Between words and things: digital cognitive stimulation groups for people with dementia

Abstract

Since 2002, the Reference Center for Health Care for the Elderly (CRASI), at the Federal Fluminense University, has been involved in medicinal and non-medical therapeutic work for people diagnosed with dementia. In this essay, I seek to reflect on the work of modulating the memory, language, attention and senses of people diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease and/or other dementias in the institution's workshops. I am interested in investigating how household utensils, cards with words, music, ornaments, fruits, flowers and spices create and (co)produce meanings (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste), memories, bodies, syntactic and semantic contexts. The drawings I present were produced, between 2021 and 2022, in graphite pencil, colored pencil, ink pen and felt-tip pen. Once finished, they were digitized, decomposed, repositioned and, sometimes, edited in color and shape. Together, they seek to portray interactions with the digital environment, the work dynamics of the workshops and the new material arrangements, made possible by cell phones and computers in a period of social isolation.