‘If disabled people are able to access ways of being in the world that the ‘able-bodied’ are not, who exactly is disabled?’
Unfixed, a creative research residency hosted by the Australian Network for Art & Technology, Access2Arts (Aus), Unlimited (UK) and Watershed (UK) brought ten artists from Australia and the UK together in Adelaide to explore this delectable question. It was the hook that caught me, and I was excited to chat with those seeking answers.
This question provokes. It threatens to turn tables on language. It confronts categorisation and dares us to redefine terminology: to rewrite the labels with which we shape and limit ourselves. It uses language like a flint to spark a shift in perception.
I’m a poet, I love that shit.
So, in the unique silver structure that is the AC Arts building, I caught up with two of the resident artists: Daniel Savage (ACT), a photographic artist working with ‘constructed portraiture’, and Catherine Long (UK),a dancer exploring the individual and collective body, to chat words and art.
A two-week residency with no fixed outcome is a difficult thing to articulate to the world outside it. Best I can tell, ten diverse artists gathered in a big silver box, previous technological impossibilities were presented as possible, and words – like the overcoats they are – were hung on the walls and unstitched.What was experienced was a full-bodied immersion into access logistics and deep conversation.
Language and perception were themes that kept surfacing.One of the major talking points, Savage tells me, was asking “Who is disabled? What is disabled? What is disability?”
“How do we contextualise that?”
“I have been very self-conscious[speaking about disability] in Canberra”, he says. “I’m coming from a very isolated place. Although I’m saying it with some authority, am I actually being representative both in Australia and in the wider international context?”
Reflecting on outside perceptions, Savage tells me “I think the general idea [is] you get a bunch of disabled artists in the room and they must all agree because there’s this one way of thinking – no. There’s so much back and forth. It’s all been very positive. And that’s what [Unfixed has] been about: how do we use language? What do we mean? How can we grow and learn from that?”
Savage’s No offense, but… (2014) is a series of photographs where individuals in printed t-shirts directly confront the viewer with the language of labels and perception. He tells me he was interested in the space between “overt discriminatory language – the language we all know we’re not allowed to say”, and “subtle discrimination – the questions people in the position of other are asked”.As a wheelchair user Savage gets asked: Are you sick? When are you getting better?
No offense, but… Daniel Savage, photo: Daniel Savage, danielsavage.com.au
In viewing No offense, but … “You had to acknowledge that relationship between the language and the person,” he says, “and the position you’re putting them in. It was about opening a space for discussion.” Through the work Savage asks back: “Are those questions okay? Do people understand where those questions are coming from, how they’re still subjugating you as the other?”
“Through the history of disability, agency has been taken away from the disabled person and then they’ve been told this is how the world’s allowed to interact around you or this is how you’re allowed to interact with it.”
“I’m fine with people being offended by language, and that’s their relation to it. I don’t like people getting offended for me,” he says.
Savage’s work speaks in delightfully subtle ways, too, whether he’s slipping contradictions within the “truthful space” he’s crafted in his images, as in the contemplatively slow fall of feathers in video work The Fall Of Icarus (2013), or repositioning reality at the installation stage by hanging work at his own eye height.
“It’s just another level of me putting something in the work that [audiences] can read what they want into that space.”
I place similar questions to Long on the role of language, it’s relationship to body in her work, and how words shape what we see.
“When I’m writing about my work language is crucial,” she says. “I pay a lot of attention to the way I use language and the way other people use language.”
Long’s Work in Progress (2004) created with dancer Frank Bock, director Arlette George and musician Chris Brierley, used language to translate movement from other bodies onto her own. She first created audio descriptions of how other bodies move in ways that are impossible for her.
Then, in creating the piece, she says, “I moved in space in response to the audio recordings and there was this level of utter impossibility, regardless of whose body would have been in the space, because I was [describing movement] in such detail.”
Edited together, the ums and interstitial moments of thought and hesitation from the audio recordings became the soundtrack for movement. “There was this sort of wordlessness and a feeling of not being able to explain or describe what’s going on for me physically,” she says.
“I try to unpick and use language in a way that I hope makes people question. Words can become meaningless in a lot of ways, or we don’t think about the way we use a lot of words.”
In this residency Long’s awareness of her own use of language has been heightened. The group has been holding up words and asking:What do I actually mean when I say that?
Meaning, she says, is personal as well., “People often say I only have one arm. I say I don’t only have one. I have one”. When describing bodies – her own and others – Long says she tends not to adhere to what others might expect. “I don’t often use the word ‘disabled’ in relation to myself. I say I was born with a unique physical structure and I experience chronic pain.”
On the questions she gets asked (What happened? Were you born like that or did you have an accident?), Long says “they’re not seeing the fact that my physical structure is very unusual and that actually creates a lot more problems for me than not having an arm would. They’re kinda missing something. So I investigate how people project loss onto my body.”
In Impasse (2014), Long worked with choreographer Doran George to explore her individual body. “The pain really helped choreograph the work, because it dictated it in a lot of ways,” she says. In the resulting work Long played with “challenging the ideals of what the body should look like, especially what a dancing body should look like. This is how it is, this is who I am, this is what’s here. I’m not trying to be anything other than this.”
Impasse Catherine Long. Photo: Christian Kipp from 'Impasse' at Summer Dancing 2014. Decoda. Choreography: Doran George, Film editing: Barry Shils, Costume: Anne Marie Allen.
Living with visible disabilities, for these artists an exploration of disability in their work seems necessary. Savage frequently includes his body in his photographic work about perception and representation. “People see me in a wheelchair and just assume that nothing below my waist works,” he says.“In actual fact I can stand up out of my wheelchair. So that action of standing up and standing apart from my chair is a very simple action of breaking that idea.”
For Long, control and representation are the very reasons she makes performance. “So much of the time my body feels like it’s on display just in day-to-day life. So by putting my body on stage or in front of the camera I have more control over what I choose to show, what I don’t show, and how I choose to show it. You can never dictate an audiences’ interpretation or response because it’s what they bring in to it, but at least I have some choice as to how I represent myself when I’m performing.”
Of her time with Unfixed, she says, “some of the discussions we’ve had have been very challenging and some of them have been very thought provoking. I feel like I’m going to be processing this for another month.”
“I’m really curious as to how it’s going to impact and inform my own practice. And it’s going to be interesting to see what directions people pursue, ” she says, spilling the beans on a potential collaboration with local writer Michele Saint-Yves.
As we wrap up, the overwhelming sense from both Savage and Long is that the residency has created a strong and unique community. It’s not been easy, but directly exploring everyone’s needs seems to have enlivened the connection. From the outside I know something magical has occurred, but I’ve got Buckley’s of truly understanding what: I just note the sparks and try not to break the spell.
Reflecting on their words and the residency, I realise the languageisn’t just in the work, but in our minds. The art just starts the conversation.These artists are creating diverse and intriguing work with a material both unique and universal: their own human form. What if what’s most fixed is not our physical bodies, but our perception of them?