Healing Media: A Manifesto for an Audiovisual Turn in Practices of Care

Abstract

Emerging from the intersection of the Medical Humanities, narrative medicine, and media studies, this manifesto explores the expansion of therapeutic practice through the multisensory language of audiovisual media. By reclaiming the therapeutic agency of screens and devices, it outlines the coordinates of a transdisciplinary approach to research and training in which clinicians, artists, and patients collaborate as co-authors of meaning. Attentive to trauma, accessibility, and cultural difference, this framework situates healing within a participatory and ethical ecology that privileges collaboration and creative agency. Within this horizon, the mindful use of audiovisual and creative languages appears as the continuation of a long history in which representation, imagination, and care have always been intertwined—transforming media from mere instruments of observation into active environments of relation, empathy, and repair