century global context.” The work is comprised of a pair of custom-printed tent structures originally housing two listening stations, and was presented in context of an ambient soundtrack invoking an “inner bodyscape” — with a vaccine ostensibly moving through it. The installation offered participants an opportunity to encounter a history of media coverage regarding vaccines and pandemic occurrences, mainly in the twentieth century, and to imagine mechanisms and environments for spreading information about vaccines as well as for administering vaccines themselves.
 
The onset of Covid-19 has potentially made D4DS both more fanciful and more real. It’s colourful surface, bearing digitally-printed watercolours of vaccine adjuvants, could appear unnecessarily decorative, while reminding us of the importance of ways of alleviating the attendant stresses of a pandemic, including through aesthetic pleasure. The portability of the project (the structures fold down to be carried in small cases) is resonant in relation to the importance of mobility and adaptability in these times. And, notably, for this Covid-era presentation of the work, the use of headphones for a sound encounter is no longer appropriate. This, of course, reminds us of the practical need to adapt to a new form of engagement in these times, and the importance of registering that the sonic archive presented here is clearly an unfinished one.

— Patrick Mahon and Annemarie Hou, August, 2021