Fire$, tree$. $orry, not $orry.
I hope everyone who is reading this can breathe.
August 26th will mark the third anniversary of being admitted to hospital with what turned out to be Stage 4 ladybits cancer (ovarian, fallopian, too difficult to be sure).
So I'm holding a...
Cancerversary+Fires Action
Sunday, August 26
3-4pm
Quadra St near Pandora, Victoria, BC
This action will entail a performance of what I'm dubbing an Atrocity Cheer.
I'll be in my version of cheerleader garb, complete with pompoms.
All are welcome.
Facebook event
I'm still breathing.
30% to 50% of those in my schmancer boat are still alive after five years. I do plan to continue to be in that number even though I feel quite sure I landed on an incorrect planet, or at least an incorrect time period on this one. Having landed here though, I've made some heart connections and whatnot so I've gotta do the time.
To recap, I've been holding the Monthly Actions / Acts of Disruption+Resistance / Vulnerability Vigils for more than six years, doing the performance artwork under the umbrella of the Human Body Project for more than 12, and, while cancer sucked, the intense emotional pain that I've come to identify with being on the wrong planet has been a longer and harder road since about age 12 on.
When I had the idea for the Human Body Project in 2004 (it took me two years to get the courage up to be naked), the main reason I felt compelled to do the work and chose the overarching theme of vulnerability was because everything I felt was important and URGENT was nowhere to be found in any accessible discourse I could enter into.
Lately, many of the conversations that were impossible to imagine people having are finally happening in a much more open way: the severe pain and cost of capitalism; non-binary distinctions; systemic corruption, violence, racism and misogyny; the ongoing effects of colonialism; ongoing colonialism; etc. Or at least that's how it looks to me in my self-curated social media feeds.
Dots are finally being connected. Compartments are being pried open. The dark layers are becoming visible.
So I've been confused. Should I still follow the impetus that has taken me this far? Like, do I still have my unpaid, embarrassing job?! Haha.
NON-TRANSCENDENT. It recently dawned on me that this word describes my work.
It helped me realize it is still an important artistic statement in the sense that it's SUPPOSED TO BE grounding and extreme in the grinding and excruciating here and now.
I do still have my cop-magnet, buzz-kill job!
Link to Saanich News story about last month's action:
https://www.saanichnews.com/news/naked-roadside-protest-stopped-outside-camp-namegans/
Support? Hey, I recently won an award for my show Naked Ugly Dancing at the Montreal Fringe but the money from my award and ticket sales did not even cover my plane fare. If you'd like to support this work by, say, buying me the equivalent of a latte or two once a month or even once please consider checking out my Patreon site.
https://www.patreon.com/humanbodyproject
Ecofeminist, inconvenient prophet, artist, activist, cancer survivor, mother. Radical vulnerability on behalf of the collective. Using nakedness—literal+figurative. Processing my pain.
Showing posts with label Human Body Project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Body Project. Show all posts
Monday, August 20, 2018
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
The Thin Edge of the Wedge
A friend asked me if I believed in the current structures and, if not (I don't), what would I replace them with?
Another friend asked me why we didn't hand out flyers at our Boxing Day AnthropoScene or ask people, "What are you doing to create the extinction crisis we face?"
I got really irritated with both of them and I'm still irritated.
Regarding handing out flyers and asking people point blank... seriously? Ya, the reason I have diligently used my naked, VULNERABLE self/body as an expressive/artistic/political statement for MORE THAN 10 YEARS of HEAVY LIFTING is because I haven't thought about flyers or asking people pointed questions.
The decision to intervene, to trouble, to create—dare I say it?!—discomfort is purposeful.
In my portrait here, by Elemental, she used an interview she conducted while sketching me to pull my quote. I say: "This is a culture of avoiding pain at all costs."
But it's worse than that! We're a culture of avoiding discomfort at all costs.
And, hypocrite that I am—because who cannot be a hypocrite in this culture?—like pretty much all of my cultural criticism, I am also criticizing and implicating myself. I have said many times and I'll say it again: I'm teaching what I need to learn.
I know that the work I've done in the Human Body Project and the new AnthropoScene Collective isn't easy to parse.
It's more like a poke in the psyche for the people who come upon it. Yes, it creates discomfort. I dunno, is discomfort worse than facing mass extinction? A fate that is decidedly closer with President-of-the-Petrostate Trump's inauguration.
Just because our society's emotional/neurological systems haven't evolved to FEEL the PAIN and seriousness of the ongoing situation so that in most cases NO AMOUNT of logic will penetrate... I'M supposed to figure out a surefire way of reaching people?!
And I'M supposed to know the best system to replace it with?!
This is what I know and have been expressing in my personal/political art practice for more than 10 years: we don't understand or deal with VULNERABILITY.
Because in this ego-based culture, in this culture built on millennia of domination and violence, our understanding of vulnerability is suppressed pre-verbally.
(From my personal perspective of doing DECADES of self-study and therapies to heal, I have come to understand my own PTSD-like nervous system symptoms as something that happened at birth. Simply put, my extremely sensitive baby being couldn't believe I had landed in such a cruel, unloving, DISCONNECTED place and my extremely sensitive 55-year-old being still can't. Ya, ya, people are basically kind but are emotionally damaged, etc. I'm on board with that. That's the whole point.)
