Roberto Santaguida
Research project
Fragments of Recovery: Artistic and Scientific Dialogues on Cancer and Immunotherapy
Project summary
Illness, Immunotherapy and the Poetics of the Body
I am developing a research-creation project that intersects contemporary art and cancer treatment, with a focus on the science of immunotherapy. Rooted in my experience as a documentary filmmaker and video artist, this initiative explores the inner landscape of the patient, the unseen workings of the body and the cultural narratives that shape our understanding of illness.
The project examines how language is used to represent cancer. I am interested in how these representations are driven by imagery and how anti-narrative strategies can challenge dominant paradigms around treatment, recovery and the emotional terrain they encompass.
My practice lies between the known and the unknown. It unfolds through a slow, circular process, attentive to moments that often go unnoticed. This project approaches immunotherapy through metaphor, sensation and poetics. It is not a translation of science into art but a multidisciplinary conversation.
One component of the project examines how the body mobilizes its own defences, how T-cells are activated to target cancer cells. I plan to produce a video work that visualizes this process as poetic evocation rather than scientific illustration. Using abstraction, movement, light, and sound, I hope to convey the emotional texture of the body’s transformation. What does it mean to see oneself differently? What might cellular recognition feel like?
Drawing from microscopy, fluid dynamics and organic forms, the work remains grounded in scientific research while incorporating personal memory and narrative. I intend to collaborate with cancer researchers and immunologists, building a dialogue through interviews, lab visits and shared reflection.
Story, Language and the Lived Experience of Sickness
The project will integrate a social dimension. Cancer is also shaped by the language we use to understand it. Terms often appear in public discourse, offering strength to some while feeling distant or limiting to others. In a later phase of the project, I will pair scientific imagery with patients’ own metaphors: fragmented, personal expressions of living with illness. The idea is to reflect a range of lived experiences, without impose a unified narrative.
This project represents a continuation of my method of departing from linearity and clarity in storytelling. I will use non-chronological structures and looping edits that convey the fragmentation of chronic illness. I am drawn to quiet but charged moments: the weight of clinical dialogue and the shift in meaning that illness imposes on ordinary words. The final outcome will take a modular form of short experimental video pieces and a longer documentary.
I would like to include the professional perspectives of oncologists, nurses and laboratory technologists to expand a central dimension of the project. Their metaphors, emotions and coping strategies are often overshadowed by institutional demands or conflated with technical expertise. By inviting them to impart their personal language of care, I hope to provide a setting where clinical detachment and human vulnerability coexist. This will deepen the polyphonic structure of the final work, blending professional restraint with emotional insight to reveal how care is both given and internalized.
I believe art can reframe how we perceive illness through questions. What does it mean to heal in the face of the unknown? How do we live with processes we cannot see or control? How might we express resilience without invoking triumph? The relationship between art and science is often framed as one of translation. I propose a model based on mutual provocation: testing ideas and unsettling assumptions.
My hope is to generate new forms of seeing, thinking and listening; opening a space for what illness can teach us about the body, systems and the stories we hold.
Biography
Since completing his studies in film production at Concordia University, Roberto Santaguida’s films and videos have been shown at more than 400 international festivals, including Tampere Film Festival (Finland), CPH: DOX, Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival (Denmark), Contemporary Art Festival Sesc_Videobrasil (Brazil), Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival (United States), transmediale (Germany), and Message to Man (Russia).
He has also taken part in artist residencies in numerous countries, including Iran, Romania, Germany, Norway, and Australia. Roberto is the recipient of the K.M. Hunter Artist Award, the Chalmers Arts Fellowship and a fellowship from Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.
