Patrick Mahon participated in the collaborative exhibition, <Immune Nations> as part of The Vaccine Project, which was sponsored by the Research Council of Norway, SSHRC, and other funders. An international collaboration involving artists, researchers, and policy makers, the project highlighted complexities regarding global vaccinations. The exhibition premiered at Gallerie KiT, Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts, in Norway, March 13, 2017, and travelled to the UNAIDS Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, to coincide with the World Health Assembly in May 2017. Patrick Mahon’s project, Design for a Dissemunization Station, was developed in collaboration with Annemarie Hou of UNAIDS, and produced with creative and productive assistance from Thomas Mahon (Toronto) and Tegan Moore (London, ON).
Design for a Dissemunization Station, was realized as a pair of custom-printed tent structures, with two interior listening stations, presented in context of an ambient soundtrack invoking an “inner bodyscape” –as a vaccine ostensibly moves through the body. The installation offered a participant an experiential engagement with the subject of vaccines and its complexities in a twenty-first century global context.
Foldable, decorated information booths that could be sited in ‘public’ contexts such as airports, or portable nodes for creating community awareness or even possible ‘access’ to vaccines, or structure for other as-yet-unimagined uses, the Dissemunization Station(s) invoke real-world issues, and as artworks, have a propositional, even fantastical character that enlists imaginative responses.
The Vaccine Project
REVIEWS