We are all walking around in various states of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). To cope, we learn to suppress our vulnerability. This suppression of vulnerability is especially socialized and internalized by masculine beings.
So conversations about climate change, mass extinction and the end of capitalism as an idea that functions for the good of most people—incredibly challenging conversations—are impossible to have when one-upmanship is the norm.
And impossible to have when one-upmanship (a nicer word for domination and violence) created the situation in the first place. Hence thinkers such as Audre Lorde: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
The choices the American people had for electing a leader were mistress-of-realpolitik Hillary Clinton (status quo, or, arguably, worse) and an INSANE PERSON addicted to one-upmanship. The system—and many people—allowed the insane person to win.
The current structures of English and most dominant languages, as well as dominant institutional structures for governance, "trade," education, etc. do not allow for us to have the kind of conversations we need to have AND have created the situation we are in.
As I explained to the friend who asked me what structures I would replace the current house of cards with, that's not my job! I'm the thin edge of the wedge already!
Do the visuals help? The thin edge of the wedge people are taxed in a way that most people couldn't possibly comprehend. We're up front chip-chip-chipping away, creating the space for movement and change.
Like the tip of any wooden doorstop, we are beaten and battered but, at least in my case, still in service.
Not only that, "be the change" has been my purpose from the beginning. To own and hold vulnerability, to share vulnerability, I do work that is exactly the opposite of comfortable.
And, not only that!! To offer a space to be vulnerable and show up vulnerably is exactly what we need to have honest and NECESSARY conversations.
As I explained to both of my friends, after doing this for more than 10 years, my work is about due diligence. I show up and do the work. I don't get money. I don't get jobs. I am not generally befriended or welcomed by art or theatre people. Academics don't get it. I am CONSTANTLY coming up against criticism and judgment, my own and others; or worse, indifference. There are moments of fun when I'm actually out there but far more moments of difficulty (MENTAL ILLNESS/processing shit-type stuff) behind the scenes. I got Stage 4 cancer for fuck's sake.
DUE FUCKING DILIGENCE. I hereby honour myself.
As my friend suggested I ask: what are you doing to prevent the mass extinction crisis in which we find ourselves?
I try not to rant but so be it.
The next AnthropoScene will take place in solidarity with the Million Women's March on January 21, 1pm, in Centennial Square, Victoria, BC.
Another friend asked me why we didn't hand out flyers at our Boxing Day AnthropoScene or ask people, "What are you doing to create the extinction crisis we face?"
I got really irritated with both of them and I'm still irritated.
Regarding handing out flyers and asking people point blank... seriously? Ya, the reason I have diligently used my naked, VULNERABLE self/body as an expressive/artistic/political statement for MORE THAN 10 YEARS of HEAVY LIFTING is because I haven't thought about flyers or asking people pointed questions.
The decision to intervene, to trouble, to create—dare I say it?!—discomfort is purposeful.
 |
| Portrait of me by Elemental. |
But it's worse than that! We're a culture of avoiding discomfort at all costs.
And, hypocrite that I am—because who cannot be a hypocrite in this culture?—like pretty much all of my cultural criticism, I am also criticizing and implicating myself. I have said many times and I'll say it again: I'm teaching what I need to learn.
I know that the work I've done in the Human Body Project and the new AnthropoScene Collective isn't easy to parse.
It's more like a poke in the psyche for the people who come upon it. Yes, it creates discomfort. I dunno, is discomfort worse than facing mass extinction? A fate that is decidedly closer with President-of-the-Petrostate Trump's inauguration.
Just because our society's emotional/neurological systems haven't evolved to FEEL the PAIN and seriousness of the ongoing situation so that in most cases NO AMOUNT of logic will penetrate... I'M supposed to figure out a surefire way of reaching people?!
And I'M supposed to know the best system to replace it with?!
This is what I know and have been expressing in my personal/political art practice for more than 10 years: we don't understand or deal with VULNERABILITY.
Because in this ego-based culture, in this culture built on millennia of domination and violence, our understanding of vulnerability is suppressed pre-verbally.
(From my personal perspective of doing DECADES of self-study and therapies to heal, I have come to understand my own PTSD-like nervous system symptoms as something that happened at birth. Simply put, my extremely sensitive baby being couldn't believe I had landed in such a cruel, unloving, DISCONNECTED place and my extremely sensitive 55-year-old being still can't. Ya, ya, people are basically kind but are emotionally damaged, etc. I'm on board with that. That's the whole point.)
We are all walking around in various states of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). To cope, we learn to suppress our vulnerability. This suppression of vulnerability is especially socialized and internalized by masculine beings.
So conversations about climate change, mass extinction and the end of capitalism as an idea that functions for the good of most people—incredibly challenging conversations—are impossible to have when one-upmanship is the norm.
And impossible to have when one-upmanship (a nicer word for domination and violence) created the situation in the first place. Hence thinkers such as Audre Lorde: "The master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."
The choices the American people had for electing a leader were mistress-of-realpolitik Hillary Clinton (status quo, or, arguably, worse) and an INSANE PERSON addicted to one-upmanship. The system—and many people—allowed the insane person to win.
The current structures of English and most dominant languages, as well as dominant institutional structures for governance, "trade," education, etc. do not allow for us to have the kind of conversations we need to have AND have created the situation we are in.
