Disability Arts: Slaughtering the Sacred Cows : my provocation for a public conference.

In this blog I share my provocation for the Public Conference – Disability Arts: Slaughtering the Sacred Cows at the Midland’s Art Centre in Birmingham. Anna Berry is an artist and the curator of the exhibition Art and Social Change: The Disability Arts Movement at the Midlands Art Centre. For her DASH Arts Curatorial Residency, Anna curated this event as a public conversation. 

Anna asked panelists to bring a sacred cow of disability arts to the conference for slaughter! As she explained in an email,

‘The idea of the day is to try to create a space where people feel they can think and express their thoughts freely, and be accepting of a multiplicity of opinions, even if it’s not toeing-the-party line when it comes to disability politics.”

My approach was to unpick solidarity to share frustrations about the lack of diversity within disability arts. The conference was super-interesting and my reflection about it will be published shortly on Disability Arts Online.

“I want to begin by saying that I don’t necessarily agree with my own argument (I’ll leave that up to you to work out), and that I’m treating this as being like the debating societies I was excluded from due to failing the 11+  spectacularly – because of dyslexia, dyscalculia, and being selective mute at the time without knowing it. So, this is my opportunity to be an obnoxious smarty pants! That’s the persona I’m going to adopt. 

My argument pokes a stick at Anna’s question… 

Where do mental health issues and neurodiversity sit within disability arts?  Although, I will focus more on neurodivergence stick to what you know, I always say.

I also want to ask: can we laugh at ourselves without fear of offending one another? And why does this all feel so uncomfortable? I’ll leave that out there. 

As a late-diagnosed autistic person I’m a newcomer to disability arts and think of neurodivergents as the next frontier marginals. 

So, like the youngest child of the disability arts family I’m going to misbehave royally and go for the jugular! 

My sacred cow is solidarity – that fluffy idea that we’re better together. Well, some autistics might disagree – just putting it out there! 

(This was meant to be a joke!)  

I feel solidarity contains the illusion that disabled people can all work together; that we can consider one another’s disabilities sufficiently to be good comrades in the joint struggle against our oppression. But are we? And can we? 

The definition of solidarity is “unity or agreement of feeling or action, especially among individuals with a common interest; mutual support within a group.”

Even I’ve got to admit it sounds good. So what’s the problem with it? 

Well, I want to put it to you that the notion of solidarity for such a diverse, and increasingly diverse diverse group of people is terminally woolly, and, that in 2020, it’s quite possibly not unlike trying to herd cats. How can we contain all the cats that are likely to go off message? I’m thinking particularly of some of my neurodivergent friends and colleagues who don’t even want to identify as disabled! 

I think that solidarity probably depends on a shared history and understanding, which makes it difficult to include newcomers, let alone cater for all groups and perspectives that could come under the umbrella of disability arts. 

So I argue that, however far it may have got disabled artists in the past, our solidarity today is a perhaps a mere fantasy. I argue that indeed our so-called solidarity is, in reality, a hot mess of bickering and jostling in which the specificity of need is lost and no group en masse actually has their needs met. Perhaps because the abled are just not literate in nuance and we’re too busy perpetuating our own misery by arguing. 

(At this point I noted that there were no communication badges or flapplause.)

I wonder if we’re doing both ourselves and the abled a disservice in not talking-up and educating about the wonderful diversity within our solidarity, and also if we’re not just a bit crap at meeting each other’s needs too? Shouldn’t we just admit this? 

In herding together, are we also unwittingly sustaining our marginal, outsider status? You can’t have insiders without outsiders. But, can I only be naughty and ask this because my disabilities are invisible and I’m congenitally tactless. (I think my disability and my privilege just got tangled up there.)

Shouldn’t our end goal be to destroy this outdated and delusional idea of solidarity, because it shouldn’t be and won’t be needed anymore when we’ve swallowed up the mainstream with multiple ninja infiltrations of the system. 

As I’m not really sure whether my argument has legs or even wings, I’d like to end abruptly with the assertion that solidarity is so yesterday, and throw it open to the floor with one last petulant, youngest-child-thinks-they-know-best, retort.

Aren’t we all just better off blowing our own trumpets and talking about the brilliance of our art?” 

I have a neurological condition: further notes on an autistic identity.

A blog post about exploring new language through visual research. 

I’ve written a lot about my autism over the past 4 years, but that’s because discovering you’re autistic late in life can feel like a page-turner. With an introspective disposition and a bent for self-analysis the plot twists keep on coming. I’m glad of this. Who doesn’t love a good story and, let’s face it, there’s nothing more gripping than your own. I don’t minimise the inner struggle for autistic self-knowledge, but dull it isn’t!

Discovering autism can quickly become an identity quest. For a late-diagnosed person the self-image of a lifetime can suddenly feel like a case of mistaken identity – there really are no words to capture the magnitude of this. There follows a process of adaptation for which there is no guidance and little if any formal support.  We must work things out as best we can, and for many of us this can mean a lot of online activity, including reading and writing blogs. Wherein autistic adults are amassing a truly wondrous resource, which also serves to document both an important cultural moment and a movement for social justice. Good times.

