Having been in bed for four days – seems like a week and like my worst ever time spent in bed though it is not – I have again been reflecting on what it means to test my own personal physical limits and on how the work I make has to a large extent been determined by what I am physically able to do. I like working with physical materials but have to work with materials that are light. So I work a lot with paper and also try and build bigger pieces from smaller building blocks.
Tacita Dean’s interview in the Guardian came at the right time: “I don’t know what I would be like if I didn’t have arthritis,” she says. “Obviously, I make slow work. I can’t take a step which is not painful. Sitting here talking to you is all right. But my ankles are now just bone on bone. I have no idea what life would be like if I wasn’t, you know, lame. The fact is,” she says, “you can’t but help work with the stuff that you are made of. Antigone is all about that. [The illness] is part of the genesis of what I do, but it is not the explanation. Which is important. Which is very important.”
Having rheumatoid arthritis myself, I know what she means.
On another note I now have a creator space in the Baby Forest colony, which I am super excited about. A very good thing to get out of bed for.