As I explained to the friend who asked me what structures I would replace the current house of cards with, that's not my job! I'm the thin edge of the wedge already!
Do the visuals help? The thin edge of the wedge people are taxed in a way that most people couldn't possibly comprehend. We're up front chip-chip-chipping away, creating the space for movement and change.
Like the tip of any wooden doorstop, we are beaten and battered but, at least in my case, still in service.
Not only that, "be the change" has been my purpose from the beginning. To own and hold vulnerability, to share vulnerability, I do work that is exactly the opposite of comfortable.
And, not only that!! To offer a space to be vulnerable and show up vulnerably is exactly what we need to have honest and NECESSARY conversations.
As I explained to both of my friends, after doing this for more than 10 years, my work is about due diligence. I show up and do the work. I don't get money. I don't get jobs. I am not generally befriended or welcomed by art or theatre people. Academics don't get it. I am CONSTANTLY coming up against criticism and judgment, my own and others; or worse, indifference. There are moments of fun when I'm actually out there but far more moments of difficulty (MENTAL ILLNESS/processing shit-type stuff) behind the scenes. I got Stage 4 cancer for fuck's sake.
DUE FUCKING DILIGENCE. I hereby honour myself.
As my friend suggested I ask: what are you doing to prevent the mass extinction crisis in which we find ourselves?
I try not to rant but so be it.
The next AnthropoScene will take place in solidarity with the Million Women's March on January 21, 1pm, in Centennial Square, Victoria, BC.
Saturday, January 7, 2017
Blog Post Reading #4 + AnthropoScenes
Here I am reading another blog post. This post was written on March 26, 2006, the day after I did my first Human Body Project performance. It's entitled "Post-nakedness (1): support and embracing awkwardness"
Also, here are some videos from the AnthropoScene Collective's first two AnthropoScenes!
Also, here are some videos from the AnthropoScene Collective's first two AnthropoScenes!
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
Help Keith?/Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn"
I hope anyone reading this will consider helping out a beautiful person and member of the Victoria downtown street art scene and a longtime Human Body Project community member.
My dear friend Keith Jenkins, 61, had open heart surgery in the fall. He's still unable to work and needs rest. Keith is one of many Canadians who lives from pay cheque to pay cheque and has very little savings.
I know everyone is sending money every which way and it's that spending time of year. But if you have even a little to help Keith, please do!
Here's the funding web address:
https://www.youcaring.com/keith-jenkins-649425
Also, here's the latest YouTube video of me reading my blog posts.
Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn" (posted Feb. 27, 2006)
I'm following a creative impulse and recording myself reading my blog. We'll see where it takes me...
Here's the link to the original post http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2006/02/pornnon-porn.html
My dear friend Keith Jenkins, 61, had open heart surgery in the fall. He's still unable to work and needs rest. Keith is one of many Canadians who lives from pay cheque to pay cheque and has very little savings.
I know everyone is sending money every which way and it's that spending time of year. But if you have even a little to help Keith, please do!
 |
| The one and only Keith! |
Here's the funding web address:
https://www.youcaring.com/keith-jenkins-649425
Also, here's the latest YouTube video of me reading my blog posts.
Reading Blog Posts 2: "Porn/Non-Porn" (posted Feb. 27, 2006)
I'm following a creative impulse and recording myself reading my blog. We'll see where it takes me...
Here's the link to the original post http://www.humanbodyproject.org/2006/02/pornnon-porn.html
Tuesday, December 6, 2016
Reading Blog Posts 1: "A Longer Version of the Artist Statement" (Feb. 12, 2006)
I am reading my blog posts written on humanbodyproject.org
The one above is the first one: I'm reading the blog posted on Feb. 12, 2006. I'm starting with the oldest and working my way forward.
I am sitting naked in my basement (but you can only see my head and shoulders).
I am choosing to be as groomed (or ungroomed) as I am in the moment of shooting.
I use physical and emotional nakedness as a medium to create vulnerability or a metaphor for vulnerability or to allow space for vulnerability or radical non-violence...
Tuesday, July 12, 2016
First Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto! Fri, July 15, 2016, Yonge+Bloor, 4:30
I am thrilled to announce that I'll be holding the First Vulnerability Vigil in Toronto!
Friday, July 15, 2016
4:30-5:30 pm
Yonge and Bloor
Everybody welcome, dressed or not.
Please share with Toronto friends!
Maybe you understand or have an inkling that our old structures are not working. This includes cultural ways of being (the water we swim in), which are pretty much invisible to most of us.
I have been using the spacious form of performance art for more than 10 years to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world.
I use my 54-year-old, baby-producing, cancer-surviving, naked female body to honour, share and express vulnerability.
I am white and very privileged. This is also about showing up and using my privilege.
A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Holding vigils (and performing the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I have.
Yes, it's small. It could be big. Consider holding a companion vigil. Consider joining me. (I'm the only one committed to being naked; it's completely optional.)
 |
| June 2016 Vulnerability Vigil in Victoria. |
Friday, June 17, 2016
Free. Real. The Opposite of Violence.
Vulnerability Vigil
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
5-6 pm
Pandora and Broad St, Victoria, near the rainbow crosswalks
I've written about this before. I'll be brief.