Access to a collective autistic wisdom, absent for a lifetime, is a powerful force. Through it we can discover the language and concepts we need to ease our passage towards more congruent identities, but there are no emotional short cuts. Truly understanding and owning autism is something which evolves, I’ve found. Where I was last week is not where I find myself today. In a recent blog post I considered ‘social disability’ as a useful term.  Right now my eureka! is a post-it note on which a version of me seems to have written, I have a neurological condition. The me who wrote it must have been the schoolgirl me trying hard to please at handwriting practice. The note pictured above was written (left-handed) by the artist-advocate me who wants you to know that my neurological condition affects my handwriting. This blog flows directly from my visual research.

My post-it phrase also featured in the blog post about ‘social disability’, but sometimes we bury the lede. I must have written my post-it as an aide memoire. It was waiting for me yesterday on my return from a 12 hour working day (including travel), and today I’ve struggled. This is not ordinary tiredness, this is the ache of overload which I now understand to be neurological at core. So much so that I realise my post-it contains the message I must now front-load, not least to myself.

And with these words I am reminded of all the binaries we seem to peddle in our online lives, in which my lovely post-it could be seen as a pathologising message about autism. This is not my intention, and autism as a cultural identity is something I will also uphold to my final breath – I see no conflict in this duality. I continue to be joyful, and to celebrate my autism unreservedly, but I must develop the means to communicate more effectively about my autistic needs. What’s required is clarity of thought and vision. We can’t truly know what we need until we learn what’s holding us back. It’s all a work in progress.

I’ve worked with many artists and I know how challenging it can be to seek to make autism visible when the narratives surrounding autism remain skewed and contested, but I believe it to be important and fertile ground. For example, I intend to talk and practice more self-care as a result of working on the image above. The act of creating it conjured the idea that one simple thing could have improved my yesterday and can help me in the future. My yellow post-it! I’m now excited to discover what happens when I carry it with me – both literally and metaphorically speaking.

I’m loving this phase of my becoming. My post-it isn’t designed for sympathy, no, no! For me this is a powerful image, brimming with ownership. I’m all for that!

 

 

The building blocks of learning. Thinking about ‘social disability’ and access.

A blog post in which I talk through some new thinking about the term ‘social disability’.

 

I love an epiphany!

God, being autistic is sometimes an absolute blast. I get to peel back layers of a life time’s accumulation of faulty learning and go, wow! so that’s how it really works…

Recent adventures have got me thinking about ‘social disability’ as an important addition to the terms I can use to help articulate accommodation needs. This could be a sensitive term for some, so here comes the bit where I make the usual disclaimers. As ever in my writing I only speak for myself, and please remember that when you’ve met one autistic you’ve only ever met one autistic.

The point is (however) that each autistic has to work things out for themselves. We mainly have no such thing as aftercare following an autism diagnosis. I’ve been through many a recalibration of my identity since my official diagnosis in March 2016, but my love for the word autism has never wained. I was luke warm on the term neurodivergent for the longest time, but have recently cosied right up to it – it’s so useful and brings much needed solidarity with a wider group. I’ve got a lot of affection for the term invisible disability, but rarely remember to use it (note to self to do more of this). But in almost mint condition is my sudden mental adoption of the term ‘social disability’ which I’m test-driving here. I’m excited by it mainly because I feel the need for clarity and specificity. This is about refining and recalibrating where I am 4 years on from my diagnosis and readying myself to meet new challenges.

It’s taken 4 years for me to absorb that I can never fully compensate for my autism with workarounds, accommodations and self-care. There’s no magic neurological catch-up or compensation that can level out the playing field (ergo it’s the playing field that needs to change, by the way!) I HAVE A NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION ( which affects me in many ways) as well as an identity to forge – and for me the two must go hand in hand.

The penny has finally dropped. It doesn’t matter how much learning I do, or how much I am accommodated, I will remain at core disabled by my hyper intuitive and sometimes scrambled navigational systems. This insight, by the way, does nothing to negate my autism positive position – I see autism as both disability and identity, and find no conflict in this position.

I feel great joy at being me, I love myself and my autism quite fully, right up to the brim in fact. But I will forever spend my days in hostile environments following norms I can’t ever hope to understand. I will always need to use my native intellect and find the will to be assertive and seek adjustments, but I need more than this. I NEED IT TO BE UNDERSTOOD THAT I AM RADICALLY SOCIALLY DIFFERENT – AND THAT I DON’T WANT SUPPORT TO APE YOU OR OPERATE LIKE YOU (if you are a non-autistic reader). This is not rudeness on my part, I’m talking about neurologically based social orientations and needs.

I do a lot of writing, thinking and advocating about autism and the arts, and I encounter a lot of artists who are autistic and struggle with the question of how to place themselves in their professional lives, and in the art world as a whole. There is no such category as ‘autistic artist’ that would fit us all – as stated above, once you’ve met one of us you’ve only ever met one of us. So what kind of beastie are we, and where do we fit, if at all? What does it mean to be an autistic artist?

