See You Tomorrow

Something Will Kill Me. Probably Not Today.

This is a work in progress, a beta release, finished enough to get feedback on.

This project began with my diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer (starting last December until June this year, though the hormone suppression lingers). As a gay man, the prostate is important to my sexuality; having it as the target for surgical procedures, radiation therapy and hormone treatment was a repeated assault.

Making art was how I engaged with this potentially overwhelming situation. It was also a bridge between my day-to-day life and the medical system. 

Cameras are companions and give me agency, photographing grounds me in the moment. 

The experience was otherworldly, a kind of sci-fi portal with rooms bathed in pink and purple light, criss-crossing laser beams to position me in the machine, the buzz of the radiation generator, the real-time images of my internal organs. 

By sharing my artwork and asking the medical staff to help with the photographs, we partnered in an engagement beyond my sick body and their technical skills.

The artwork is playful and serious, elements are fragmented and whole, hidden and revealed. The work is meant to be held, tenderly, with an invitation to look closely, or to step back and look at a transformed image.

These are objects made from photographs that are folded into zines, fortune tellers, and other objects. They are on the edge of mechanical reproduction. 

Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Sketch (2023)

The beta versions are done.

How do others respond? 

How do I respond? 

How do the forms and images relate? 

Do I introduce text?

Is this a performance piece, where I sit in a gallery, fold the fortune teller and flex it through its opening and closing to reveal the present-future? 

I bring these to coffee with friends, to you the reader.

How do you relate to this work? 

Where might it be further developed?

How might this be transformed into a published object (a book, printed sheets with DIY instructions)? 

How might this be an environmental experience (an exhibition with colored lighting, laser levels, audio of the radiation machine)? 

 

Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller - External Beam Radiation - Flat Sheet (2023)