Maybe you understand or have an inkling that our old structures are not working. This includes cultural ways of being that, because that's the water we swim in, are largely invisible to most of us.
I have been using the spacious form of performance art for more than 10 years to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world.
A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Doing vigils (and the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I have.
Yes, it's small. It could be big. Consider holding a companion vigil. Consider joining me.
http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html
Facebook event
Wednesday, June 22, 2016
5-6 pm
Pandora and Broad St, Victoria, near the rainbow crosswalks
I've written about this before. I'll be brief.
Maybe you understand or have an inkling that our old structures are not working. This includes cultural ways of being that, because that's the water we swim in, are largely invisible to most of us.
I have been using the spacious form of performance art for more than 10 years to present a non-violent, non-rhetorical, feminine, indigenist, healing response to an insane world.
A Vulnerability Vigil is a ritual; it's about being the change; it's about being an ally; it's art. Doing vigils (and the Human Body Project) continues to be the only sane response I have.
Yes, it's small. It could be big. Consider holding a companion vigil. Consider joining me.
http://www.humanbodyproject.org/p/vulnerability-vigils.html
Facebook event
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Human Body Project 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil
10th Anniversary of the Human Body Project
"Retrospective" Vulnerability Vigil
All welcome.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
1:00 PM
Revised location: Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge
South end of Beacon Hill Park (near flagpole and Camas Circle, across from Dallas Rd.)
Victoria, BC
If you've ever wanted to take part in a public performance project or a flash mob or a Vulnerability Vigil, please consider coming out for this one!! (Dressed or undressed.)
"Retrospective" Vulnerability Vigil
All welcome.
Saturday, March 26, 2016
1:00 PM
Revised location: Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge
Victoria, BC
If you've ever wanted to take part in a public performance project or a flash mob or a Vulnerability Vigil, please consider coming out for this one!! (Dressed or undressed.)
___________________
I started the Human Body Project ten years ago, as a performance art event, in a very conservative place, Lethbridge, Alberta. An undercover officer came to the first performance because a concerned citizen had called. (The cop left saying, "That was very beautiful.") I had the idea two years earlier but it took me those two years to get the courage up to be naked.
People like to say nakedness isn't a big deal. Ha. You try it. On the street. In any case, it's a big deal to me. It's very challenging for me to show up naked.
I do so in the Human Body Project, which is an ongoing performance art/activism project, to provoke a serious consideration of individual and humanity's vulnerability. Nakedness is a metaphor for and embodiment of vulnerability. I use my naked body and naked self. I also use this blog/website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as other spaces to share.
When I started I was the mother of a 4-year-old whose birth changed my life more than anything before or since. Her presence in my life awakened me to the denying I'd been able to do before she was there. I had responsibilities, to her and to myself. I felt so much opening, love, and pain. I finally felt like an earthling.
I couldn't and still can't explain it all. Or that's not right. I have explained, in many different ways, in my writing and in performance. It's difficult, however, to explain succinctly and in a way that many people can access. I'm pushing against so many dominant narratives and vulnerabilities. People react very personally.
Still, after 10 years of viscerally and publicly coming up against our culture's ideas of vulnerability. And after becoming a woman with gynecological cancer, yes, I will connect misogyny, fear of femininity, and our culture's need to place ego above love to what I'm slogging through.
My mother self couldn't accept that the world was going to treat my daughter like it treated me and so, not logically or rationally, but with a sense of calling that has been a burden and a challenge, I embarked.
It has been too hard and I don't doubt that the toll it's taken on my body has been a reason I have cancer. Some of us process the shit of a damaging culture. I'm one of those people. It does not come with pay.
Now I'm 54. Because of chemo, I look 74. I have two daughters now. One is 9! My oldest is 14! I'm alive!
I use the word vulnerability as a key to entering this work. All of us have vulnerabilities, all of us are living at the most vulnerable time for humanity that has ever existed in history. This is directly related to how we treat women, children and feminine energy. To shift this WE as a culture have to shift. It has to be a visceral, non-verbal shift because we need to waylay the ego self, which is very attached to words.
It can only happen with experience. "Be the change" is a useful phrase, one that continues to simplify the reason I do this.
I must repeat this though: I don't pretend to be good at it.
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, at 1 pm, in Victoria, BC, which is where I expanded the Human Body Project work to include Vulnerability Vigils, I am holding the 10th Anniversary Vigil along the Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge.
Over the more than four years since I started holding vigils, I have stood naked on the street more than 50 times (behind a sign as a gesture of gentleness to those who are deeply affronted by nudity). In solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. To share and express vulnerability. As a creative antidote to the isolation and detachment of our society. Etc. I'm doing more than one thing!
For the 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil I will place all of the signs I have used on the slope of the hill. Words like: VULNERABLE, PRIVILEGE, SYSTEMIC, HEAL, FIX, PARADIGM, MOTHER. Also the Extinction Symbol.
I started the Human Body Project ten years ago, as a performance art event, in a very conservative place, Lethbridge, Alberta. An undercover officer came to the first performance because a concerned citizen had called. (The cop left saying, "That was very beautiful.") I had the idea two years earlier but it took me those two years to get the courage up to be naked.
People like to say nakedness isn't a big deal. Ha. You try it. On the street. In any case, it's a big deal to me. It's very challenging for me to show up naked.
