Medical Comics Exhibition: Looking at facets of medicine from different perspectives
Focus on Medical Humanities in the Lecture Center of MedUni Vienna/Vienna General Hospital until 31 January 2020
The “Medical Comics” exhibition will be on display in the Medical University of Vienna’s Lecture Center in Vienna General Hospital (Level 8) until 31 January 2020. Under the heading of “Impression – Expression – Interaction, Perception in Medicine”, the various facets of medicine are broken down according to three perspectives: “Help!” Helping with comics”, “Sick! Being sick in comics” and interactive stations, so that visitors can join in the action and interaction. Admission is free.
The initiative is directly related to MedUni Vienna’s general aim of promoting “Medical Humanities” (an interdisciplinary field at the interface between medicine and human sciences) and to highlight and consolidate them within the entire university sector. A launch event for the initiative took place in October 2018, with the “Medical Humanities: Interactions between Medicine and the Arts” conference taking place one year later under the direction of Felicitas Seebacher and former MedUni Vienna Rector Wolfgang Schütz. In addition, courses focussing on “Medical Humanities” are being run as part of the curriculum.
Watch an informational video about the exhibit here.
Bringing about a change in perspective
“With this exhibition, we are aiming to reach students, people from various healthcare professions, but also patients and their families and friends, as well as anyone interested in medicine, to appeal to the individual perspectives of these groups and to bring about a change in perspective,” explain the originators Eva Katharina Masel (Department of Medicine I) and Andrea Praschinger from MedUni Vienna’s Teaching Center. “This provides an opportunity to tackle difficult everyday topics, make them easier to understand and easier to accept.”
The Exhibition makes use of visual expression, which occupies an important place in medicine. At the end of the day, pain, loss, illness, overload, grief, visible and invisible injuries and huge emotional stress must be addressed, amongst other things. Reflecting on these critical situations through the medium of comics – which, in this case, do not primarily focus on humorous representation – not only provides a look behind the obvious but also an opportunity to change one’s viewpoint: What are the characters in the comic feeling and what are the observers feeling, where do they identify? “The comics show how useful it can be to step outside one’s “own role”. And the interactive stations provide an opportunity to actively reflect on pictures and strip cartoons.
Medical Comics Exhibition
The “Medical Comics” Exhibition will run until 31 January 2020. It is on display in the MedUni Vienna Lecture Center in Vienna General Hospital (Währinger Gürtel 18-20, 1090 Vienna). From the main hospital entrance, you can access the exhibition area via the blue lift to Level 8. Opening times: Monday to Friday, 07:00 – 20:00 hrs. Christmas/New Year opening times: 23.12.2019 until 03.01.2020: 07:00 -16:00 hrs / 24.12.2019 and 31.12.2019: closed. Admission is free. For more information: www.meduniwien.ac.at/medical-comics.
Please direct enquiries to: Mag. Johannes Angerer, Communication and Public Relations Manager,pr@meduniwien.ac.at or Karin Fehringer, MBA, Head of the Information Center and PR Manager, Vienna General Hospital, presse@akhwien.at
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