We return to the conundrum of extreme diversity within divergence, but I believe we can perhaps haul some commonalities out of the possibly infinite variety of minds, though once more I can only truly speak for myself.

A social difference that’s disabling and is life long means the building blocks of learning have been (and will continue to be) different. THIS DOESN’T GO AWAY. Our thinking can run so counter to the non-autistic that we can feel alien even when we appear to be joining in and on side. We’re conditioned to mask our difference and often don’t know how to drop this adaptation. We can also find many points of joyful and genuine connection, but it takes colossal effort on our part to ‘make it’ into the room. Once there, we may well have no idea how to network and ‘makes things happen’. We can learn some of your tricks though kindness and information sharing, but THIS TOO DOESN’T GO AWAY.

So what’s my vision, and what does focusing on the term ‘social disability’ gain? I feel this would be suitably radical and risky. Talking about social disability is usefully uncomfortable and revealing. We reward neuro-normative sociability with popularity and power and we judge those who can’t perform it. In doing so we must sometimes confuse neurology with personality – neither should be judged, but disability is a protected characteristic and requires positive action.

Accommodations are vital, but so is culture shift. Please understand that I don’t want a leg- up to join the ranks, I want to break the current neuro-normative socially biased mould. I feel social disability as a term enables me to pinpoint a very particular aspect of my struggle as an autistic artist. At the forefront of articulating and carving out autistic space and power is where I want to be.

Critically reviewing disabled artists.

So last week I went to the fantastic closing event (conference) organised by Disability Arts Online as part of the Contested Spaces exhibition, at the Foundry in London, curated by Aidan Moesby.

Access arrangements were superb and the event was pithy. Succinct, and brimming with content, it was concluded with a quite beautifully poetic performance by Malgorzata Dawidek. Aidan deftly chaired the panel, which featured Jennifer Gilbert, Ashok Mistry, and Elinor Morgan. I came away enriched and energised.

I was especially struck by the lack of critical review for disability arts as a topic – though  I’m a relative newcomer to the field. This is a good moment to say that I’m autistic, and that I can’t claim to speak for anyone but myself, and that I will focus on critical review in my blog post.

Jennifer Gilbert highlighted some shocking examples of ableism in mainstream reviewing of disabled artists, Elinor Morgan suggested strategies for disabled artists to gain access to feedback and build confidence, which might in turn lead to critical review. Raising the quality of our work was also touched on in this context. I will come back to this.

I was pleased Ashok Mistry spoke about having something to loose in engaging with the art establishment for approval – our very difference is precious. It is. Our very difference is our sometimes very ‘marketable’ USP (unique selling point), among other arguably more important things. I can’t think of anything worse than contorting the self to fit in. Surely we need to infect the ‘mainstream’ with our glorious USPs rather than try to second guess it.

I left the building with Artistic Director of DASH, Mike Layward, who kindly saw me to Marylebone Station. I’m indebted to our conversation for helping me articulate what I think I feel about the critiquing of art made by disabled artists, certainly I feel it about the area I know best, autistic creatives. We are all of us outsiders by default unless masquerading as…well…just artists.

Someone (I think it was Mike) had earlier pointed out that Frida Kahlo has been assimilated by the mainstream through the erasure of her disability despite it often being her subject.

Another good point which I hadn’t considered was raised by the panel that critics can be frightened of reviewing us because they might ‘get it wrong’, thereby causing offence and also loosing credibility. Time for some tough love. Do the work. Research the field, don’t avoid it. Yes, it can be quite hard to get it right, but a lack of familiarity with disability issues as an excuse in 2020 looks as weak as a used teabag. Get on with it, because here is where the good stuff often is!

I’m autistic, so as usual I experienced a lot of upside-down thinking about this topic. I so appreciated Ashok’s comment that he’s a professional outsider! Okay, critical review is important. Informed critical review can be vital to a career, but the uniformed critic who’s anxious about getting it wrong isn’t what we need. I say this as someone who supports neurodivergent (ND) artists professionally. Often the job is to unpick the barrage of unhelpful mainstream ‘critique’ they’ve experienced over a lifetime.

These nascent artists need nurture, and perhaps most importantly autistic artists may not find conventional critique/ review helpful as a form – though of course they may benefit from exposure. It isn’t just that we need to build ourselves up. There can be a genuine cultural difference, I’ve found, whereby our need for input is simply that – different. So I think we need a range of methods for evaluating and elevating artists. ND artists may not need conventional critique so much (because it may misread or prove irrelevant to them) to improve the quality of their work, but may perhaps benefit more from access to the kinds of resources which enable better production values. Quality issues (if they exist) may be about being cash poor and unable to invest in materials or production processes. That’s not to say that encouragement and tailored mentoring aren’t vital. They can be. It’s just that the current model for artists’ elevation via critique and review is like the hotel elevator that ain’t working. We often don’t get off the ground floor and I wonder if this resonates more generally for disabled artists? What would really help you, is my question.

