Medicines of Uncertainty and Objects of Care: Creative Engagement with an Ancient ‘Folding Almanac’

Folding almanacs are magico-medical objects which were worn and used by doctors in fifteenth-century England to perform rituals of medicine and to align the timing of diagnosis, prognosis and treatment to earthly and cosmic cycles. As a multimedia artist, my curiosity was taken by these hand-held objects of care. To my contemporary eye, they are essentially artist books. A further connection came through my own lived experience of breast cancer. A year of intense treatment, including six cycles of chemotherapy followed by mastectomy, significantly complicated my relationship to my own body and to medicine. This creative engagement explores how and why I tried making my own folding almanacs, using modern materials, and what I learned when one of these was accepted for Un-boxing, an international travelling exhibition. These ancient folding almanacs encapsulate a world view where people's lived experiences of being in a body was held within a flow of relationships with other bodies, human and non-human including animals, the moon, stars and planets. A close reading of the visual and material languages I used in this remaking offers insights into a personal health history folded into bigger questions of what we might allow into an expanded field of 'medicine'.