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ME/CFS (myal­gic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syn­drome) is a mon­ster: one that many affect­ed peo­ple and their loved ones in Aus­tria and around the world are fight­ing. A severe and not uncom­mon mul­ti-sys­tem ill­ness, there is no treat­ment for the root caus­es nor gen­er­al­ly acces­si­ble ther­a­py to date. Due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and the mil­lions of indi­vid­u­als affect­ed by Post or Long COVID, this often unrecog­nised and triv­i­alised ill­ness has shift­ed more into the pub­lic awareness.

“Even try­ing to put on an exhi­bi­tion with this ter­ror is com­plete mad­ness,” was one of the thoughts that went through the minds of Judith Schoßböck and Matthias Moll­ner in autumn 2021, when they came to the deci­sion to trans­late their expe­ri­ence into art. Express­ing their per­son­al stroke of fate as art is a way of pro­cess­ing their expe­ri­ences and inti­mate insights into a silent and invis­i­ble world lived each day by mil­lions of peo­ple who are miss­ing from soci­ety (#Mil­lion­s­Miss­ing), who mobilise their mea­gre ener­gy reserves for dai­ly sur­vival and recog­ni­tion. This is an ill­ness that stands in dia­met­ric oppo­si­tion to the com­mon­ly accept­ed ideals of moti­va­tion and per­for­mance, as sim­ple activ­i­ties and exer­tion are pun­ished with a wors­en­ing of symptoms.

In this exhi­bi­tion Moll­ner, Schoßböck (a.k.a. Black Ferk Stu­dio), and oth­er artists and cre­atives reflect on the real­i­ty of liv­ing with ME/CFS. To cre­ate art in this con­text becomes a spe­cial activ­i­ty that is tied to risk, as suf­fer­ers of the dis­ease expe­ri­ence phys­i­cal con­se­quences. The hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ties the ill­ness often caus­es are fur­ther chal­lenges to artis­tic endeav­our and com­mu­ni­ty participation.

The exhi­bi­tion shows var­i­ous artis­tic per­spec­tives togeth­er with infor­ma­tion on the ill­ness in dif­fer­ent con­texts: From the per­son­al views of those affect­ed to the stand­point of soci­ety, from help­less­ness to activism, from the iso­la­tion of the indi­vid­ual to the col­lec­tive view, from the emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence of per­pet­u­al cri­sis to sci­en­tif­ic fact. The exhi­bi­tion tells sto­ries from the “night­side of life” (as Susan Son­tag called ill­ness), pro­vides insight into cop­ing strate­gies, and seeks to utilise open­ness and dark-yet-colour­ful humour to coun­ter­act suf­fer­ing and neglect.