Little about the way many ND artists work best is reflected in neuro-normative professional practice. There can be a great deal of unlearning to do in unshackling ourselves from these tyrannies. Perhaps more needed than conventional critique is help in understanding neuro-normative codes. It’s very simple, you can’t be expected to navigate what you can’t see or even begin to process. The current system is completely weighted against us.

So my heart sinks a little at the idea of chasing conventional critiques – though ironically if my most recent DYCP ACE funding bid is successful (very slim chance), I will be doing exactly that thing, but doing so autistically and on my own terms! Surely the best critiques consist of dialogue and if reviewers are frightened then that’s a sign that such a dialogue is lacking.

So, what’s needed first is a culture shift, and projects or initiatives which dare to throw stakes in new ground. Critics need to understand what they’re viewing if they’re to be any good to us. Review isn’t just about exposure, it’s also about framing. Ah yes, and it’s about bums on seats, which is an area I haven’t yet touched on and probably won’t for lack of time.

Ashok unlocked something vital when he talked about the need for us to be allowed to be our ‘messy’ selves (forgive me if I haven’t paraphrased you correctly, Ashok!) For me this is the key to making a necessary 360 degree turn.

Critics need to know what they’re looking at to get it ‘right’ and be helpful. It goes without saying that we need disabled critics and curators, but we need ally curators too. I hope that if some of the Shaping the next ten years (Arts Council England) policies go the right way we may see a real development of ‘hybrid’ ally professionals along with more of us (of course!) I’m very keen on collaboration as a way forward.

In the field of invisible disability (which has a shorter history) I feel we are in a useful moment of transition where disruption can occur (and I hope this resonates more widely with my more experienced disabled colleagues). I don’t think that what we need is judgment on abled/neuro-normative terms, but rather that our products must be allowed to flourish as they need to and be equally valued. What I feel we need is opportunity on our own terms to create what we believe to be good, which may be very different from the current mainstream critical agenda.

We also probably won’t be equal until the boot is on the other foot and the ‘mainstream’ values and seeks out what disabled curators and critics think about its cultural outpourings. Dialogue is all.

I began my 2018 catalogue essay for the Shadowlight Artist’s Arts Council England funded RISING exhibition with the following provocation.

“What if everything you ever thought about learning disability is wrong.”

A power imbalance exists because the ‘mainstream’ gaze monopolises and is uninformed. It creates insiders and outsiders and is extremely outmoded, as Drag Syndrome are currently proving on the global stage in taking it by storm.

I think the conversation has probably moved on already and it’s now for the ‘mainstream’, so-called, to catch-up if it can.

Living with ghosts and the value of creative resistance.

View of my home with a painting by my father (in 1950) hanging above some vintage suitcases and alongside two works of my own from the Buenos Días Dictador (2018) series.

Those of you who know my creative work will know that I’m haunted. Yes. I live with ghosts.

I’m going to share a secret. I talk to a handbag. I’ve even written letters to it. No, I’m not loosing my marbles. In 2013 my grandmother’s handbag came back into my life and whispered in my ear. From this moment my life changed and my art practice blew wide open. I knew what I had to do, but I couldn’t guess where it would take me. I’ve just commemorated 6 years of works responding to the Spanish Civil War and my family’s political exile. Previously unspoken, I’ve sought to bring to light this history in order to understand my heritage and heal trauma wounds.

My practice has come a long way, but since those first whispers in 2013 – in which the rise of fascism seemed more historic and remote than it does today – a curious echoing of past times has struck me again, and again. Incremental, creeping closer, and ever more distinct, the feeling of deja-vu pervades. It announces itself as a sudden chill, or today as a moment of terror in reading about the multiple ways in which this brand new Conservative administration already threatens to mimic all that our American cousins have endured in their President for the past 3 years. As if we didn’t already know that Boris Johnson was the perfect UK double for Donald Trump.

My 6 year haunting – yes, I live with my art now and am surrounded by ancestor talismans and tokens – begins to feel prophetic. My grandmother has been whispering through her handbag for so long now that sometimes I admit I haven’t always heard her. Life became full at times and I forget to listen, but believe me I won’t be making that mistake again. Abuela (as grandmother is called in Castilian Spanish) is tugging at my sleeve.

I know that she will show me what to do, and this is a great comfort, but she’s taken great care to remind me how quickly the wind can change which is unsettling too. She knows the supreme value of preparedness because she’s survived a Civil War. Abuela will guide me in her gentle way, and then fasten her apron strings to make us cafe Bonbón. She knows how to cajole, but from now on she has my full attention.

The atmosphere of sudden departure is in my DNA. My family fled for their lives from Spain along with almost 500,000  Republican Spaniards when the fascist dictator Franciso Franco seized power in February 1939.

I know that I must ready myself in whatever way I can. History repeats itself, this we know. I’m not prophesying war and catastrophe, I’m obeying the unspoken laws of my DNA. I know I’m not leaving tomorrow, but I’m vigilant and quietly offloading. I have already asked myself what I could fit into packing cases and would there be time and money to ship my work? These are unknowns. A crossing of bridges.

