'part of testimony' (taken from curatorial dreams)

Now I think I’ve been writing but haven’t and last night said something about late in the day work.

It begins with a perception at Goldsmiths long ago and time spent thinking about psychoanalysis. I say I’ll turn things around and do something with my work. It follows illness and five years with Ruth. We met while we were both having cancer treatment and she died nearly eight years ago. It seems important to provide some context for late work or work that sometimes feels like work.

I felt very small at art school and psychoanalysis has something to say about being in the world... or being in the world somehow.

A litany includes falling around on top of an iceberg and Freud’s drive somehow  follows as antecedent.

I remember coming up with a text forty years ago, putting it away and picking it up again later, sitting next to my first iMac. Fifteen years had passed and I was a single parent. It was an introduction of sorts and I begin with something I think I’ve written and find I’m back at the beginning again. Something I think I’ve written seems in keeping with work in my twenties and thirties. Sex came first in those days, then work eventually after (a text called) beach notes. Topologies structure recent work and have a lot to do with a preoccupation with psychoanalysis and Lacan in the last twenty years. Psychoanalysis provides some structure and early texts and video provide something else. It was first texts and photos, then texts and stills... then texts and video... and a time travelling timeline accompanies jouissance and the drive. The work or what I call my work was always there and digital times were anticipated in art worlds long ago, but sets and exceptions provide a little coherence. It’s sometimes the coherence of work that can be video and signifiers sometimes come without the voice.

                                                                 Christopher Sands, still, 18 May 2022

I put expensive radiators on for the first time last night and warmth this morning is also the tepid warmth of half finished texts and video. A text holes my nonchalance and hollows prompt more work. Eight years ago I began work on a text first called unworn clothes. It follows time spent with Ruth and runs into talking and curatorial dreams. Texts and video are digital and there are yet few ways of funding new work. The artist, Hito Steyerl suggests cryptocurrencies and linked provenance, but little is clear at the moment.

What goes with a passage that looks like a testimony can be reference to ill health.

I had two primaries just over ten years ago and put up with the after effects of treatment. I had radiotherapy for prostate cancer and lost most of my colon to bowel cancer. These cancers were in close proximity and bile acid malabsorption and radiotherapy effect what’s left of my colon. I plan going anywhere and keep to a very controlled diet, but likely dehydration and sometimes low blood sugar prompt a problematic balancing act. Recent work accompanies the long term effects of life saving treatment, and costs and funding difficulties effect trajectories beyond texts and video. For a while after Ruth died, I got very cold at night and took baths to warm up. I often lay very still in bed and this was all a run up to what I called a first disconnect in the talking text. Being quite separate from ongoing work that night led to unlikely work or work that was nearly impossible. It structures what comes next. I dreamt being trapped underground and woke up making my way to the surface. I was in awful pain and walking around didn’t help. When I switched on my iMac, I couldn't see what there was too see. I later referred to a disconnect and looking on.  I lost Ruth and looking on isn't looking on in a desert or at the Tate Modern. It's not even a metaphor.