insight Creative renaissance man Conn Bertish
Internationally awarded creative director, conceptual artist, cancer survivor and founder of the Cancer Dojo app Conn Bertish on why creativity is mankind’s greatest survival tactic
creativity is the ability to play with a problem – to bounce it, roll it, burn it, cajole it, redefine and shift it. Open to the crazy and the impossible, it debunks fear and challenges the constructs of the expected…or the traditionally diagnosed. My cancer was my greatest and most terrifying canvas – stretching ahead like a runway off a cliff. Using creativity, I dived in, creating cartoons, voice messages, sound effects, animations and artworks to kill the fear with action and extreme metaphorical meditation. I got the Berklee College of Music in the United States to help me turn the sounds MRI machines make into upbeat music tracks to build resilience. I punk’d police cars and put up signs on the street selling ‘Used Coffins’ and ‘Breastmilk’ and ‘Alibis’ outside the High Court. I completed 120 portraits of cancer patients in the throws of depression and helplessness, staring into the abyss with dead eyes. I put my own artwork up on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York next to Yves Klein and Pablo Picasso. I became my own form of medicine – a most powerful creative force – built from the intuitive experimentation of survival techniques and behaviour change methodology learnt from competing as a big waves surfer, Fear Factor winner and public speaker. And so, when I beat cancer in 2013, I immediately plotted to resign from my job to begin building a tool to empower the world’s cancer patients to harness their own versions of creative resilience. To shift them, from helplessness to actively engage in their own healing, strengthen their immune system and become happier, healthier and harder to kill. I am proud to say that the freemium Cancer Dojo mobile app is now available on app stores – and is backed by some of South Africa’s rock star professors of oncology, science and medicine.
cancerdojo.com