Abuela smiles her approval. I look at the jewel-like object I know I would take with me no matter what. It would be my father’s only known/surviving painting from 1950, shared on Instagram just yesterday @s_boue, which also features in the image above. Abuela pinches my cheeks affectionately, and I’m suddenly taken back to the memory of my father sitting under an acacia tree writing while we were on holiday in Spain in 1972.  He would have been writing something other than his his plays, as by this time he had given up on playwriting for the sake of his mental health. I’ve come to view his exile theatre as creative resistance, and I increasingly see my own work in the same light.

Abuela beams at me. I’m old enough for these truths to be known, but then a shadow passes over us and her face becomes suddenly sombre. Fascism creeps in through the back door, she says with a shudder. I nod. It begins with fear; of what you read in the newspapers and what you can no longer say freely.  I understand now without her saying it that these 6 years have been a preparation too. All this time I have been on a parallel mission of making and packing, and leaving a trail for future generations – as I now realise that my father did in his time.

Life and art are never separate, not even if you try to wrench them apart. It’s been a long time since I wrote in quite this way, but we are living in increasingly frightening and unsettled times. My blog is a call for preparedness, but above all for creative resistance. Finding spaces in which the mind can be free become more vital when our actual freedoms are under threat. Every act of creativity and self-care is a means of survival. Reaching out and organising is what we must do.

 

 

Neurodivergence – language, the concept of ‘group brain’, and neurological-ecologies.

Photo credit Joel Chester Fildes

---

Do you know how to use the terms neurodiverse and neurodivergent? 

What’s in a word? What are four letters between friends, you might well ask.

I myself am no fan of getting hot under the collar about language OR spelling. I’m dyslexic and I loathe being corrected. Way to feel like you’re back in primary school waiting to read to Miss, knowing that you’re destined to fail because your brain (unlike those of your mates) won’t let you.

So I proceed cautiously, but with a passion.

In my heart I know that words matter, though I honestly feel we can go too far. Again, I’ll take care, yet my impulse is to be strident because this is important.

My recent appointment to the A-N Board is an exciting development. An opportunity to help direct the biggest arts organisation for artists in the UK (and possibly even in Europe). I will do so neurodivergently.

I won’t help direct the Board neurodiversely because I am an individual and not a group. We are as a group (species; Homo sapiens) neurodiverse. Ergo, neurodiversity refers to a neuro-ecology. Pretty much think biodiversity, but with brains, and you’re there.

The neurodiversity paradigm is a term coined by Nick Walker, and I would recommend everyone who wants to understand it and the terminology to read his key text Neurodiversity: Some Basic Terms & Definitions. It is short and extremely clear.

Here’s one pithy example:

“Neurodiversity is not a trait that any individual possesses. Diversity is a trait possessed by a group, not an individual. When an individual diverges from the dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning, they don’t “have neurodiversity,” they’re neurodivergent.”

The neurodiversity paradigm is hitting the arts big time. Almost daily I’m astonished to read about opportunities for neurodiverse artists. The other day this was topped by reference to a self-diagnosed neurodiverse artist.

In the first case, technically speaking this reads as an open call like any other. In the second case, it reads like a double negative. Artist discovers they are part of a greater neurological-ecology like the rest of humanity.

I astonish myself by how much these understandable mistakes press my buttons, until I scroll back down the decades of dedicated research (and hard won experience) my current level of knowledge is founded on. This is not like my autistic ‘quirk’ about the status of the Tupperware cupboard (yes, I do have an unusual need for order in this department). It’s because the concepts my community have toiled over and honed for eons are sometimes being chucked about like newly plucked feathers.

I understand. When I was first corrected on this point, by Nick Walker himself, it took time to absorb the difference and get used to using the terms correctly rather than interchangeably, but I have done the work to get there because it matters to the paradigm shift we need to make. As Nick says, this is a social justice issue.

I’ve since developed my own understanding of the importance of working intentionally with neurological-ecology in mind. This I’ve termed ‘group-brain’.

To give an example, for my recent Arts Council England funded #NUNOproject I was enabled to lead, and my ‘shortcomings’ were compensated for by the project’s combined neurologies – ‘group brain’. Whenever I needed it, there was a rich pool of talent to draw on, a sea of helping hands, and extraordinary good will to support me in doing my best job. This was possible because we were working openly with an understanding of our neurological profiles across the project, and across neurologies too. No hierarchy, no judgements, and full consideration to optimal working conditions for ALL, regardless of neuro-type.

Unless as Nick Walker puts it, those closer to the “dominant societal standards of “normal” neurocognitive functioning” understand they too form part of our neurodiversity as a species, we neurodivergents will be forever othered and we all miss out.

So I urge you neurodiver-gently to consider the difference. Absorb the language and the process it represents of de-centring neuro-normative brains. I say to you gently, move over, it takes all kinds of brains to make a better world.

In my view, arts organisation need to embrace the depth of learning required to become agents of genuine change. Being smart about language is a good start.

 

 

 

You have even seen my autism as it is.

• 

The painting you see before you is literally buzzing. It’s a good representation of my brain right now.

I painted it with great emotion, inspired by a piece of classic Spanish cinema called The Spirit of the Beehive (1972). Bees swarming. Having a bee in your bonnet. It’s all connected. But what do you do when the bees are inside your brain?

