This is an AI-supported transcription of an interview conducted by Christian de Lutz with artist Lyndsey Walsh, held as the second episode of a podcast series titled “Sonic Ecologies” as part of a project by the Art Laboratory Berlin. The AI transcription is reviewed by Tuçe Erel. Click here for the AI-supported Turkish translation of the interview, edited by Tuçe Erel and Öykü Burçak Ortakcı. Click here to listen to the original.
Christian de Lutz (CdeL): Welcome everybody to Sonic Ecologies. I’m here with Lyndsey Walsh whose work Self Care (2021-ongoing) is in our current exhibition at Art Laboratory Berlin, Matter of Flux. The exhibition examines both their and their mother’s relationship with the BRCA1 mutation that they both carry. Lyndsey, could you tell us a little bit about what is in the exhibition?
Lyndsey Walsh (LW): Yeah, of course. Thank you for having me on. The work in the exhibition features, first and foremost, a custom-made wearable chest binder that I’ve created up a silicone and houses a living breast cancer cell line that shares the mutation in the same gene that I have it on, the BRCA1 gene, as you discussed. As well as the incubator that it lives in, because I cannot wear it. I needed to keep it warm with my body heat to take care of the cells, so it’s sitting in an incubator in the meanwhile. And all the accessories needed to take care of it as well as different photo documentation of me wearing the wearable and a video of me interviewing my mother about my mother’s experience with breast cancer and having this genetic mutation. And then a letter in response, there’s a separate video, that’s being read to the audience that responds to a lot of things that my mother says and our personal relationship.
CdeL: Yes, you mentioned in the video that your mother brought you to be tested for the BRCA1 mutation when you were 18 years old, which you, in retrospect, believe was much too early. This was just when you were starting university, NYU, where you were in the Gallatin, which is an independent study program. How did your awareness of your health affect your studies and impact that time in your life?
LW: Yeah, so I actually did the test right before I went to university, and then I got the results while I was in my first semester at university at 18. And there actually have been a number of studies that have come out since then that have written on the fact that in time between the ages of 15 and, I think, about 20 years old, it’s a very important time for the development of self-concept and self-identity. And that individuals being diagnosed with a genetic mutation during that time, actually it greatly negatively impacts notions of self-concept and self-identity. The formation, which I certainly had going to university and suddenly trying to have to grapple with this realization, being the only person without cancer in an oncologist’s office at 18 was quite a confronting experience as well, and not immediately entering adulthood with no doctors really being able to sort of mediate my medical care because we didn’t really know what to do at the time, and then having to answer these very difficult questions about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life in terms of having children. When I would get all these preventative surgeries and having people kind of obsessively control my hormones and things like this. It was very intense as well because there was a big fear of me suddenly getting cancer for some reason, even though these genetic test results are giving a diagnosis based on a type of risk assessment, and at the time the risk assessment for me was thought to be a 70% chance of getting breast cancer throughout my entire life. But in terms of my studies, I think I just kind of rejected that all of this was happening and it didn’t impact it too much because I was already trying to pursue art and science integration within my independent study curriculum, and yeah, I thought I was going to work on sharks instead.
CdeL: Wow, okay, that’s interesting. And then, that’s interesting, especially since after you got your BA, you went to Perth, Australia, which also has a relationship with sharks, but you went to get a master’s at SymbioticA, which is pretty much the gold standard for biological arts, and it’s also a place with a big specialization in cell culture. Why did you decide you wanted to work with living cells to investigate your personal relationship with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer syndrome?
