Event overview
Dr Graham Harwood (Digital Culture Unit, Goldsmiths, YoHa) and Dr Luke Mitcheson, (Consultant Clinical Psychologist) will give a joint talk on the project "Database Addiction".
The arts group YoHa in collaboration with the staff at the addictions clinic, Lorraine Hewitt House in Brixton, explored the inter-relationships between mental health and the forms of digital rationality with which we manage addictive behaviour. The project used art within the context of staff development to enable critical readings of the clinic's techno-social environment with particular emphases on exploring the inter-relationships to databases between: front-line staff and management; management and the commissioners; and between care workers and service users
The clinic sits at the nexus of several databases: the Electronic Patient Journey System (ePJS), NHS Spine and the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System (NDTMS) above others. It is also linked to the Home Office and the DWP databases by which cross-data on crime, benefits and addiction can be extracted. The databases investigated produce an abstraction of the clinic's modalities by which the materiality of the work can be managed and governed at multiple scales with computation. This process allows distance and overview from the gritty work of dealing with addiction and the representation or experience of the clinic. The structure of the database unlocks what is articulated about addiction from an ideological, technical and governmental viewpoint, while monitoring and monetising addiction services.
Database Addiction is a research project supported by the Wellcome Trust.
Dates & times
Date | Time | Add to calendar |
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19 Jan 2016 | 6:00pm - 8:30pm |
Accessibility
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