a slow start...

Guts, Swords, Stones + Games

Jan 31, 2025

It’s been a slow start to 2025 for me- much as I love the slowdown between Christmas and those first few days of the year, I always find myself so untethered by the change in routine it brings.

This year I had a couple of weeks before I had to return to any regular plans and work, so I nested in to read, play some games and finish watching Vikings. This went to plan for a couple of days until I caught a bug which set off my chronic health symptoms, leading to a full-on month of specialist calls, GP appointments, tests and, at the end of the scale, an ambulance callout after I lost my vision and then my consciousness in the street. Dramatic! Things are thankfully a little more under control now, but after a few months of regular flare ups, I’m being ushered up the ladder of treatment options, onto some pretty heavy immune-suppressing drugs.

There’s a good chance these may help keep my condition under control, but I’ll be immunocompromised in such a way that I’ll be more prone to infections, and it will take me longer to recover from anything I catch. Considering how the majority of people post-Covid DGAF and are still going to public places and travelling on trains whilst coughing and sniffling and not wearing masks, I’m not looking forward to having to return to being someone who has to advocate heavily for my own health concerns, and take the roll of ‘Dr Doom’: reminding people how catching colds, flus and other airborne viruses can actually have quite a serious impact on many people, and that doing our best to choose whether we spread things around is one of the most basic ways we can care for the most vulnerable people in society. A cold can knock someone out for a week, but for people like me, it can trigger other conditions and push me out of work, my social life and the ability to be a physical part of society for months at a time.

Arts organisation Unlimited have just today released a guide to how to support people with autoimmune conditions (1 in 10 people have an autoimmune condition) and I’m really pleased to see this addressed by a big organisation.

There’s something quite existential about the nature of autoimmune diseases- your body essentially attacking itself. When you’re on the receiving end it seems so… well, freakish and monstrous. I recently made a resin sword, inserted into a stone as part of my research into connecting fantasy worlds with the social model of disability. I’ve yet to quite verbalise why this particular image resonates with these concepts, but that’s kind of part of the process right now.

Speaking of the monstrous and freakish (in the best way) I recently finished reading Johanna Hedva’s excellent ‘How To Tell When We Will Die’: a thrilling and urgent read by an exciting disabled artist.

Rather than being a concise, comprehensive account of Being A Disabled Artist, it is a mad and messy collection of essays detailing the intersections of the art world, making art, the medical system and just generally trying to scrape together a life when you simply do not have the health privileges that many take for granted. (A lot of the book is based on experiences of the US healthcare system. As an English person, I actually cannot fathom having to pay for healthcare.) The book includes Johanna’s accessibility rider, which should be studied for years to come! Johanna is also an all-black wearing, doom-metal-loving badass, which is such a welcome retreat from the soft-cosy-infantilising-cartoony-whiteness seen around a lot of disability activism. There’s space for that too but the disabled experience is varied (and often dark AF )and that’s what’s important.

Very much appreciate this chapter title featuring my least favourite 3 words.

When I finished reading this book, it spurred me on to update my accessibility rider, and actually email organisations and ask them how their residency/open call/event could work with my access needs, before I go through the (often long and complicated) process of applying. I am glad to say I received some really great responses, and I feel so much more confident about asking for my needs to be met as a result.

Following on from my Month of Hell, and in the spirit of asking for things that we should all have access to from time to time in order to Enjoy Life, I decided to launch a gofundme for my birthday in March. I usually travel up to spend the day in my happy place, Kew Gardens, (it’s only £2 entry if you’re on universal credit btw!) and I wanted to stay nearby a couple of nights in a hotel with a pool, sauna and hydrotherapy pool. I was overwhelmed by the generosity of friends who helped me surpass my target, but if you did want to add to it, the link is here. Any extra and I can have a nice meal and book myself a massage or something. Either way I now have something to look forward to outside of an impending sigmoidoscopy, so that’s great!

Looking after myself better and asking for things is small steps at first but it feels like a good way to start a year (which I am increasingly deciding to start with Imbolc and the Lunar new year, as it makes a lot more sense. Throughout January, we should still all be hibernating and resting IMO, not rushing back to things just because the number of the year has changed.)

