The Disability And…Podcast gets right to the heart of some of the most pressing issues in arts, culture and beyond with a series of bold, provocative and insightful interviews with disabled artists, key industry figures and the odd legend. The Disability and…Podcast is currently monthly.
Intro
Welcome to the Disability And... podcast, bringing together thoughtful discussion and debate. This month, Disability Arts Online have been taken over, AlanJames Burns has been invited on a content takeover. And we leave it to them to introduce this month's podcast.
AlanJames Burns
Hello, and welcome to the Disability And... podcast. My name is AlanJames Burns. I'm an audio visual artist, curator, producer, creating interactive, socially engaged and site specific exhibitions. In my practice, I look at topics such as disability, climate change and the human mind. I'm currently doing a content takeover to Disability Arts Online, looking at the intersection of disability and the climate emergency. Today, I'm joined by Professor Julia Watts Belser, who is a professor of Jewish Studies and Disability Studies at Georgetown University and a senior research fellow at the Berkeley Centre for religion, peace and world affairs. She directs Disability and Climate Change: Public Archive Project, an initiative that documents the wisdom and insights of disabled activists, artists and first responders on the frontline of the climate crisis. I'm delighted to be chatting to Julia today about my artistic practice exploring the climate emergency and the disability experience, as well as discussing our creative practices. We are going to talk more broadly about our experiences as creative petitioners, members of the disability community, and concerned climate activists, Julia, maybe you could start and tell us about the disability and climate change initiative you direct, and why it is so crucial that conversations about climate change involve the disability community.
Julia Watts Belser
Alan, thanks so much. First, thank you for the invitation to be in conversation with you today. It's a huge pleasure to get to think with you more about your own work and also share a few of my own projects and insights and just dive into these questions together. Thanks for asking about the disability and climate change initiative that I direct. We call it a public archive project, in part because the work centres on documenting and witnessing the insights of disabled practitioners, whether activists, artists, first responders, folks who are in various ways navigating climate questions or climate intensified disaster response, to think about the particular vulnerabilities and also insights that disabled people bring to questions of climate change. I think, at the heart of the archive are a series of Q&A style conversations with disability cultural leaders, mostly it's written texts, but written in an accessible engaging format that's meant for to be easy to read and accessible. We have a few short very short audio pieces as well, audio snippets, we call them audio portraits that kind of glimpse into the the voice and the worlds of particular activists and artists. We also have some plain language and some Spanish language materials. And you know, I'd say at heart, there's three key aims to the project. First, to document the disproportionate harm that disability communities face from climate change. Second, to lift up the way that disabled people have been developing particular skills or expertise, for navigating climate disruption, I think it's sometimes really easy to see the way that we are more at risk. And so while that's obviously a crucial part of the conversation, I also want to show how we, as disabled folks have particular affinities for or expertise for responding to climate questions. And then third, we document Disability Cultural wisdom. So often, I think that's ephemeral. It's shared, like in a Zoom room over/across the kitchen table, it's not documented in ways that other people outside the community are able to get a glimpse of. And so in that sense, this is a kinship feels like to me between your work the work of a lot of disabled artists working on climate questions, and my own documentary work, to think about how do we better tell the stories, both of climate emergency itself but particularly of the way disabled folks are interacting with, responding to and grappling with climate questions.
AlanJames Burns
I really enjoyed what looking around the archive and reading all the interviews. I'm dyslexic. And I kind of did find all the interviews quite kind of accessible for me to kind of digest and take in. And the format often
Makes me so happy to hear that we actually really worked with a team that works on curating the pieces is a combination of work with Georgetown students who've taken classes with me, but who in the project really work to kind of create both simple but hopefully really engaging, compelling narratives. And I think that question of how to tell climate stories, in a way that speak, to speak to a broad audience, something that's really central to my, to my thinking.
I think that that comes across really well of it within the archive.
I wonder, as we're thinking about these questions of what Neurodivergent folks what we bring to the kind of conversation about climate, I wonder if we could turn to talk about your project, Augmented Body Altered Mind, because I think there's some really interesting shared resonance here around this question of recognising in your case, neurodiversity as a kind of asset for thinking about and engaging with climate questions. Can you talk a little bit more about that, that project?
it's an artwork that I've been creating or developing, it's, to be honest, it's more of like a series of works or a project, that I've been developing over and over a year using brain computer interfaces, so devices that you put on your head, and it takes electrical brainwave data from your head, you're looking at that to create interactive or participatory artworks, and how then they engaging that medium that technology, how I can then discuss the intersection of neurodiversity and climate change on top of that, so Augmented Body Altered Mind is an interactive artwork where audiences come in to sit down to put on their head head set activate the artwork, so it's a projected projected environment with a surround sound setup. So the visuals are kind of inspired and span imagery of like environmental climate and neurological inspired imagery, and which is controlled by the viewers brainwaves. And then there's a dialogue that accompanies this artwork by two Neurodivergent people discussing how they relate to the climate and to environment and how they understand climate, the climate emergency from their lived experiences of neurodiversity. What I find really interesting about it is because once you're working with a brain, like brain computer interfaces, that really engages audiences and really engages people with because of that technology, people like, Oh, my brainwaves are connecting. But then when you kind of engage people, through that you kind of open them up into newness and kind of understanding nuances or differences, different perspectives, which then allows me to start kind of delving into how to do the intersection of neurodiversity and climate change.