LW: Yeah, so this project originally was conceptualized during my time at SymbioticA, and I only worked on it in a speculative ethics application manner. I came to SymbioticA after seeing Oron Catts and Ionat Zurr’s work The Pig Wings Project (2000-01)[1] at the Museum of Modern Art, and I was really inspired by their things, and I connected with Ionat via Skype, and then she encouraged me to move out to Australia and pursue the master’s program, and during my time there, there was one of their Friday seminars where I cannot for the life of me remember which artist it was, but one of the artists gave this talk about kind of picking out uncomfortable places to point out that they’re there, and performance really triggered something within me that I came to Ionat the next day, and I think I told her that at some point in my life, I want to do this project, and here was the idea that I want to somehow grow this cancer that’s being projected on my body, which Ionat was really supportive of and encouraged me to do it as an independent study within the master’s program to explore these avenues, which I wrote a paper and began to do the ethics applications for. The rest of my master’s degree program, however, I focused more on the aesthetics and materiality of stem cell potential, looking at how stem cells can equally become cancerous as they can become any other cell in the body, so the project was kind of put on the backside burner until many years later when Self-care was conceptualized and a research project called Prophylaxis at ITMO University Art and Science Center in Russia.
CdeL: And it’s interesting because caring for cells which have a gene predisposing them to cancer, which are then immortalized, is basically an agilist being made malignant. It’s quite a radical approach for someone confronting their own possibility of getting cancer. Why did you choose this path while creating the work?
LW: Yeah, so I was really interested. I have a very dark, creepy, I guess, predisposition, but I was very interested in the concepts of how care could reframe this dialogue of waiting and living in fear and with anxiety about diseases to care for the disease and to have, to make kin with it, as Donna Haraway would say, really takes a different approach, especially because these cells themselves, they don’t think that, I mean, if cells could think, that’s me personifying them, but they’re just acting out of their own interests necessarily and not necessarily trying to purposely kill you, your body just can’t have them inside of it because they take too many resources and they’re multiplying too chaotically. So it’s kind of a friction in needs and desires, and that was really obvious to me during my master’s degree when I was working with different stem cell lines that could become cancerous and also working with cancerous cell lines. And I wanted to kind of analyze the friction between these needs and desires between myself and the- cancer and see how that could really reframe this dialogue that we have towards cancer, because cancer is probably one of the most vile diseases that we can, it’s the C word, not that C word, but the other C word. And everyone knows someone who’s had cancer or had a family member who’s had cancer, so it’s quite personal. And yeah, I wanted to kind of pick at this sort of wound in a sense to see how care and making kin could reframe it.
CdeL: And for this particular artwork, you chose a cell line that also has an
interesting backstory to it.
LW: Yeah, so the original project was self-care. I wanted to do my own cells and turn on my mutation to have them express, but unfortunately I haven’t gotten to a place yet where this is impossible. So in the meantime, I’m using the cell line called HCC1937. This is a cell line that was made in, I believe, 1995. It comes from a 24-year-old white woman who has of like, I think, 1998 or 1999 was still alive. So hopefully maybe she’s still alive now, but we don’t know. She had stage 2B breast cancer, and yeah, this is all the information that exists in the literature about this person. But I picked this cell line in particular not just because it was one of the very few cell lines available, but also because the cell line in particular kind of materially represents all these societal fears that my doctors, my family members and other people have about. My relationship with this potential risk of developing disease is that by getting breast cancer, it will corrupt my youth and my femininity and sort of my whiteness as well. And yeah, I think it adds a very interesting dimension to the work to have the cell line currently in it right now. And to have to care for it. Additionally, the cell line is very difficult to take care of. They’re very particular. And despite my expertise in tissue culture, my entire master’s degree is in it. I kill them a lot. And that creates a very interesting dynamic where I’m constantly begging these cells, “Please don’t die. Please, I’ll do anything,” and catering to their every whim. And right now, with it in the exhibition, I’ve totally reprogrammed my entire life to evolve around these cells to the point where I’m not sleeping as much as I usually do. I’m not eating as much as I usually do. So it’s become cancer in my life in a sense without even being in my body, which is hilarious. And also my mom thinks it’s funny whenever I call her and I’m all upset because I’ve killed my cancer or I’ve lost it in the mail. She thinks that’s really weird and funny. And yeah, it creates a very interesting performative dialogue in a sense.
CdeL: Lyndsey Walsh, thank you very much. The Matter of Flux exhibition is open at Art Laboratory Berlin through the 9th of July. And you can also check out on our
website at artlaboratory-berlin.org. Thank you.
LW: Thank you.
[1] https://www.moma.org/collection/works/110251