I do so in the Human Body Project, which is an ongoing performance art/activism project, to provoke a serious consideration of individual and humanity's vulnerability. Nakedness is a metaphor for and embodiment of vulnerability. I use my naked body and naked self. I also use this blog/website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter as other spaces to share.
When I started I was the mother of a 4-year-old whose birth changed my life more than anything before or since. Her presence in my life awakened me to the denying I'd been able to do before she was there. I had responsibilities, to her and to myself. I felt so much opening, love, and pain. I finally felt like an earthling.
I couldn't and still can't explain it all. Or that's not right. I have explained, in many different ways, in my writing and in performance. It's difficult, however, to explain succinctly and in a way that many people can access. I'm pushing against so many dominant narratives and vulnerabilities. People react very personally.
Still, after 10 years of viscerally and publicly coming up against our culture's ideas of vulnerability. And after becoming a woman with gynecological cancer, yes, I will connect misogyny, fear of femininity, and our culture's need to place ego above love to what I'm slogging through.
My mother self couldn't accept that the world was going to treat my daughter like it treated me and so, not logically or rationally, but with a sense of calling that has been a burden and a challenge, I embarked.
It has been too hard and I don't doubt that the toll it's taken on my body has been a reason I have cancer. Some of us process the shit of a damaging culture. I'm one of those people. It does not come with pay.
Now I'm 54. Because of chemo, I look 74. I have two daughters now. One is 9! My oldest is 14! I'm alive!
I use the word vulnerability as a key to entering this work. All of us have vulnerabilities, all of us are living at the most vulnerable time for humanity that has ever existed in history. This is directly related to how we treat women, children and feminine energy. To shift this WE as a culture have to shift. It has to be a visceral, non-verbal shift because we need to waylay the ego self, which is very attached to words.
It can only happen with experience. "Be the change" is a useful phrase, one that continues to simplify the reason I do this.
I must repeat this though: I don't pretend to be good at it.
On Saturday, March 26, 2016, at 1 pm, in Victoria, BC, which is where I expanded the Human Body Project work to include Vulnerability Vigils, I am holding the 10th Anniversary Vigil along the Dallas Rd. walkway between Cook and Cambridge.
Over the more than four years since I started holding vigils, I have stood naked on the street more than 50 times (behind a sign as a gesture of gentleness to those who are deeply affronted by nudity). In solidarity with those who are most vulnerable. To share and express vulnerability. As a creative antidote to the isolation and detachment of our society. Etc. I'm doing more than one thing!
For the 10th Anniversary Vulnerability Vigil I will place all of the signs I have used on the slope of the hill. Words like: VULNERABLE, PRIVILEGE, SYSTEMIC, HEAL, FIX, PARADIGM, MOTHER. Also the Extinction Symbol.
 |
| Keith Jenkins and I holding the Extinction Symbol, February 2015. |
It would be thrilling if lots of people came (dressed or not) and joined me. As an art project, people holding the signs (there are more than 20) would be such a beautiful statement!
Links to the event on Facebook:
Links to the event on Facebook:
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
An Article from an Audience Member a Few Years Back
A few years ago, an author tried to sell this story but, shock of shocks, couldn't so she recently allowed me to post it on my blog – which is, of course, followed by mainstream news outlets and Woody Allen fans everywhere. (Not.)
People think I'm brave to deal with cancer. But cancer gives no one a choice. Every cancer sufferer is forced to be brave.
People think I'm brave to deal with cancer. But cancer gives no one a choice. Every cancer sufferer is forced to be brave.
As the person in question, I'd like to point out that I'm much braver to be the Human Body Project lady for the last 10 years. I mean, read the first paragraph.
I'd also like to connect a couple of dots. How women are supposed to look is a place of projection in a male-dominated culture, it is a way of devaluing the feminine and the necessity of dealing with vulnerability. This is at the heart of every problem we face: power and ego over love and cooperation.
Thanks to Thelma Fayle for sharing this article.
The Human Body Project
by Thelma Fayle
When she slowly steps in front of the audience, without even wearing shoes, Tasha Diamant reveals herself to be a plain-looking, naked woman with a couple of C-section scars and plenty of hair in places where the Prada girls have none. She has small sagging breasts and dimpled thighs and a pear-shaped, sturdy-looking body.
The 49-year-old visual and performance artist seems slightly nervous in the way one might be before doing a high-dive off a cliff. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath and captures a dignified, but still tentative, composure. She explains to the three-dozen audience members of the Fringe Theatre Festival on an island off of the West Coast of Canada – how she came to create the Human Body Project.
“In so many facets of our lives, we forget how vulnerable we humans are,” Diamant says, “and this project reminds me.” The mother/artist/educator explains that in spite of her discomfort, she is determined to give this unscripted 90-minute presentation at least once a year for the rest of her life. Unscripted, as she is determined to maintain an open heart and a healthy dialogue with the audience in her effort to use her body to create a visceral experience of shared vulnerability.
Before Diamant arrives on stage, a 5 ft tall cardboard cutout, depicting a naked Diamant from her first Human Body Project presentation six years ago, gives the audience a chance to stare at the life-size photo and to climatise themselves before being faced with an excruciatingly bare presence on stage.
The artist welcomes the audience to look closely at her body. She speaks quietly but with strength and walks up and down the center aisle of what was once a church and is now a venue for community presentations. “Please feel free to look at my body,” she coaches.
