"Among the surviving records of SPK’s (Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv or Socialist Patients' Collective) actions and ideologies is a manifesto written by its members called Aus Der Krankheit Eine Waffe Machen (often translated as To Make an Army out of Illness, or Turn Illness into a Weapon). This 1972 text is part user manual, part oral history, part sardonic critique of Cold War capitalism. Unlike other self-organized patient groups and their counterparts in the anti-psychiatry movement, SPK uniquely combined Marxist political theory, social science analysis, and what they termed 'therapeutic praxis' to create an improvised, in-patient community with the express collectivist goal of researching the connections between capitalism, madness, eugenics, and the individuation of illness under political economies of work and care."¹
— from Health Communism, written by Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant.
[ID: My design of a linocut print on brown paper. A snake is wrapped around a stick, with text below which reads, "Turn Illness into a Weapon". The snake is hissing and baring its fangs. Its tongue is curling out of its mouth. The second image is the same design but on white paper. End ID]
¹ Beatrice Adler-Bolton and Artie Vierkant, Health Communism (Brooklyn: Verso, 2022), 128-129.
Finished up the carhartt project today! From feeling like I had ruined the jacket, to having it be one of my favorite pieces I've ever made- just goes to show that pivoting directions and keeping on with a project even after messing up can really lead to great things!