Update: Barbara Hammer died on March 16th, at the age of seventy-nine.

“I’m glad you made it at the last minute,” Barbara Hammer said when I arrived at the West Village apartment where she lives with her spouse, the human-rights activist Florrie Burke. Hammer is dying. At seventy-nine, she has lived with cancer for thirteen years and has exhausted all available treatment options. She has spoken publicly, repeatedly, about her impending death, both as an artist reflecting on her creative life and as an activist for allowing terminally ill patients to take charge of the dying process.

Hammer is a pioneering visual artist known primarily for her films, most of which deal with lesbians, personal histories, and the body. Her four-minute film “Dyketactics,” from 1974, is a classic of lesbian hippie joy; her first feature, “Nitrate Kisses,” from 1992, was a visual and sensual exploration of hidden lesbian histories. Most of Hammer’s work is nonlinear, based on striking connections that she draws among disparate facts, images, movements, and sounds. Hammer appears in many of her own movies: she speaks, dances, and asks a lot of questions. With retrospectives at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, and the Tate Modern, in London, among other venues, she is probably the first artist to have achieved mainstream acclaim for a lifetime of work done as a lesbian, largely about lesbians.

I asked Hammer if she would sit for an “exit interview,” and she found the idea delightful. We spent two mornings together, in February. Because both the disease and the drugs that she is taking for pain are affecting her ability to use language, Hammer at times asked Burke to step in when she couldn’t find the words to describe images she could see clearly in her mind. The arrangement made it easier to talk about the events, ideas, and work to which Burke has been a witness, though earlier decades of Hammer’s life were harder for her to describe. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Day 1

Let’s start by talking about your activism for death with dignity. How did that start?

HAMMER: When I became aware that I really was dying, and it was going to be soon. How could I die in a way that would alleviate pain and allow me to say goodbye to people that I want to, and make sure all my artifacts are in order? With the assistance of a physician, I could be able to take the pills that will put me out of my suffering and pain. People do their best, they are working with me in palliative care, but it can take thirty minutes to an hour to get the interventions that alleviate the suffering. And the suffering is pretty awful. I can’t say I’m not yelling, wanting to jump out the window sometimes. In New York State, it is illegal for somebody to assist me in dying.

BURKE: We’ve always been believers in choice. We have a good friend who advocated for it in Washington, D.C., for two years, and she actually was the first person who could use it there. She died in August. She also had ovarian cancer. We’re hoping people will get onboard and push New York to pass the Medical Aid in Dying Act, so that people have a choice. [In 2018, the New York State Assembly considered a right-to-die law that didn’t make it through committee, but activists continue to work toward legalizing aid in dying; the bill has been introduced again.]

HAMMER: We looked into further possibilities. We have family in Oregon.

BURKE: And California.

HAMMER: But you have to live there for two years before you establish residency, and have doctors in agreement. Also, you don’t have your circle of friends and family.

BURKE: And we looked into the Switzerland idea, but that seemed even more isolating.

HAMMER: More isolating and expensive. Then you start thinking, Oh, my God, I could give my nephew that money to go to school with—can’t I suffer a few more weeks?

How long have you been in palliative care?

HAMMER: A long time, since May. But, even then, I was able to work. I did the lecture “The Art of Dying or (Palliative Art Making in the Age of Anxiety).” Did it three times [at Temple University, at Yale, and at the Whitney Museum, in New York City], always improving it and always noting that my abilities are declining slowly. Also, an exhibition that I’m in required writing—I could go out and do the shooting, but a couple of weeks later, when we got to the language, I couldn’t do it. My assistant was very helpful. The wonderful thing about dying is the interesting processes. I find it fascinating as an artist and as a writer. Your ability to talk in the world is changing. And you still remember what you used to be able to do. I can’t read, but I can still listen to Florrie read to me. I can still listen to the radio. There are things that I can delight in. Just to see the changes is what I always wanted. What is it like to die? Why don’t we know? I try to take notes on it. It is harder to write now. I don’t really feel like going into so many details when pain hits hard, though I kind of feel like I should. I mean, what am I? An investigator, an archeologist.

So much of your work has been about two things: about investigating the body—the sexual body—and also trying to tell your own story in different ways, through looking for your roots: as a lesbian, as somebody whose family came from Ukraine, as an artist. In “Tender Fictions,” you start by saying that you read artists’ autobiographies to figure out how to be an artist.

I read these books on Gauguin and other extraordinary male artists, identifying with them as artists at kind of the extreme edges: they leave their family, they go to another country, they would live without much money, suffer, and do these fantastic works. That was my role model. I didn’t have any women. At that point, I hadn’t taken a film class, so I really didn’t know some women I could have looked up. But then I started taking film classes at Sonoma State and driving my motor scooter there and studying with William Morehouse, who started the art program at the San Francisco Art Institute.

I would take over a room and just paint in the whole room by putting glass and paper all the way around the room. One day, I brought Morehouse in. He recognized me—this is all you want, as a young artist, is to be recognized. He had long talks with me then. “It may be very hard to be an artist. You might have to make twenty works in one year. Do you really want to do this?,” he asked. “Yes, I still want to do it.” “You may not be recognized for twenty years.” “That’s where I’m going.”