HEALING MACHINE DEVICES
“Healing Mashine” is a growing network of bodies, voices, scripts, and devices that send, store, and receive healing qualities with an archive of narratives on healing resilience and healthcare twists. Rejuvenating the body, repurposing everyday objects for healing, and performing individual and collective therapeutic rituals are the core components of the project.
The first iteration of “Healing Machine” is a repurposed candy-vending machine that dispenses sweet healing notes, plays somatic meditations, and collects and shares survival tricks in English and Persian. Playful in its delivery but biting in its critique, this machine is very different than its biomedical counterparts. It is placed in public places for therapeutic engagement with the body and to spark conversations among its visitors for reimagining public care and relief.
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By dispensing sweet healing tidbits from its participatory archive, the machine invites us to exchange healing techniques and healthcare stories. Since its inception in 2019, “Healing Machine” has been placed in public and outdoor spaces and galleries in Detroit. Below, are images of the participants and healing scripts they stored in the machine at the “Sick. Time, Sleepy Time, Creep. Time: Against Capitalism. Temporal Bullying” exhibition curated by Taraneh Fazeli at Red Bull House of Art in Detroit.
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The first iteration of “Healing Machine” is a repurposed candy-vending machine that dispenses sweet healing notes, plays somatic meditations, and collects and shares survival tricks in English and Persian. Playful in its delivery but biting in its critique, this machine is very different than its biomedical counterparts. It is placed in public places for therapeutic engagement with the body and to spark conversations among its visitors for reimagining public care and relief.
By dispensing sweet healing tidbits from its participatory archive, the machine invites us to exchange healing techniques and healthcare stories. Since its inception in 2019, “Healing Machine” has been placed in public and outdoor spaces and galleries in Detroit. Below, are images of the participants and healing scripts they stored in the machine at the “Sick. Time, Sleepy Time, Creep. Time: Against Capitalism. Temporal Bullying” exhibition curated by Taraneh Fazeli at Red Bull House of Art in Detroit.
The somatic grounding techniques link different therapeutic spatial-temporal experiences through movement and voice, asking us to look inwards to liberate our bodies and resist the numbing difficulties of the world.
They helped Ava Ansari to navigate Michigan’s health-care system and many doctors’ waiting rooms after a recent car accident and to cope with the effects of the ongoing separation from her family due to the recent immigration ban.
“Healing Machine” emerges from Ava’s creative work with her body, language, technologies, and communities to create transnational celebratory spaces for individual and collective healing.
In 2017, Ava founded Poetic Societies as a Detroit-based non-profit network for the cosmic liberation and ancestral and digital healing of self, land, and senses of belonging against structural violence.
They helped Ava Ansari to navigate Michigan’s health-care system and many doctors’ waiting rooms after a recent car accident and to cope with the effects of the ongoing separation from her family due to the recent immigration ban.
“Healing Machine” emerges from Ava’s creative work with her body, language, technologies, and communities to create transnational celebratory spaces for individual and collective healing.
In 2017, Ava founded Poetic Societies as a Detroit-based non-profit network for the cosmic liberation and ancestral and digital healing of self, land, and senses of belonging against structural violence.