Given permission, timid eyes that have been respectfully focused mostly on Diamant’s face, begin to peek below. Diamant is everywoman – not remotely proportioned to any Barbie doll ideal.
When someone asks a question, she approaches them and warmly shakes hands. She puts people at ease. She helps the audience to become comfortable with a plain old, magnificent, aging body.
Her well-documented project shows her foray on stage during her full-bellied pregnancy – an experience that re-affirmed her need to talk about the collective vulnerability that our culture denies and hides in the shadows of life’s many little 21st Century femme façades of hair-dye and implants and face-glitter and push-up bras and tattoos – just to name a few.
The more she talks the more refreshing it is to listen to her. She mourns what she sees as the “amputation of empathy and connectedness in our society”.
She talks about the impact of having children in her life. Motherhood was a powerful catalyst; only unlike many parents who quite naturally become focused on their own children to the exclusion of all else, Diamant was moved to have a larger discussion with the world through her art.
“How do you feel about your body?” an audience member asks.
“I just try not to go to that place of judgment,” she responds. The way she responds with hesitation reveals her tenuousness bordering on insecurity about her body and also her decision to direct herself away from that same insecurity that plagues almost all women who have been trained to self-hate by years of looking at magazine pictures of what women are supposed to look like but never do.
Watching Tasha Diamant’s 90-minute Fringe Festival presentation reminds me of a line in a movie called Kamataki, where a young man asks an old man if the elder thinks the woman in a magazine is beautiful. The wise elder man slowly looks at the picture and then at the young man and says: ”I don’t know if she is beautiful”.
The Human Body Project offers its audience a chance to answer the same question as they examine a naked, intelligent and articulate 49-year-old woman.
Absolutely. And unlike the Emperor who got fooled, this Empress knows she is naked and she wants you to look at her.
Diamant is a genuine, un-altered woman.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Surgery today+vote for HBP documentary
This is a quick note to say today is the day I have hysterectomy surgery to remove the cancerous mass growing inside me (or my self-grown anti-patriarchy sculpture, as I like to call it).
My mantra: my excellent doctors and nurses are the peak of their competence and surgery is going to go sooooo smoothly.
I have a very good feeling about it. (Timing-wise, I think it will happen about 1 pm Victoria time).
Also, I've been working with director Robyn Thomas on a documentary about the Human Body Project. We started pre-cancer and are continuing through this cancer story.
The name of the project is Visceral.
She has entered it into the Storyhive funding site.
To help us out, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS VOTE! Please consider voting for our project, you can vote online every day until November 9.
Here's the link: http://www.storyhive.com/project/show/id/825
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| Poster designed by Craig Nicholas. |
Sunday, October 18, 2015
Stage 4 Cancer: my human body project/the Human Body Project
In my last blog post I was very ill. I had to cancel my show at the Victoria Fringe and put Vulnerability Vigils on hold.
It turns out I have Stage 4 gynecological cancer. This is not a great cancer to have. Prognosis is 30-50% alive in 5 years. I do plan to be in this number, however.
I have a large cancerous mass growing in what doctors assume is my ovary, but they're actually not certain. This kind of cancer is an "invisible cancer," one that escapes detection until the person is ill. Mine was found because my GP ordered an ultrasound after I showed up so sick in her office.
I was in hospital from August 27 until September 25. My first couple of weeks were traumatic. I was extremely ill with fluids accumulating in my chest and abdomen and I had a parasite on top of this. I dealt with extreme, unceasing nausea. I was so ill, I couldn't stand to be touched except handholding. I was so ill, I could see it in the terrified looks on my family's and friends' faces. I was so ill, I said to my husband: "I can't even miss you guys."
My situation was one they call "complicated," without protocols. I could see my very competent, very kind doctor wrestling with how to handle me medically. I am extremely grateful to him and to all the incredibly dedicated caregivers in Women's Health at Victoria General Hospital. I have such faith now in this doctor, who will be part of my surgical team to get my mass removed, because I feel he made really difficult but the best decisions while caring for me during this time.
After "getting stabilized," I was transferred to Royal Jubilee's oncology floor to begin treatments for the cancer. It took two more weeks for me to be well enough to leave hospital. Again, the care I received was, on the whole, stellar.
I am beyond grateful to our health care system.
It's difficult to recall details. I have been on a "dose-dense" chemotherapy program. I definitely have the side effect of "chemo brain," e.g., very fuzzy-headed, slower reaction time, can't get jokes! And, because of drugs and discomfort, I have also been very sleep-deprived.
I needed people to wipe my bum. I had two blood transfusions (thank you thank you blood donors). I have had about 15 thoracenteses/paracenteses. These are scary. Fluid that would kill me accumulates in my chest and abdomen. It was the fluid accumulating (and the blessed but sickening parasite) that alerted me to the cancer. To get rid of the fluid is pretty intense. I am "stabbed" and a straw is inserted into the space in my body where the fluid is. Then a a line to a bag is attached and I drain. The last two times this happened (it continues since I've been out of hospital) more than 2 litres of fluid came out each time. Ew!!
These last two times came from my chest, which is a more dangerous place to poke (lungs and all nearby!) but the radiology doctors have been as kind and competent as almost everyone I've encountered in the health care system. Only once in these times the straw must have twisted and didn't drain. A repoke was required.
