Claudia Lomoschitz

HEALTH INVESTMENT

Videowork by Claudia Lomoschitz

The video work examines the emptied architecture of Semmelweis Clinic, one of the first clinics dedicated to women’s health solely. The pavilions were constructed from 1908 till 1910, as a state orphanage of lower Austria, where in 1909 the first existing human milk bank, preserving breast milk for infants in need, was established. Ignaz Semmelweis opened a clinic for women’s health in these buildings in 1943 which operated for 76 years as an influential health center for women. For centuries women, mothers, daughters and granddaughters gave labor in this public clinic, which is surrounded by a park, equipped with balconies and located in Vienna’s most wealthy residential area. In the last decade, the city started to sell the monument-protected buildings to private investors and the site of the clinic became an object of speculation at the expense of women’s health commodification.