AlanJames Burns
So
Julia Watts Belser
So
the brain waves of individual viewers are actually shaping and affecting the art that's created, we are getting to see visually, a kind of visual representation of viewers internal responses, both to the, to the art itself, but particularly to the dialogue that you've described of two Neurodivergent folks in conversation about climate change.
AlanJames Burns
Yes, in many ways, but then also in some ways, like it's the artwork is, you know, there's a programme and there's an algorithm, so it is predetermined in some ways. It's not so it's not as scientific, you know, you're not really seeing someone's thoughts or brain. But I have created visuals that the brainwaves of the participant does interact and change. So like one of the visuals kind of changes, goes, it kind of looks like a red dry desert. And then there's another visual that's quite like kind of glacial ice sheets and dependent the viewers brainwaves can kind of change between what the visual between those two types of visuals, kind of can change the speed, intensity, the colour intensity, of these visuals and it moves throughout. So there's lots of different types of like neurological inspired visuals that the brain can kind of, the participants brainwaves can kind of change, which what you're looking at on screen, but there is a creative interpretation behind it, so and that then there is a dialogue that participants are listening to. And obviously that dialogue kind of, we're all we all take in data and our brain activity is kind of moving around with what we're taking in all the time. So that dialogue is affecting someone's brainwaves activities, which in turn affects the imagery, however, in saying that the material, the technology that I'm using is kind of consumer end dry BCIs, which so there's wet and dry BCI brain computer interfaces. If you want to get like a clean, accurate scientific reading, you need to put on like gels and like wet people's heads with to get conductivity but we don't do that when in an exhibition setting. But we don't need to because it's the artwork is more about a concept. It's kind of more driving thinking around these concepts. Not collected, I'm not collecting data. I'm not, it's not a scientific experiment, it's an artwork to shine, that kind of holds a mirror to these conversations, rather than and using this technology as a kind of a creative medium.
Julia Watts Belser
yeah. I'm, I'm really interested in that. I think in part because I in my own work, I'm interested in the question of whether and how disabled or Neurodivergent folks might both feel and respond differently to climate questions. And, you know, I, I'd love to know if that's a question that feels resonant for you. If that's something that you're that you're also getting at here. Yeah,
AlanJames Burns
Actually in Augmented Body Altered Mind that kind of that comes, I kind of deal a lot with our kind of question or explore that a lot within the dialogue. So I created a dialogue with writer Chandrika Narayanan-Mohan and Carys Coburn Gray. And we kind of developed it as a conversation between two people, exploring and the conversation kind of, it's a 15 minute kind of narrative, where to delve into systems of the world, that kind of perpetrate climate change, but also sit like ableist systems, and how they're how these two characters kind of interact and proceed within the systems that we are living. So one of the characters is, identifies as dyslexic, and one of the characters identifies as autistic. And we all kind of, between the kind of the writers, we all kind of have these perspectives to add into the artwork. For me, I'm dyslexic, ADHD and exploring autism. And one thing that I know is that, like, my dyslexic brain kind of connects and sees loads and different novelties and nuances within how we live and work within the world that don't make sense that don't add up. When I see things that don't quite add up. I kind of can't unsee it, and I can't kind of ignore it because and I then need to kind of try and address that, or change it.
Julia Watts Belser
I think that piece that you named Alan, about not being able to unsee it. It feels very resonant to me. I'm a wheelchair user, and my own physical disability has given me a much more acute sense of risk when it comes to climate crisis. Well, I'll give you an example this summer, in the in the US, we had some really, really significant intense days of wildfire smoke wafting down from the terrible wildfires in in Canada. Of course, this is something that's been really familiar to folks on the west coast for many years. But for many of us on the East Coast, this was a really striking kind of encounter with direct climate impacts. And I remember one morning, I, you know, went to go outside and the smoke just caught me. I felt my lungs seize up. And I felt so acutely the differential experience, the disproportionate impact that that smoke had on my own disabled body. And I think it's very risky actually to generalise about disabled people, you know, etc, as a group. But I think I've become interested in trying to understand whether there are generative effects that might also come from vulnerability, so I don't want to romanticise it or talk it up like oh, we should all experience vulnerability. That'd be good. No, quite the contrary. But I am very interested in the way that that this recognition of physical risk may at times help sort of sharpen our attention? Or maybe it's soften our attention, I don't know, but allow us to engage more deeply with climate questions because of, you know, similar to what you named, it's hard to unsee it's harder to ignore. Of course, we can experience overwhelm and think, Well, what the heck are we going to do about it? And then, so not to say it's an easy solution. But I am intrigued by that question of how recognising a sense of the stake, that we have the stake the closeness of our own bodies and minds to these questions, how that might change the way that we relate to them.
