Hi, my name is Gunnar, I am a retired researcher and activist with more than three decades of experience in arts activism and human rights. Due to a serious head injury in August 2022, I was in a coma for 20 years – trapped in the gray zone like Scott Routley.
Since my recovery in 2043, thanks to genetic engineering (a part of my prefrontal cortex was replaced with a pig’s brain tissue), I am now trying to catch up with everything that I have missed and reconnect to ideas I was working with before coma. A short attention span, temporary memory loss fits, and occasional oinking are part of my present condition.
With a PhD in Arts and Sociology, I have taught at several universities in the Northern Periphery, but I have now resigned from most of my responsibilities to have more time to co-create arts-based collective greenhouses. I am keen to advocate cultural rights, social justice, and social sustainability. Also, due to my condition, I have complex feelings about animal rights – pigs especially.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/sep/05/how-science-found-a-way-to-help-coma-patients-communicate
https://www.neuliferehab.com/what-are-the-10-recovery-stages-after-a-brain-injury/
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00111-9#:~:text=In 2021%2C surgeons at New,recipients were sustained on ventilators.