Such is the sensation sometimes with autism (I find). I qualify this because it will feel differently to others. We don’t need a bunch of bee-brain theories (or pea-brain theories, to be honest).

That’s why it’s hard to write about the less comfortable aspects of autism – you don’t want to fuel the ‘bad autism’ beast. See! Naughty autism got you, they might say, but I won’t let them. It’s not the autism that’s naughty. I guess I should blame the sillies who tried to tell me I was slow (for example) when it’s quite obvious I am fast (too fast at times). But I won’t do that either.

Increasingly, I’m inclined to believe that these people and many others just don’t know about brains, probably because they’ve never had to think about them (or their brains in relation to others).

Thinking about our brains (and what’s ‘wrong’ with them) is probably the sole preserve of the ‘misfit’. Majority brains don’t have to bother. In my view this labour is advantageous and our ‘misfit’ brains hold many advantages too.

It helps to identify the volume of traffic caused by the bees (ideas), and they don’t always swarm so. They also connect parts that other brain can’t reach.

What interests me about the mark-making activity documented in the painting above is that it narrates the impulses of my mind via the movement of my arm (and hand). The movement of my whole body indeed (because it was suitably frenetic – you won’t know this but I just typed frantic in error.)

I have therefore (in a way I can relate to) shown you the inside of my mind, without recourse to any words. You will see it. You will see my joy and my rage. You will also see my freedom. You have even seen my autism as it is. Dynamic, rhythmic, capable of control (for I have stayed within the picture frame and given you a harmonious dancing surface to gaze at.)

I want to show you more.

A little bowl of love and kindness – taking the strain out of caring.

• 

• 

This has been an exhausting week. I’m used to caring for my mother part time in her own home where she has all the adaptations she needs. Suddenly the need for me to be on my own home turf coincided with mum saying she was ready to come and visit us in what has been (up until more recent times) her home from home. In a flurry of activity I cleared the clutter, refreshed her linen, and steamed the floors.

It’s been a luxury to spend 7 straight days in one place to be honest, but we’ve struggled at night due to a lower bed frame and lack of accustomed grab rail to help mum get out of bed. There had been no time to get one and no way to improvise a safe alternative. She has nocturia which means myriad trips to the loo at night, which combined with the loss of her mobility aid made for a whole heap of broken sleep for me. You can imagine what helping someone up 6-7 times does to a body, and I could see exactly why she snoozes so much during the day. I now have wrinkles on the bags under my eyes!

I admit I’ve felt mangled, and quite unable to piece together more than a Tweet or two. Oh, it’s been glorious too. Just seeing mum’s face as she took in a loved environment she thought she might not see again was marvellous. I swelled with pride as my little home proved more adaptable than I could ever have hoped. Mum could manage everything but the bed.

I’ve done the obvious and ordered a grab rail which will hopefully arrive before her next stay. These things can never come quickly enough though – where are all the local grab rail outlets when you need them? That said, it is amazing what the body and brain can sometimes do in straightened circumstances. We spent a morning troubleshooting the problem after a particularly ropey night. She worked out – quite spontaneously – that she could grab the bed frame itself and lean on her elbow (practice helped) to swivel round on her side and get her legs over the edge to terra firma. It was a case of now I can and now I can’t for a night or two. This became easier and more fluid an action as the nights wore on. We kind of managed, but her risk of falling is great and one must keep an eye open (from the futon mattress at the end of the bed).

Today I was to drive her home (to her house) after lunch, and feeling slightly less mangled than before I was inspired to make croutons to go with our homemade courgette and black bean soup. It would use up a block of stale bread which had got trapped in the bread bin under a pile of newer slices. The act of not wasting felt good in itself. A cheery drizzle of olive oil was soon guzzled up by the pale hunks, and so I drizzled some more, and then some some more! Croutons know how to take care of themselves allowing me to wander back and forth between various points of interest in the room.

Mum – newspaper on lap – slept peacefully in a chair while my now young people bantered. Granny (mum) helped bring them up when they were tiny, and was a faithful weekly visitor despite the 70 mile commute. One picked out a tune on the piano, the other worked on a drawing. Both hovered over the pan. Smells like sausages!

I chucked some thyme at the croutons, no longer pale and wan they looked crispy and golden. This simple transformation lifted a hearty yet simple soup to new and quite heavenly heights. Delicious! called out three generations. Mum doesn’t eat a lot these days, but she had polished off every single crumb. This felt like old times again when she was at the heart of our little family as the commuting grandma. It was wonderful to have her there again as we really didn’t know if she could manage the environment.

Extreme old age isn’t easy, not one bit. Mum carries it with great dignity but these few days without a bed rail have taught me so much humility. We will all at some point need adaptations (if we’re lucky) and should probably plan ahead. I’m chastened by the unravelling that can take place for want of one simple adaptation.

I can’t really explain it but somehow that lovely bowl of soup set us on our way and mum’s visit feels like a triumph. For want of a bed rail the battle for sleep was lost, you might say, but a bowlful of love and crispy croutons won the day. Next time I’m awake in the wee hours I will try to remember this well.

