1 00:00:00,213 --> 00:00:01,763 Trigger warning 2 00:00:01,800 --> 00:00:04,246 This video contains flickering and flashing images that could be triggering for some people. 3 00:00:18,330 --> 00:00:22,381 One day I realized that what I feel is not “normal”. 4 00:00:22,842 --> 00:00:26,082 I’ve always been wary of the word “normal,” 5 00:00:26,549 --> 00:00:28,283 it has never described me 6 00:00:28,442 --> 00:00:32,023 but I learnt to identify what is constant as normal, 7 00:00:32,303 --> 00:00:34,236 even if it weren’t to others. 8 00:00:35,136 --> 00:00:37,023 The normal of abnormal. 9 00:00:37,664 --> 00:00:39,344 I was comfortable there, 10 00:00:39,491 --> 00:00:40,491 consistent, 11 00:00:41,071 --> 00:00:44,333 without knowing that something in my perception was broken. 12 00:00:44,727 --> 00:00:47,863 Without knowing that the impossibility of naming, 13 00:00:47,915 --> 00:00:49,992 came from not being able to recognize, 14 00:00:50,093 --> 00:00:51,782 from not being able to perceive. 15 00:00:52,856 --> 00:00:55,800 But one day, the term to name it came to me: 16 00:00:56,084 --> 00:00:58,692 sensory disturbances, 17 00:00:59,283 --> 00:01:02,574 an affected capacity of the nervous system 18 00:01:02,608 --> 00:01:04,288 to interpret stimuli. 19 00:01:05,301 --> 00:01:07,566 A diminished sensibility 20 00:01:07,760 --> 00:01:11,472 that perceives more that I thought in one half of my body 21 00:01:11,600 --> 00:01:14,467 and less that I believed in the other half. 22 00:01:15,038 --> 00:01:18,622 A spectrum that goes from feeling to not feeling at all 23 00:01:18,858 --> 00:01:21,930 and most of the time is feeling something weird 24 00:01:22,394 --> 00:01:25,194 that is easier to explain in visual terms 25 00:01:25,303 --> 00:01:26,983 that in spoken language 26 00:01:27,370 --> 00:01:29,970 and words that are associated to touch. 27 00:01:42,529 --> 00:01:45,921 I think that my sensibility is distributed unevenly. 28 00:01:46,695 --> 00:01:49,403 All the sensibility that my nerves lack, 29 00:01:49,469 --> 00:01:51,149 I have it in my emotions. 30 00:01:52,149 --> 00:01:56,111 Physical insensibility, emotional hyper-sensibility. 31 00:01:57,118 --> 00:01:58,798 It is an odd operation 32 00:01:59,004 --> 00:02:00,807 that departs from recognizing, 33 00:02:00,934 --> 00:02:02,872 or more precisely the failure to recognize 34 00:02:03,139 --> 00:02:04,739 what the body feels 35 00:02:05,231 --> 00:02:07,537 and turns into a search for language, 36 00:02:07,785 --> 00:02:11,817 for words to name, to describe, to understand, to make sense, 37 00:02:12,109 --> 00:02:14,148 that remain spiraling in my mind. 38 00:02:15,085 --> 00:02:18,705 It turns into confusion, mis-identification, 39 00:02:18,826 --> 00:02:21,154 frustration, anger, sadness, 40 00:02:21,425 --> 00:02:23,658 a mix of all and none. 41 00:02:24,112 --> 00:02:24,878 Nothing. 42 00:02:25,158 --> 00:02:26,011 Blank. 43 00:02:26,645 --> 00:02:29,042 Rigidity not only in the muscles. 44 00:02:29,962 --> 00:02:31,562 Mental contracture, 45 00:02:31,890 --> 00:02:34,010 a mass that shouldn’t be there 46 00:02:34,137 --> 00:02:38,097 but was formed because of the constant extended never ending over exertion. 47 00:02:38,930 --> 00:02:41,161 A mass of inflamed tissue, 48 00:02:41,348 --> 00:02:45,285 threads of tangled ideas without beginning or ending, 49 00:02:45,310 --> 00:02:46,830 indistinguishable. 