Migraine and Visual Arts
| Author: Klaus Podoll | 06. March 2007 |
| Edited by: Klaus Podoll |
Alana Jonze
Artist's website
AJ, Migraine 1, 2007. © 2007 AJ
AJ, Migraine 2, 2007. © 2007 AJ
"we were in touch many years ago about my experience and expression of migraine. i finally have scanned a couple of my sketches and can now share them with you.
some text to accompany these images:
drawn while i was having a migraine, then manipulated in photoshop to bring more reality and depth to it.
what is missing is it's evolution, from a tiny little blob into a consumation of my entire visual field. it's a constantly moving, changing, growing entity.
i experience these for about 45 minutes before my vision begins to reappear, glassy and nonsensical, meaningless and disjointed. i feel that this part of the vision is the most difficult to express visually, because it's so much more about meaning and connection and how it falls away in migraine.
i could be looking at my hand but it's not a hand. and it's not mine. it seems inanimate, independent and inorganic. it has no meaning. it is a thing, but without description or context.
this is sometimes accompanied by apraxia, alexia, agnosia, aphasia in combination or independently.
i hope you find these somehow useful!"
(AJ, Email to Klaus Podoll, March 6, 2007)
By Alana Jonze
fuck. got a migraine again. can't really see. shouldn't be doing this but sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do...
right now it smells like christmas when i was 12. i remember getting a driz a bone, string in a can and bright yellow converse. the smell of the ankle length oil skin coat, combined with the smell of new rubber, combined with the smell of aerosol. it amazes me that a migraine can reach back into my memory and retrieve such an obscure scent, and present it so clearly for me. so strange. i still wear that jacket. i made it bum length though. also, i think i may purchase some converse over the summer. a nice colour. like dark blue, or something...
my eyes are hurting real bad, but i feel l want to force this as long as i can and fuck my migraine off, not give in to it. ...
i have lots of plans for the site... a weird migraine section, where i will try to understand my migraines more by articulating them in different ways (drawings, descriptions)...
ok. lots of pain now. must close my eyes and forget the world.
(Artist's webpage, November 26, 2002)
By Alana Jonze
here it is. most of the time, they begin like this. sometimes on crowded trams, sometimes while sitting on the couch, sometimes when i wake up, sometimes when i am working. immediately, there is this disturbance in my field of vision. it is slowly swallowed up by the lack of bloodflow. forty minutes later, the throbbing will become to strong to ignore. BOOM BOOM BOOM. i will fantasize of the ecstatic aftermath, of laying on the couch, hungover from the migraine, wondering at how beautiful life is. later, i lose sensation down one side of my body. my limbs seem to be enormous. objects become different realities. the meaning of far and close take on entirely new meanings. i may lose the capacity to create words which make sense. "thrrbbbbmmmm". or "jjjjjiiiijjjel". i will be sweating, shaking, and then be shivering from cold. my body is confused. i cannot stop vomiting. every 15 minutes, like clockwork. how will i keep these painkillers down? will i have to leave this bed and go to the doctor to get the drugs injected?
i have had 15 years with this unavoidable part of my life.
i used to be terrified of getting them. sometimes i would have them everyday for weeks. sometimes, my parents wouldn't believe me. sometimes i didn't know if i would be alive at the end of it. or if there would be an end of it. slowly, we have learnt to live with one another. i do my best to look after myself and keep myself out of known danger (nitrates and nitrites, chicken flavour, etc etc) and your end of the bargain has been to slowly deconstruct you. i found oliver sacks and suddenly i saw this whole new way of living and learning.
i became an explorer of migraine. not everyone get to experience the incredible altered senses. or the extreme pain. the massive rush afterward.
and so here we are.
alana and migraines. slowly getting to know each other.
(Artist's webpage, January 23, 2003)
By Alana Jonze
i have had a headache for three days. today i lost my vision while hanging out the washing, and proceeded to have a migraine. it was a bad one, where the pulses of pain in my brain felt more like waves which would be strong enough to become tsunamis. i felt a difference in the air, in the weight of the air, in the way it was getting into my head and it was making my head hurt. the weather was making me have a migraine this time, i thought to myself. and so i did a little research.yes, it happens. and so it was.
(Artist's webpage, February 22, 2003)
AJ, How I used to see the world, 2004. © 2004 AJ
"i want to show you how i used to see the world."
(AJ, Artist's website, September 13, 2004)
AJ, How I see the world now, 2004. © 2004 AJ
"it is important for me to share this with you. because if i don't, i will carry this with me for the rest of my life, alone. this is the first time i have tried to express this loss through imagery.
just understand
that is all."
(AJ, Artist's website, September 13, 2004)
"i was 24 when this happened. five years later, it's still the same."
(AJ, Artist's website, September 13, 2004)
"it is some art i made to show my vision loss from a drug called sabril [vigabatrin, see Nordmann et al., 1999] (anti convulsant). not really migraine art."
(Alana Jonze, Email to Klaus Ppodoll, July 17, 2008)
"An update: life has changed SO MUCH! i am on topamax and my migraines have slowed down in frequency and severity to such an extent that i feel like i have woken up to the world for the second time. it is wonderous and new and strange. part of me somehow mourns for the world i no longer inhabit and know. but mostly, it's very wonderful."
(Alana Jonze, Email to Klaus Podoll, July 17, 2008)
References
Nordmann JP, Baulac M, Van Egroo C. [Concentric changes in the visual field associated with GABA-mimetic antiepileptic agents] [Article in French] J Fr Ophtalmol 1999; 22: 418-422.
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