Convoy – una respuesta artística al convoy de los 927.

• 

Sonia Boué explica su nuevo proyecto: crear un memorial para El convoy de los 927 en el año 2020

Hola, soy Sonia Boué, hija de un exiliado español (llamado José María García Lora), viviendo en gran bretaña. Soy arista visual, y desde 2013 mi trabajo ha tratado con el tema del exilio español y la respuesta cultural a la guerra civil española en gran bretaña. Este trabajo se encuentra en mi pagina web www.soniaboue.co.uk

Ahora tengo un nuevo proyecto. Se trata de un fragmento de testimonio oral narrado por mi madre. Ella cuenta que una noche en 1940 mis abuelos y bis-abuela escondieron en un bosque para escapar los Nazis. Resulta que la anécdota de mi madre refiere a El convoy de los 927 que partió de la estación de mercancías de Angoulême, 20-8-1940. Exiliados y separados de mi padre, quien había salido de España a pie durante la Retirada con el ejercito republicano, ellos en cambio eran funcionarios y habían sido evacuados por tren de Barcelona al destino de Port Bou. Pasaron por los infames campos de Francia y finalmente habían sido permitidos vivir cerca de Angoulême y trabajar allí en una fabrica de armas.

El convoy de los 927 fue el primer ejemplo de la transportación de familias enteras con destino a un campo de exterminio Nazi, y el número 927 se refiere al número de exilados españoles, incluyendo mujeres y niños, llevados ese día en vagones de mercancía (transporte para animales mas bien) al campo de Mauthausen. Llegados a Mauthausen, los Nazi separaron a las familias, internando as los hombres y chicos mayores de 13 anos, y mandando a las mujeres y niños menores a la España de Franco. El documental El Convoy de los 927 contiene testimonio de los sobrevivientes que nos puede ayudar a comprender las condiciones, aunque el acto mismo es casi impossible de entender.

Somos hermanos

Cuando hice mi programa de radio con la BBC The Art of Now – Return to Catalonia (en 2018) me encontre con un grupo de valencianos en Argelès sur Mer que también eran hijos de españoles republicanos. Me regalaron naranjas y cuando nos despedimos uno de ellos me dijo, somos hermanos (se oye en el programa a los 16.15 mins). Me pareció de lo mas hermoso y esto es el espíritu solidario del proyecto Convoy.

Mi concepto artístico se basa en un patrón creado repitiendo cuadros usando una fotografía de 1939 de mis abuelos y bis-abuela tomada en su exilio (lo cual fue mandado a mi padre en su exilio en Londres). El cuadro consiste de dos imagines rectangulares. Utilizando técnicas digitales he añadido al retrato original una imagen reflejada (en rojo) significando un possible destino alternativo. Con el arte puedo imaginar el inimaginable – que el convoy podría haber sido de los 930.

Mis obras suelen contener un fuerte elemento de homenaje, y con Convoy mi visión es crear un acto de solidaridad con los 927 exiliados llevados en ese día de terror. El sentimiento que trabajo aquí es de una familia amplia y acogedora de españoles republicanos y exilados, que guardaremos en nuestra mente colectiva tras las generaciones. No paro de pensar en el momento cuando salieron del bosque, mis abuelos y bis-abuela, y encontraron a Angoulême vaciado de gente. Al llegar a España por fin en 1941 mi abuela estaba tan traumatizada que no podia hablar. Mi abuelo preocupado por ella la mando a su pueblo en Galicia para recuperar peso y ánimos. Nunca hablaron a mi generación de este tema ni de la guerra civil en si.

Con la repetición de una imagen generas algo nuevo y quizás con cada repetición se vuelve mas potente. La idea de usar el retrato para significar cada español en ese convoy se formo durante mis investigaciones – y de allí entro la matemática. También se puede jugar con orientación y color entre las múltiples posibilidades artísticos.

En la siguiente imagen (abajo) se voltea el destino de mi familia. De allí entro la idea de usar 930 caras en Convoy, así mostrando la solidaridad de los 3 exilados escapados. Imagino que no fueron los únicos escondidos ese día – quien les aviso, y quienes pudieron avisar (en su turno), son detalles que nos faltan. Quizá siempre serán misteriosos.

Pero el arte nos acerca a otras verdades, y nos ayuda a mediar historias traumáticas. Buscando la manera de representar múltiples personas con las caras de mi familia en forma cuadrada he creado un patrón totalmente accidental. A veces me parece mas potente lo inesperado. Lo que llama atención es el momento en que el ojo pierde la caras y empieza a ver solo el patrón. Para mi la illusion óptica llega a ser símbolico de la posibilidad de perder la humanidad. Quizás nos puede decir algo sobre la tendencia en ciertos circunstancias a la inhumanidad cuando de trata de grupos de personas numerosas.

• 

• 

• 

• 

La decision de usar el color rojo significar sangre y la política de usar el termino rojos para abusar y exterminar a los exilados españoles.