50 00:02:48,527 --> 00:02:51,019 But as muscular contractures do, 51 00:02:51,093 --> 00:02:54,221 they sometimes get better by stretching, strengthening. 52 00:02:54,408 --> 00:02:57,063 Exercising again and again: 53 00:02:57,990 --> 00:02:59,763 keep the posture, count to ten. 54 00:02:59,964 --> 00:03:00,964 Rest. 55 00:03:01,150 --> 00:03:02,750 Repeat three times. 56 00:03:03,096 --> 00:03:04,830 Repeat three times a day. 57 00:03:05,149 --> 00:03:06,509 Repeat everyday. 58 00:03:06,657 --> 00:03:07,857 Repeat forever. 59 00:03:09,467 --> 00:03:11,533 The body is not only the body. 60 00:03:12,080 --> 00:03:14,013 Feeling is not just feeling. 61 00:03:14,867 --> 00:03:17,667 Half of my feeling is more like thinking. 62 00:03:18,021 --> 00:03:19,141 Feelthinking. 63 00:03:20,008 --> 00:03:21,688 Not in a poetic way, 64 00:03:22,101 --> 00:03:24,995 but as the impossiblity of only feeling. 65 00:03:25,623 --> 00:03:29,327 Because feeling, touch, is not reliable, 66 00:03:29,815 --> 00:03:31,761 it doesn’t give enough information. 67 00:03:32,601 --> 00:03:35,027 I have talked about the embodied for so long 68 00:03:35,454 --> 00:03:40,117 but I don’t think I would be able to recognize it, describe it, feel it, or just know it. 69 00:03:40,557 --> 00:03:41,477 Or maybe I would, 70 00:03:41,770 --> 00:03:43,290 in my altered way, 71 00:03:43,930 --> 00:03:47,446 that not only affects the perception of my body, 72 00:03:47,730 --> 00:03:49,916 but also of all the places that it goes to, 73 00:03:50,210 --> 00:03:52,676 all the relationships that it holds, 74 00:03:52,988 --> 00:03:55,122 all the labor that it performs. 75 00:04:11,008 --> 00:04:15,394 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson describes the crip experience as a misfit. 76 00:04:15,948 --> 00:04:18,348 As not fitting into an environment. 77 00:04:18,596 --> 00:04:20,482 It is not the same at every place, 78 00:04:20,682 --> 00:04:24,458 it depends on the specific conditions of that environment: 79 00:04:24,733 --> 00:04:26,908 of how the space is built, 80 00:04:27,182 --> 00:04:29,649 of the medium that is used to communicate something, 81 00:04:29,960 --> 00:04:31,772 of schedules and times, 82 00:04:32,186 --> 00:04:36,491 of whether and light, of noise, language and contact. 83 00:04:37,479 --> 00:04:41,383 We are an unformed mass that not always holds the same shape, 84 00:04:41,680 --> 00:04:44,473 that sometimes fits where yesterday it didn’t. 85 00:04:44,967 --> 00:04:45,786 That sometimes, 86 00:04:45,846 --> 00:04:49,126 with pressure and will it is forced to fit. 87 00:04:49,643 --> 00:04:53,243 That sometimes it fits and suddenly it overflows and doesn’t fit anymore. 88 00:04:53,758 --> 00:04:56,632 That stops fitting from one day to another and never 89 00:04:56,668 --> 00:04:58,485 goes back to its previous form. 90 00:04:59,026 --> 00:04:59,875 That sometimes, 91 00:05:00,082 --> 00:05:01,342 few times, 92 00:05:01,669 --> 00:05:05,381 finds a flexible environment that anticipates its misfits 93 00:05:05,507 --> 00:05:07,653 and is prepared to mold, 94 00:05:07,760 --> 00:05:10,359 to contain, to hold, 95 00:05:10,713 --> 00:05:14,553 to give time and space and let the new form settle. 96 00:05:31,228 --> 00:05:33,255 The body is a domain of art. 97 00:05:33,722 --> 00:05:37,392 But not all the bodies in art take the same place, 98 00:05:37,799 --> 00:05:39,754 either physical or symbolic. 