Title: Doctor OuchItHurts opens a hospital that cures any sickness from any animal
Artist: Dan Beudean
Venue: Zina Gallery, Cluj-Napoca
Photos: YAP Studio / Mădălin Mărgăritescu
I think he thought, and we thought, that he had beaten the addiction, but he hadn’t, and I think that’s the nature of the addiction. It came back, and it wasn’t about losing large amounts of money. It was him thinking that he could never be free from this. Here he was, he had traveled continents away from where he’d been gambling, thought he’d escaped it, but he was dragged back in. He hadn’t lost much money, that’s the point really. He was the definition of what the industry call a responsible gambler. He was free for months and months and months, and for a year at a time, but he was dragged back in. Everybody thinks that the deaths and suicides are caused by debt. They’re not. They’re caused by mental health problems that gambling causes, these very, very addictive forms of gambling. They actually affect the brain and they harm your cognitive capacity. It was very clear from his suicide note that he felt he would never be free, and he felt that he needed peace.
Fragment from Vincent Kearney, „Gambling addict left note saying he ‘needed some peace’”,
RTÉ, 28.09.2021
And said Ouch-it-hurts: “No problem!
Give it here!
I will sew him new legs,
He will run on the track again”.
(…)
“(…) if i drown,
If I go to the bottom,
What will become of them, with the sick,
With my beasts of the forest?»
(…)
And the mountains stand in front of him on the way,
And he begins to crawl over the mountains,
And the mountains are getting higher, and the mountains are steeper,
And the mountains go under the very clouds!
“(…) if i don’t get there,
If I get lost on the way,
What will become of them, with the sick,
With my beasts of the forest?»
Fragment from Kornei Ciukovski, Aybolit, after the English version by Alexander Blok