John Miers - John Hicklenton's Zoom Meeting

This strip is part of an ongoing project using autobiographical drawing to express, conceptualise and cope with my experience of living with multiple sclerosis. The first instalment was produced during a postdoctoral residency in UAL’s Archives and Special Collections Centre at LCC. Guided by the residency’s requirement to respond to work held in the archives, and my existing interest in stylistic ventriloquism, I produced two anecdotal stories that adopted graphic languages inspired by Mark Beyer and Ivan Brunetti. Perhaps paradoxically, drawing “in drag” as another cartoonist provided freedom to speak without restraint about some of the most challenging aspects of my illness. In more recent work I’ve begun to address more directly my understanding of my still relatively new status as a “disabled” individual, and have incorporated aspects of my archival research that were not reflected in the earlier comic: the experiences and reflections of musician Lindsay Cooper and cartoonist John Hicklenton, both of whom suffered from MS. If there is an argument here, it is that trauma is always experienced in relation to our social world. My coming-to-terms with illness – a process that, in the case of progressive disease, can never be completed – is reframed by my response to our current state of global ill-heath and to the experiences of two individuals who passed away long before I began this work. To ask whether Hicklenton’s horrific imagery here serves as a metaphor for personal pain or pervasive pandemic is to miss the point: we all experience both simultaneously.

本连环画系某持续进行的艺术项目的组成部分，该项目以自传体绘画（autobiographical drawing）来表达心绪、梳理认知并应对我罹患多发性硬化症（multiple sclerosis）的经历。其首篇章创作于我在伦敦艺术大学（UAL）伦敦传播学院（LCC）档案与特藏中心的博士后驻留项目期间。受该驻留项目“需回应馆内藏品”的要求，加之我此前对风格化腹语手法（stylistic ventriloquism）的创作兴趣，我创作了两则轶事式小故事，其图像语言借鉴自漫画家马克·贝耶（Mark Beyer）与伊万·布鲁内蒂（Ivan Brunetti）。颇具反讽意味的是，以模仿其他漫画家的风格进行创作，让我得以毫无顾忌地倾诉病痛中最具挑战性的诸多面向。在后续创作中，我开始更直接地直面自身尚且崭新的“残障”身份并形成相应认知，同时纳入了早期漫画未体现的档案研究内容：音乐家林赛·库珀（Lindsay Cooper）与漫画家约翰·希克伦顿（John Hicklenton）的经历与思考，二人皆患有MS。若说本项目存在核心论点，那便是：创伤始终与我们所处的社会语境息息相关。我与病痛的和解之路——对于进行性疾病而言，这一过程永无终点——因我对当下全球健康危机的回应，以及对两位早在本项目启动前便已离世的个体经历的回溯，而被重新语境化。若纠结于希克伦顿笔下极具冲击力的意象究竟是个人痛苦的隐喻，还是蔓延全球的疫情的象征，便偏离了核心主旨：我们始终同时经历着这二者。