These poke'n'drains are one of the most difficult things for me. But they have also saved my life several times over. I have one scheduled (thoracentesis=chest) tomorrow. Ugh.
I also struggle with bloodwork pokes (usually only once a week now but at least once a day in hospital) and my IV being put in for chemotherapy (once a week). I really struggle with pokes. For the thoracentesis or paracentesis, I use pain and anxiety drugs. For blood and IV, I have gotten pretty good at knowing what works and giving instructions but it's still a source of pain and anxiety.
My chemotherapy side effects include neuropathy (numbness and discomfort in hands and feet), the fuzzy brain, joint aches, and severe energy dips.
At this point I can't drive; I can't prepare for a class I was going to teach so had to let it go; I can't really do much around the house; I'm only able to read in brief bursts; I can sometimes take short walks. I need a lot of quiet, solitude and rest. I am VERY LUCKY that I have the support that I am able to do this.
This is the first time I've been on the computer since I got ill. I have been sharing on Twitter (@HumanBodyProj) and Facebook (on my personal and Human Body Project page). But I felt unable, until today, to go beyond short posts and my iPhone.
I am also VERY LUCKY that I do not experience nausea. In fact, I have an excellent appetite and any of you supporters out there who want to donate food, I encourage you to do so!! Anything! Variety is a gift!
Hmm. This ended up being a post about the more physical details.
Spiritually, I have been deeply blessed by this cancer. I've written about his in my posts on Twitter and Facebook. Adrian Chamberlain wrote a piece about me in the Victoria Times Colonist.
Loneliness and depression is something that was such a deep and painful part of my pre-cancer life. Doing the Human Body Project in the way I was holding that super-serious piece has been a burden and also separated me. Somehow through this transformative cancer I have been able to receive love in ways I was unable to before.
The Human Body Project is this!! Cancer is part of my human body project/the Human Body Project.
The Human Body Project has always been about two main things:
1) me working with my disconnection... from self, community, love...
2) how my process intersects with "the culture" or, maybe a better word is "the community"
How has this particular part of HBP process intersected with "the culture"/"the community"? It's brought out an outpouring of love from everyone around me. Just an outpouring. That love, yes, it's "inspired" by my process. But it's not "zero-sum," i.e., the love is not just "for" me but envelops, feeds, gives to all who feel it.
I'm not sure what the Human Body Project as performance and activism will look like when I'm better, but I'm definitely going to have more fun. Part of what I've let go is my need to hold such seriousness alone.
Love, Tasha
ps Some kind people have put together a fundraising effort for my family and I: https://www.youcaring.com/tasha-diamant-444984
It turns out I have Stage 4 gynecological cancer. This is not a great cancer to have. Prognosis is 30-50% alive in 5 years. I do plan to be in this number, however.
I have a large cancerous mass growing in what doctors assume is my ovary, but they're actually not certain. This kind of cancer is an "invisible cancer," one that escapes detection until the person is ill. Mine was found because my GP ordered an ultrasound after I showed up so sick in her office.
I was in hospital from August 27 until September 25. My first couple of weeks were traumatic. I was extremely ill with fluids accumulating in my chest and abdomen and I had a parasite on top of this. I dealt with extreme, unceasing nausea. I was so ill, I couldn't stand to be touched except handholding. I was so ill, I could see it in the terrified looks on my family's and friends' faces. I was so ill, I said to my husband: "I can't even miss you guys."
My situation was one they call "complicated," without protocols. I could see my very competent, very kind doctor wrestling with how to handle me medically. I am extremely grateful to him and to all the incredibly dedicated caregivers in Women's Health at Victoria General Hospital. I have such faith now in this doctor, who will be part of my surgical team to get my mass removed, because I feel he made really difficult but the best decisions while caring for me during this time.
After "getting stabilized," I was transferred to Royal Jubilee's oncology floor to begin treatments for the cancer. It took two more weeks for me to be well enough to leave hospital. Again, the care I received was, on the whole, stellar.
I am beyond grateful to our health care system.
It's difficult to recall details. I have been on a "dose-dense" chemotherapy program. I definitely have the side effect of "chemo brain," e.g., very fuzzy-headed, slower reaction time, can't get jokes! And, because of drugs and discomfort, I have also been very sleep-deprived.
I needed people to wipe my bum. I had two blood transfusions (thank you thank you blood donors). I have had about 15 thoracenteses/paracenteses. These are scary. Fluid that would kill me accumulates in my chest and abdomen. It was the fluid accumulating (and the blessed but sickening parasite) that alerted me to the cancer. To get rid of the fluid is pretty intense. I am "stabbed" and a straw is inserted into the space in my body where the fluid is. Then a a line to a bag is attached and I drain. The last two times this happened (it continues since I've been out of hospital) more than 2 litres of fluid came out each time. Ew!!
 |
| I shaved my head to pre-empt chemo shedding. |
These poke'n'drains are one of the most difficult things for me. But they have also saved my life several times over. I have one scheduled (thoracentesis=chest) tomorrow. Ugh.
I also struggle with bloodwork pokes (usually only once a week now but at least once a day in hospital) and my IV being put in for chemotherapy (once a week). I really struggle with pokes. For the thoracentesis or paracentesis, I use pain and anxiety drugs. For blood and IV, I have gotten pretty good at knowing what works and giving instructions but it's still a source of pain and anxiety.