99 00:05:40,506 --> 00:05:44,134 Not all bodies in art are seen with the same gaze 100 00:05:44,428 --> 00:05:46,874 nor all bodies in art have a voice. 101 00:06:00,114 --> 00:06:03,634 There are alterations that happen in the symbolic too, 102 00:06:03,801 --> 00:06:07,886 when addressing narratives, representation, concepts. 103 00:06:08,631 --> 00:06:10,869 When rupture is not material 104 00:06:11,189 --> 00:06:14,089 and sensibility operates as a point of view. 105 00:06:14,789 --> 00:06:17,154 Perspective alterations. 106 00:06:17,274 --> 00:06:19,647 Point of view alterations. 107 00:06:20,536 --> 00:06:24,528 What can we access from this Other point of view? 108 00:06:25,506 --> 00:06:28,172 What can be seen from this perspective? 109 00:06:29,349 --> 00:06:32,562 Is seeing the possibility of entering as well? 110 00:06:32,949 --> 00:06:34,389 Of participating? 111 00:06:34,554 --> 00:06:35,994 Of taking action? 112 00:06:36,394 --> 00:06:39,937 Of sustaining space, the body, a position, 113 00:06:40,164 --> 00:06:42,230 in this place that we accessed? 114 00:06:55,956 --> 00:07:00,850 I understand accessibility as access to something more specific: 115 00:07:01,284 --> 00:07:03,798 a place, a piece of information, 116 00:07:03,838 --> 00:07:07,051 a time-space with clear shedule and location, 117 00:07:07,381 --> 00:07:10,132 a program with set beginning and ending, 118 00:07:10,352 --> 00:07:14,485 a content or narrative, a product or service. 119 00:07:15,460 --> 00:07:19,053 But that accessibility is preceded by access, 120 00:07:19,596 --> 00:07:23,620 by a posibility of even knowing about the existence 121 00:07:23,634 --> 00:07:25,840 of that which requires accessibility. 122 00:07:26,588 --> 00:07:29,042 Access as posiblity. 123 00:07:29,736 --> 00:07:31,488 Posibility of closeness, 124 00:07:31,768 --> 00:07:32,928 proximity. 125 00:07:33,621 --> 00:07:35,528 Posiblity of knowing. 126 00:07:36,522 --> 00:07:41,269 Disposition of time-space-energy to hold posibility. 127 00:07:57,146 --> 00:08:00,602 What kind of art world I am normalizing and centering? 128 00:08:01,192 --> 00:08:04,344 Which are its practices dynamics and access? 129 00:08:05,090 --> 00:08:08,034 How much is the impulse of professionalization 130 00:08:08,437 --> 00:08:12,824 sanitizing, whitewashing and diluting disability? 131 00:08:13,672 --> 00:08:17,012 How much do we contribute to the narrative of the good crip, 132 00:08:17,413 --> 00:08:19,566 the one for mass consumption, 133 00:08:20,287 --> 00:08:21,692 one that is not an inconvenience, 134 00:08:21,945 --> 00:08:23,305 one that passes, 135 00:08:23,483 --> 00:08:24,843 a functional one 136 00:08:25,210 --> 00:08:29,311 that doesn’t break the system nor requires different ways 137 00:08:29,539 --> 00:08:34,081 but instead absorbs the over exertion of adapting and keeping up? 138 00:08:35,201 --> 00:08:41,490 But still, I insist in artistic practice as labor. 139 00:08:42,230 --> 00:08:44,230 That is a space to fight for, 140 00:08:44,302 --> 00:08:46,635 to disrupt, to find possibilities. 141 00:08:47,500 --> 00:08:49,572 It’s not only about representation anymore, 142 00:08:49,980 --> 00:08:52,446 it’s about practice and taking action 143 00:08:53,058 --> 00:08:54,063 and it’s about labor 144 00:08:54,604 --> 00:08:58,908 and the possibility of sustaining it to sustain ourselves.