Investigando mas profundamente el lado matemático de mi concepto resulto en un plan de crear 155 cuadros midiendo 10 x 10 centímetros con la forma de 5 lineas de 31 cuadros para representar los 930 personas en esta narración. La obra final medirá 50 centímetros por 3.1 metros – una forma poco usual y así mas llamativo. Me encanta esta idea de una obra larga y delgada que implica un camino de parte del visitante, y que dependiendo del punto de vista uno encontrara caras o patrón.

Ahora me falta encontrar el lugar debido para mi homenaje que quiero exponer en 2020, lo cual sera el aniversario de 80 años. Espero poder escribir noticias del desarrollo de este proyecto pronto. ¡Hasta entonces!

Convoy – responding to the Convoy of 927.

• 

Sonia Boué explains her new project: to create a tribute in 2020 for the Convoy of 927

I have been lucky enough to be invited to join www.appletye.org Paper Trail project:

“100 pieces of heritage paper spanning over 100 years, given to 100 artists to create a piece of work.

Each piece of paper represents a year. We have invited the artists to create a work in response to something that happened during that year.

The paper must be used in the creation of the work. It can be printed, painted, written word, pulped, re-created, sculpted, folded, cut, collaged etc”

As the founding artists of appletye, Dawn Cole and Dan Thompson, know my practice well they have chosen the perfect Paper Trail year for me. I’ve been given paper 16 from 1940 made at Hayle Mill, weighing 150gsm (hot pressed). The sample sent to me is approximately 10 x 7 cms.

1940 is a year I’ve worked with recently, for the Uncomfortable Histories (UH) exhibition, and the Paper Trail work very much follows on from my piece for UH, entitled They Slept in a Forest

• 

The subject of my family’s evasion of a Nazi roundup of Spanish republican exiles at Anguoulême on August 20th, 1940, to the Mauthausen camp, continues to be the focus as I build my Paper Trail response, and it’s suddenly gone from a tiny sketch (inkjet print on tracing paper which I’ve clipped to the 1940 paper sample) to an ambitious project, which I’d like to realise in 2020 as an act of remembrance. So I’m already looking for gallery space!

• 

This new work is entitled ‘Convoy’, because the roundup has become known as El convoy de los 927 (927 being the number of Spanish exiles herded into cattle wagons that day). Almost overnight the tiny sketch evolved into a big idea with unexpected mathematical underpinnings. Through this exploration I’ve become enthralled by the idea that a number (repeated) becomes a pattern, and that this can in an immediate and powerfully visual way tell us something about the inability to ‘see’ dehumanisation in the face of number.

What you are looking at in my tiny sketch are three members of my family, my grandmother, grandfather and great-grandmother, more accurately a photograph of them. It was taken in 1939, and sent to my father (most probably to reassure him in his exile in England that they – in their exile in France – were okay). By August 1940 they had somehow ‘faced down’ a second genocidal threat (the first being their evacuation from Barcelona in February 1939). By 1941 they had made their way safely back to Spain. My father remained in England.

What I’ve done is to imagine their alternate fate with a red mirror portrait, which has created a square-shaped image. I’ve multiplied it repeatedly, et voila, together with the small size of my print (10 x 7 cms to match the Paper Trail sample), you can’t immediately see that the image is made up of faces. What you see is pattern.

How my family knew, and what they knew remains unknown. Who told them of the danger and who they then told (if anyone) is probably unknowable. A fragment of oral testimony mentions a friend, but this is vague and quite elusive information narrated almost 80 years on by my mother who is now 92. She goes on to say that they returned from their place of hiding (a forest) to find “the Germans had cleared the place.”

• 

As the pattern builds the orientation turns to reveal the possibility of an alternate destiny in which historians would refer to El convoy de los 930.

• 

As I tentatively made my way into this work I chose red to symbolise the bloodshed and for the association with communism. Spanish exiles were targeted as ‘Rojos’ whether they were communists or not.

• 

• 

• 

I quickly realised that my use of the square in a square formation was problematic, also that in using 6 faces I could never aspire to creating a piece of work which would represent the 927 Spanish exiles. In any event I wanted to work with 930 to include the 3 who, as my son remarked, “got away.” I am sure they were not alone in this, but Convoy is about a very personal response, and perhaps even the expiation of survivor guilt. This feels to me like an act of both memory and solidarity.

In overshooting the mark to create 1536 faces, I began to dial back to work out how to make my 6 faces become 930, and what shape they could form.

In working this out I have arrived at my plan, to create 155 squares (10 x 10 cms). The formation will be 5 rows of 31 squares, measuring 50 cms by 3.1 meters. I now need to find a space which will take me and my tribute (probably rendered on photographic paper on whatever kind of support works best with the gallery space in question).

There may be other versions and/or further sketches but I feel my concept is whole. I have never experienced inspiration like this (based on pattern and number) and this is a whole new way of working for me, though my commitment to the history I’m working with feels the same and I’m determined to see this important tribute come to pass. There is something quite compelling about the form I have chosen.

There is much more to say about El convoy de los 927 and I will blog about it as I make my way.

Meanwhile if you know of a venue which would welcome this work in 2020 please do let me know!