My chemotherapy side effects include neuropathy (numbness and discomfort in hands and feet), the fuzzy brain, joint aches, and severe energy dips.
At this point I can't drive; I can't prepare for a class I was going to teach so had to let it go; I can't really do much around the house; I'm only able to read in brief bursts; I can sometimes take short walks. I need a lot of quiet, solitude and rest. I am VERY LUCKY that I have the support that I am able to do this.
This is the first time I've been on the computer since I got ill. I have been sharing on Twitter (@HumanBodyProj) and Facebook (on my personal and Human Body Project page). But I felt unable, until today, to go beyond short posts and my iPhone.
I am also VERY LUCKY that I do not experience nausea. In fact, I have an excellent appetite and any of you supporters out there who want to donate food, I encourage you to do so!! Anything! Variety is a gift!
Hmm. This ended up being a post about the more physical details.
Spiritually, I have been deeply blessed by this cancer. I've written about his in my posts on Twitter and Facebook. Adrian Chamberlain wrote a piece about me in the Victoria Times Colonist.
Loneliness and depression is something that was such a deep and painful part of my pre-cancer life. Doing the Human Body Project in the way I was holding that super-serious piece has been a burden and also separated me. Somehow through this transformative cancer I have been able to receive love in ways I was unable to before.
The Human Body Project is this!! Cancer is part of my human body project/the Human Body Project.
The Human Body Project has always been about two main things:
1) me working with my disconnection... from self, community, love...
2) how my process intersects with "the culture" or, maybe a better word is "the community"
How has this particular part of HBP process intersected with "the culture"/"the community"? It's brought out an outpouring of love from everyone around me. Just an outpouring. That love, yes, it's "inspired" by my process. But it's not "zero-sum," i.e., the love is not just "for" me but envelops, feeds, gives to all who feel it.
I'm not sure what the Human Body Project as performance and activism will look like when I'm better, but I'm definitely going to have more fun. Part of what I've let go is my need to hold such seriousness alone.
Love, Tasha
ps Some kind people have put together a fundraising effort for my family and I: https://www.youcaring.com/tasha-diamant-444984
Sunday, August 9, 2015
Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe Cancelled and Vulnerability Vigils on hold
UPDATE: Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe cancelled.
I'm very disappointed to announce that I've had to cancel Skin in the Game at the Victoria Fringe.
A little about what's going on in my vulnerable human body/self right now.
I share for many reasons and, yes, I do realize my truth can be interpreted as "unprofessional."
One main reason I share is to stand in solidarity with others who struggle invisibly.
In late July I was walloped with severe depression. The worst in more than 15 years. I have dealt with depression my whole life pretty much but mostly I have dealt with it spiritually and, I'll admit, by isolating and just fucking functioning.
The work of the Human Body Project has been in some ways an outlet for me to work with my depression. But I am at the point where I have an intake booking with a psychiatrist because, after more than 15 years of not trusting pharmaceuticals (my previous experience has been bad), I'm going to give it another try.
I crashed. I still managed to finish two classes, probably taking 3 times as long as usual to get my marking done, my head was so messed up. I did not tell my students or the people I work with. I'm a contract instructor.
While that was going on I menstruated for 10 days straight. Did you know it's quite normal for menopausal women to bleed buckets for 10 days? I didn't either, but it is. Menstruation has been extreme for me my whole life.
I have rarely mentioned this to anyone. Menstruation is "private."
Then, as that was tapering off, I began to be ill with a stomach illness. I have been experiencing incredibly severe nausea, coughing, and exhaustion. It's been going on for more than a week. My competent, kind doctor has me doing several tests.
I am so ill I can barely walk around my house. So I can't show up for the fringe and Vulnerability Vigils are also on hold.
Tasha
As a student of pain, Tasha Diamant devised a performance and activism project to inquire into the origins of disconnection. Purposefully creating space for vulnerability, Diamant is now in the tenth year of her ongoing Human Body Project, for which, among many other things, she shows up literally and emotionally naked in performance and in public.
In this new show, through improvised facilitation, story telling, and disrobing, Diamant has a lot to say and reveal about the body and embodiment in a disembodied culture. Spoiler: she gets dressed at the end.
What audiences and reviewers have had to say about the Human Body Project:
“I am not sure what this exquisite piece of ‘art’ is but it’s all yours. Thank you so much, you have empowered me so much.”--note left by audience member
“You hit the tear ducts. BOOM like a bullet.”--note left by audience member
"….the experience is both powerful and empowering, pushing participants to question their own physical, psychological and social positions. The result? Both humbling and inspiring, The Human Body Project urges us to recognize the power of a single human body.”--The Ubyssey
"This is the most relevant and powerful work at the Fringe and Tasha Diamant is deserving of a full audience every night.”--Monday Mag
“The Human Body Project impacted me. Please go see it. It’s the definition of sincerity.”--note left by audience member
"I dug it. The Human Body Project slowed me down, and all sorts of stuff about shame, safety, and joy came up... Naked, emotionally and literally. Simply audacious.”--The Georgia Straight
Recent article in the Victoria Times Colonist
Link to Skin in the Game Facebook event
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