Karolina Chasáková↓

About the work

We Are Not Supposed to Share a Language for How We Really Feel

As a chronically ill woman, I am very critical of the mood of the language in which the chronically ill are described, and even of the language which the chronically ill use to describe themselves. These terms are full of surprises – they startle, discomfit, embarrass, and often humiliate in various ways. I am interested in the emotional reflection of the language of biomedicine and also of the commonplace colloquial language used in the context of health norms. I mean a closer perception of language, language metaphors, the impact of language and speech. My aim is to sensitize the sense of language and denominating.

I work within the locally specific conditions of the post-socialist Czech Republic, in the environment of the former Eastern bloc, in Czech. I follow up on situations from my own experience and from the experiences described by the chronically ill. In this space, I try to find moments that one can relate to more generally – I seek a general, society-wide language mood, expression, speech. I find strong satisfaction in the effort to name these constitutive moments, which form and co-form patients and their position, or at the same time to rename these designations.

I base my work on text fragments, excerpts, for which partial generality and unfinished character of a statement are very important. Fragments try to name shared conditions through individual emotional experience, which begins with the discovery and reflection of language depictions, shaping, and incapacitation. The work should be as accessible as possible to the people affected by the issue of language in connection with chronic diseases.

My diploma project follows up on my earlier text works, on writing, collecting text fragments, creating analogies, and neowords. I continue to blur up an individual personal story in an effort to draw myself nearer to the general subject. I think that the most apt term describing my work is sensitization, which well identifies the process of going through and contemplating situations and motives.