Entangled

An exploration of how cancer can both inspire an artistic practice as well as become a medium for the art itself, Entangled depicts the complex relationship between my identity as an artist and the metastatic cancer that lives within me. In order to connect with my cancer, to hear its voice, I followed a two-fold research path: moving from an external exploration cancer as a source of artistic inspiration for others into a more personal, interior dialogue with my own cancer and the role it has played in my life. I began by engaging written, visual, and auditory artwork created by those who work in this space but are not survivors themselves, and then by those who are survivors/have subsequently passed from their cancer, notably those who share my diagnosis and/or have received treatment at the same hospital. This enabled me to delve further into my own personal experiences, viewing my history of scans and test reports, and recalling the “emotional, psychological, mental and spiritual resonances deep within [my] cellular memory” (Gilly Angell, “A View from the Other Side: A Patient Perspective”, from Anarchy in the Organism, Simeon Nelson). After these artistic explorations, I engaged in guided and/or personal meditation to awaken my creativity,  then opened a dialogue with my cancer using free-writing, approaching it as an equal, my collaborator in life, death, and art.

Having created a collection of missives to my cancer and felt its inherent resonances within me, I subsequently attempted to model the cancer’s voice using a custom-built Python code, which accepts entries of my own words and randomly remixes these according to a set of established guidelines. I entered the results of my free-writing into this program, and it generated remixed responses representing the cancer's voice, comprised only of my original words. Thus, just as the cancer remixes my cells to build itself, the program uses only my own words to reflect the cancer’s response. Finally, I combined our two resulting voices in a video, inspired by the appearance of my scans, wherein the cancer’s words emerge in darkened ovals, obscuring my original words, overlaid on one of my actual scan images. The scrolling speed of my original words continually increases, representing my shortened lifespan, while the speed of the cancer's responses slowly decreases, representing the permanency of the cancer and its ultimately longer lifespan (as it will remain as a specimen in the lab, outliving me). The interaction between our two voices on the screen provides insight into our interior relationship, as we resonate with both tension and harmony, and reveals the cancer as  a type of muse: a source of destruction which acts like fire, bringing the light of inspiration as it consumes.