Stories from Covid long: a collective work
On 4 October, the Department of Primary Care Medicine of the University Hospitals of Geneva will be inaugurating"La mélodie des gens: les récits en musique", a work created by people living with post-Covid syndrome in collaboration with artists from the Compagnie Zappar.
Probably affecting several hundred thousand people in Switzerland, Covid long is an illness that is still poorly understood and often generates feelings of loneliness and incomprehension. "The person who suffers from it finds themselves surrounded by people who have also caught the virus, but who have probably all recovered within a week. These people are in a good position to talk about Covid, but are unable to imagine what the person is going through ", explains Prof. Idris Guessous, head of the primary care medicine department at the HUG.
After collecting testimonies from around twenty people suffering from Covid long syndrome, the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) came up with the idea of inviting them to take part in the creation of an artistic work. These people were able to record extracts from their stories in a music box, which was placed inside an original statue. This project was supported by the Leenaards Foundation as part of its "Integrative Health & Society" initiative. Integrative Health & Society.
This project combines the biographical approach (an approach that encourages the construction of meaning and learning by offering patients a space to describe their experience) with narrative medicine (what doctors do when they invite patients to tell them their story, their experiences, their emotions, their plans, etc.). In this way, the pooling of personal experiences provides a space for sharing and learning as a group, based on the story of the illness. The sound work embodies this collective narrative about Covid long, to be shared with the public.
The work will be inaugurated on Tuesday 4 October at 5pm on the first floor of the Juillard Building at the HUG, in front of the imad arcade, rue Alcide-Jentzer 17.
It will remain there for at least a month.