Happy year of the snake to you: may it bring the transformation you also seek.

FUTURE STONES: new dates

One of the things I postponed due to illness this month was my week-long Making Space residency at Fabrica. This will now be happening on 21-25 April, and will involve some stone-gathering, story-collecting and community-led events as part of my ongoing research into stone circles and what they can symbolise for us today.

I’ll be updating nearer the time on ways you can get involved, but for now here is a photo my dad found of my late Scottish grandma, at the Brodgar stone circle in Orkney, around 1998. I’ve not been to Orkney, but it would be nice to see this stone circle someday, and recreate this photo. A love of stones certainly runs in the family!

My Grandma Jeanette, with a Brodgar standing stone in 1998

Social media is on fire!

A 6 panel cartoon featuring a dog sitting at a table in a room that is on fire. The dog says 'this is fine' as the flames grow around them, until the final panel showing the dogs face melting horrifically. — the full dog meme!

My part-time day job that pays my rent involves managing social media, and in short, social media managers are pretty frazzled right now keeping up with it all. If you’re questioning the increasingly urgent implications of having the majority of your online interactions, shopping, photos and feelings on platforms owned by one, heinous corporation that are aligned with an actual fascist dictator, currently rolling back on basic human rights, do consider how and why you’re using social media right now. There isn’t a quick-fix, but here’s some of my thoughts:

My ‘professional’ advice, especially if you do actually need to promote your work and communicate to those who like what you do, has always been ‘don’t rely exclusively on social media.’ Set up a mailing list. Platforms own your followers and data, not you. You own your email list and an email subscriber is more likely to be engaged with what you do than a social media follower (by ‘engaged’ I mean, read your words, and support your work in more meaningful ways).

Explore alternative platforms for finding like-minded communities. I’m enjoying BlueSky, TikTok and Discord, for my specific areas of interest. I also love Twitch, though can’t stream as often as I like due to slow home internet. I’m trying to switch from Whatsapp to Signal (it’s hard to get others to join up but so far it seems like a more privacy-centred app.)

I might write more about this in the future, as I’m interested in seeing how people are collectively beginning to reimagine our relationship to social media.

Games!

Whilst unwell this month, I spent a lot of time playing games, (mostly puzzle games recently) and some of them were absolutely brilliant, inspiring experiences. Playing games is something I still receive a lot of disapproving looks and comments about. Games are- to a lot of people- still seen as deeply uncool, for little boys who like shooting things or something. The games industry is enormous, with a mainstream audience and indie audience, like any other medium, and there’s some amazing gaming experiences to be had out there.

From an art perspective, I’ve talked before about Total Refusal as well as artist Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley, just 2 examples of artists exploring the possibilities of making art with games. Anyway, here’s some great games I’ve enjoyed that I recommend:

Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice

I absolutely do not play horror games, or enjoy horror films, etc. This was probably one of the most terrifying gaming experiences of my life, but was also compelling enough to keep me playing. (I had to invite friends round to sit with me whilst I played it!) A more sensitive portrayal of severe mental health conditions than I expected it to be. Gearing myself up to play the sequel.

Return to Grace

Creative Byte’s Return to Grace, is a narrative-driven first-person game, where you play a future archaeologist, trying to discover why an Ai ‘God’ called Grace was switched off thousands of years ago, plunging humanity into a second dark age. There’s little gameplay in this: mostly it’s a walking simulator/interactive radio play between your character and the various Ai characters you meet throughout. The choices you make result in different endings, and I enjoyed this so much, I’ll be returning to experience the different endings. It also looks lovely.

INSIDE

Inside is a dark, dystopian side-scrolling puzzle game, with an almost german expressionist feel and sense of mounting dread leading to a genuinely unnerving and unexpected ending. Great puzzles too!

Unravel

Finally, I played Unravel- a really beautiful and inventive physics-based puzzle game with a lot of heart and no words. You play a small creature made of wool, (‘Yarny’!) travelling through various stunning landscapes, making their way along the ‘thread’ that runs through one person’s memories, life and losses. Really moving and fun.

Until next month!

Kate xo