Arts House Listening Program

This is a summary of Arts House’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan 2023 – 2028 narrated by Kath Duncan. This plan is available in alternative formats on the Arts House website: www.artshouse.com.au

This is a summary of Arts House’s Disability Inclusion Action Plan 2023 – 2028 narrated by Kath Duncan. This plan is available in alternative formats on the Arts House website: www.artshouse.com.au

Equity Builder Track 4 by Arts House Listening Program

Equity Builder Track 3 by Arts House Listening Program

Equity Builder Track 2 by Arts House Listening Program

Equity Builder Track 1 by Arts House Listening Program

(suspended brain, projections): Are you projecting other people’s ideas all over my neurology? Head in the clouds, raising my consciousness with the help of the tech team, making my MRI 3D. --- Society can project a lot of harmful stereotypes onto the autistic community. We commonly experience a world where people don’t understand our responses. I want to project a future where autism is valued an...

(Self-portrait as both ape and topless woman) wild and tame, strong and vulnerable, stupid and smart, masc and femme, masking and unable to mask: I can’t make a world without discrimination, I can’t end all ableism, I CAN draw a picture that holds us in the face of everything. --- Sometimes it’s so raw when you can’t regulate - if you’re under pressure, or out in society. I judge myself so much, f...

(Mermaid deer mask painting): Don’t look at my mystical mermaid deer winged body. I’m totally a regular norm-core human, that masks real good. --- Masking is a terminology for hiding or suppressing one’s attributes. Many autistic people develop this skill in response to discrimination. It can be hard to know what you want, if you’re pretending your needs don’t matter. It’s really hard to know when...

(blob painting): sometimes I like it when my executive functions drop. I can like being over stimulated, sometimes it’s funny and confusing. I can get sound to touch synesthesia; it can tickle me in weird places, like my organs. --- It’s nice to show myself without a mouth when I can’t talk. With no eyes, when I can’t process the visual information I’m getting. With no head, when I can’t catch a t...

(Questionnaire): “I’m not testing your responses, it’s only because I’m not a qualified neurologist and it hasn’t been passed by an ethics board” - and the other barriers between us… I made a game where I secretly test people’s global abstract reasoning. Although it’s not so secret because I have no filter and I tell everyone that’s what I’m doing.” --- I want to invite you to imagine what it’s li...

(brain canvases) In collection we gestalt: A flock of birds in the wind A school of fish in the ocean Responding to water and wind Like minds moving in collection, together we gestalt --- Because these are the artworks of around 50 contributing artists it is a bit weird to title it for everyone. I don’t feel an ownership over my ideas or artworks. I do not believe in my identity as separate from s...

(braille book): Seeing through fingers with the eyes of my body feels good --- One of the wonderful things about this project was finding out that some people who are partially sighted or have low vision have a strong relationship with stimming. It is sad to find out that they have experienced similar forms of shaming and restraining to me. I love to rock my body and use proprioception to sense wh...

(Film): Culture expressed through gesture, sensations all over, and the way the world understands itself: we don’t want to put anything in here that doesn’t make it better. --- I wanted to obscure the meaning for the audience, because my experience of autism feels obscure for me. I asked everyone the hardest political questions that I don’t know the answer to. Many of them are not even in my minor...

(third sound cone, chin hair recording): Chin Hair is the name of our new band. --- Chin Hair is improvisational lyrical abstractionist, dada Da Da dada daa-ists, non-modern modernist in a post-post-post-modernist city, deconstructing slime, pixels, stim vocabularies, and other ephemeral and mutable mediums. Recontextualising recycled and household objects as art supplies and renegade instruments,...

(Sound cone that goes with sensory stim brain): I was thinking about you, lovely member of the general public. There’s probably nothing general about you. I don’t believe that normal exists. --- I have sound to touch synesthesia and audio sensory issues. It’s like the volume of the world has been turned up way too high. Inside me it is always quiet. I can’t talk in my head. I can’t read in my head...

(suspended brain, projections): Are you projecting other people’s ideas all over my neurology? Head in the clouds, raising my consciousness with the help of the tech team, making my MRI 3D. --- A papier mache top-down MRI scan of a brain, approximately 2M high by 1M wide. It is suspended high in the space. One side is smooth. The other has contours and textured grooves that are the MRI scans in a...

(meltdown blob): It’s multiple things that collide in common, that’s also right and it’s very different. When my executive functions drop, I forget I have legs and I think I have so many hands because I get so many sensations from them. I’m a meltdown blob. A large sculpture made of paper mache with 4 human shaped arms extending out of it at odd angles. The work is all white, standing approximatel...

You’re listening to the Sublime Stim Audio Description playlist. This is a running playlist that presents the works in Studio 1, then Studio 2, from left to right as you enter the room.

(Self-portrait as human black swan): What is assumed, what is expected, what is invisible, what is very clear: the air is more buzzy, things feel more expansive, there’s a lightness to the air molecules and a depth of feeling. A human with autism, or an autism with human, or a swan with hands? I’m definitely something… A drawing of a black swan. It is set in a brown rectangular frame approximately...

(lamp): I have an idea what autism is: switched on, lighted up, plugged in, spark, light-bulb moment, illuminated, brilliant, a light in the darkness, fairy-light enlightened, glowing, luminous. And I can describe a lamp in lots of ways. --- Suspended from a high beam, approx 1.5m high by 1m wide, a large white conical lantern hangs, its shape similar to a 1920 art deco lamp. Lit from within, it h...

(brain canvases) In collection we gestalt: A flock of birds in the wind A school of fish in the ocean Responding to water and wind Like minds moving in collection, together we gestalt A collection of 62 painted canvases. Each is a cross-section of a human brain and shaped as such. Each brain canvas is about half a metre in length and height. They hang on black netting on opposing walls within the...

(Questionnaire): “I’m not testing your responses, it’s only because I’m not a qualified neurologist and it hasn’t been passed by an ethics board” - and the other barriers between us… I made a game where I secretly test people’s global abstract reasoning. Although it’s not so secret because I have no filter and I tell everyone that’s what I’m doing.” ---- 10 large sheets of paper are hung at roughl...

(sound cone that goes with projections): I was speaking out loud; I forgot you were there recording me. I was very busy pretending it was all in my head. I feel less awkward that way (which sometimes produces more awkward results). --- Perception informs opinion on the world in general. 10% of our visual perception is made up and filled in by our brains; because of the way the vision from our two...

(Self-portrait as both ape and topless woman) wild and tame, strong and vulnerable, stupid and smart, masc and femme, masking and unable to mask: I can’t make a world without discrimination, I can’t end all ableism, I CAN draw a picture that holds us in the face of everything. --- Sometimes it’s so raw when you can’t regulate - if you’re under pressure, or out in society. I judge myself so much, f...