Medicine and Megastructures: The Hospital as Collective Form in Films by Ulrich Seidl and Nikolaus Geyrhalter

Megastructures—modular in nature and capable of unlimited extension in space—play a large role in medical care in the post-World War II period. In this talk, I illuminate the experience of this type of architecture as it is represented in the works of two directors, Ulrich Seidl and Nikolaus Geyrhalter. My case studies look at the Vienna General Hospital and the Danube Hospital–SMZ Ost in their films, from the aughts onward. The films pick up on contemporary debates about the role of technology and end-of-life care; diagnosis and the delivery of information; the dependence on poorly paid nursing staff from abroad and internal hierarchies; “good-enough” architecture in relation to public health. Hospitals, in these works, become dynamic digital spaces and collective forms that are ‘remediated’ on screen.

Bio: Fatima Naqvi is Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of German and Film and Media Studies (FMS) at Yale. She is currently chair of the FMS program. Her work is situated at the intersection of literature, film, and architecture. Her work is committed to curmudgeons, nay-sayers, and querulous types, such as Thomas Bernhard, Elfriede Jelinek, Peter Handke, Ulrich Seidl, Michael Haneke, Nikolaus Geyrhalter, Friederike Mayröcker, and Ruth Beckermann. Currently, she is writing a book entitled “Architecture of Illness,” in which she looks at hospitals in Vienna (1880–2020) to tell a story about their place in modern culture. She is also at work on an anthology of women writers of Red Vienna.