After several months of a wild goose chase running from doctor to doctor, countless tests, strange misdiagnoses (IBS!) I was last month diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Already the COVID year had had an impact on my life and work, but as can be expected this event changed my world even more. I spent almost two months in two different hospitals and am currently undergoing chemotherapy. The cancer has, as far as we know, not spread, but is located in a tricky position wrapped around important blood vessels, so can’t be operated as is without taking major risks. So we wait, do chemo, and see.

I had written an ongoing blog twice in my career, starting initially with a collaborative project with homeless youth based in Oregon, whilst I was working in Vermont, in order to communicate with each other with easiest access inclusive visuals. Over time I made the experience that many people by now are aware of the internet is not a private place and people have access to statements without the context of knowing the person who made them at all, often without even reading or researching the information that would be there, if they would look at all. I deleted the blog twice, and eventually had come to the conclusion, as many others, it is best in a strangely machine-driven era not to create access to information that comes out of an exclusively human mind, the two do not mix well. The positive and professional networking I had hoped for did not seem to work out in the majority of cases, unless I was willing to take on a preplanned and constructed personality geared to always saying the well calculated right thing that could be there to say to achieve specific effects, from portraying myself and my artistic position in a specific popular way to achieving top ranking in the algorithms of various networks. This seemed to make sense only for very short moments in time, so I stopped this way of blogging as well.

Over the last ten years the meaning and purpose of artists’ websites has shifted, from initially being considered essential for any artist who planned to work professionally to being replaces by social media accounts, and even there the focus shifted from content to maximum “LIKES” and follower-count and a number of tricks developed how to achieve those.

It seemed to have moved away from the kind of art I had trained for over years in British art colleges, except the irony of this, as a thinking piece, would be possibly considered a type of artform. But irony can swap into sarcasm, or people confuse the two anyways, and a life that is structured only around who can be the most sarcastic is very toxic to me.

For all these reasons I had stopped blogging and expected to leave it at that. Until the cancer reality kicked in. I am having more thoughts that I feel perhaps are interesting to an audience as such, and do not have to be revised, polished, weighed, corrected all the time in order to achieve goals that are not my goals. The cancer, although I would not choose it had I any such choice and am actively working on my recovery if possible, has brought many good things to my life. I am saying this aware that it is my personal experience and in respect for the many people who could never ever see it that way, and also aware of the fact, that within this situation I am for many reasons very lucky and privileged, for example because my cancer was diagnosed prior to spreading (at least we think so now), I have access to good treatment, and health care that covers my treatment, I have a strong support team that takes almost any efforts away from me, and as a result of all these I can do basically whatever I feel like doing. If I need to rest, I can do it, if I want to go for a walk in the forest, I can do that. I know this is not everybody’s reality, and I feel guilty having these advantages towards everyone who does not. It also gives me an immense sense of gratefulness.

I feel scared at moments (typically prior chemo therapy sessions), I have a moderate needle phobia that doesn’t help with a cancer port and weeks in hospital being poked at least twice a day for blood tests and IV access, but I am grown-up, I can communicate verbally, read up and ask questions, and I can contextualize my situation. I feel most guilty towards small children who have cancer, who have no choice but go through it without any of the advantages of an adult. Many years ago when running a marionette group in Ohio we considered to do plays for kids in the hospital. We eventually decided against it because it seemed to complicated and at the time I was not interested at all in children’s entertainment in the arts. Now, if I had my group here in the town where I live now, I would organize it. It has become important to me. Perhaps I can do it.

Yesterday was the first day I spent all day in my studio working, I am making a new human sculpture from clay, called “The Experienced Susanna”. It is supposed to show an elderly lady bathing her feet in water, smiling. It is a version of “Susanna and the Elders”, but the idea is, my Susanna is no teenager anymore being confronted with manipulations and lies she has never encountered in her life until then, and does not know how to combat this effectively.

Artemisia Gentileschi “Susanna and the Elders” (1610)

My Susanna is an older lady, she has been there so many times, she is at a stage she understands people are complex (and some are, simply put: lousy!) and she knows, just because one loves a person one should not trust him or her, as these are two different things. Working on this piece I remembered the bath scene (Lia Beldam / Billie Gibson) from Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980)

Stanley Kubrick “The Shining – Lia Beldam” (1980)

Stanley Kubrick “The Shining – Billie Gibson” 1980

When I first watched “The Shining” I was as scared to death just as the next person. But now, thinking about it from the perspective of the lady coming back as a scary ghost, how much fun must she have, tricking guys into hugging her?

Daisuke Ito ” Shimpan Yotsuya Kaidan /Hisako Yamane” (1928)

This theme is a typical Japanese ghost story theme (most famous perhaps “Yotsuya Kaidan”), I have been working on since many years, but why not integrate it in Western culture? (*If I die, I will put this on a after-death-do-do list!)