AlanJames Burns
I've often thought of that. And I've often thought like, how my vulnerabilities have, like, shaped who I am. So like, you know, I'm also queer, as well as disabled. And I often think that like, because of that, I was forced into recognising and seeing different ways of living that might be more healthier, and more supportive regenerative to other people, as well as planets and animals. And I guess that's what we're kind of talking about is like those, like, when you when you're experienced that vulnerability, you understand the repercussions of that, or you understand the effects of it. And I guess that probably does come to how I've kind of seen the environment as well. So I've always, now, there's a there's a bit of a two question thing there because within the Neurodivergent and ADHD and special and autism, there's like hyperfocus interests and special special interests where I resonate with, or I kind of feel attuned with I feel like I have an importance or a connection with And for me, one of them is the kind of the environment and the climate, and how and my entire life I've kind of been trying to implement better ways of living. So I grew up on a farm in rural Ireland, which I was always kind of just hating, or kind of giving out to my father, about the way that kind of they were working the land. And I was like a 10 year old kid not knowing much. But it was always something that like I just, I felt I always kind of felt I was kind of given knowledge around the damage we were doing to the planet. And I kind of felt an affinity or reason that that I had, it was more of a kind of like a spiritual or kind of a connection with the land that I was having. And I could feel for it. I could I was empathising, and maybe that does come from my own vulnerabilities and ways of living.
Julia Watts Belser
That's so beautiful to me, Alan, this what you're describing about the connection with the land and the sense of empathy there. As a wheelchair user, myself, I have a very close relationship with land, and ground. In my new book, loving our own bones, one of the things I write about is the way that my experience as a wheelchair user has, has really brought me into very close relationship with, with land, and Earth, I think this is sometimes somewhat paradoxical to people, because there's a notion that, you know, wheelchairs are like you can't go out, you can't be out on farms are in fact, quite, probably quite difficult. But I feel the vibrations of the ground, right, whenever I move, I feel the echo, the literal vibration of the of the surface, and the ground flows up through my caster wheels and through the frame of my wheelchair and into my body. And so, I think that's deeply shaped my own sense of connection to the earth, to place. It shaped the way I think about environmental work it, you know, I know the literal lay of the land of every place I've ever lived on wheels, and that strong sensory memory for terrain for the feeling of moving through certain spaces and places. I think there's a kind of kinship there, a closeness, that really interests me, in terms of this kind of environmental affinity that hear you naming as well.
AlanJames Burns
My kind of neurodivergence or disabilities kind of give me like similar but different resonances to the land and to Earth. Like exactly, and that different connect, different, a different type of connection that allows me to explore the earth in different ways. So for me, I think I'm made, like I was created, like my body was created to be outdoors, I need to be on the move, I need to be going, I need to be active. I love terrain and climbing and interacting, get my hands dirty. Now being an artist, I'm kind of more, I'm always on administration, I'm always at a computer. So someone who might be hearing this might not think this is true. But I don't get that enough. either. I don't I'm not outdoors, because I need to be at a computer because it takes me hours to write something, or to read something. So I don't have time to get out. Growing up on a farm, climbing trees, hugging, hugging, I used to hug trees as a kid.
Julia Watts Belser
I still hug trees. Lets not age out of it.
AlanJames Burns
But that was that, that that when I when I done that, when I was 8, that kind of really cemented my connection to the earth, as well.
Julia Watts Belser
I love this, what you're naming about your your own sense of your feeling, feeling that your body was made to be outdoors. And of course, there's so much of your life that works against being able to be in outdoor spaces, there's a lot of screens, there's a lot of obligations. But that, that thought of the the yearning that your body and mind know, for being outside, I might like to ask you then about an element of your practice, I've noticed that you make a lot of site specific work as an artist. And I'm really drawn to that I'm very interested in it in part because I think as a person, I'm just really interested in specificity of place and terrain. But I also think from a disability perspective, and maybe here, I'm just thinking with my own disability experience. But I think about the way that working outdoors and working with specific sites can also be quite daunting, right? I'm thinking about access considerations, i'm thinking about the fact that for me, if it rains, it makes the terrain you know, getting off the pavement virtually impossible, right? All of those things, when we work outside when we work outdoors. There's so much about the environment and the climate that we can't control. I mean, that's actually I think, a big part of the issue. But it's a really interesting and and I imagine complex dimension, artistically, do you want to talk a little bit more about that?
AlanJames Burns
and like obviously, the way and which kind of the climate to climate change and climate emergency, those aspects of the environment and the climate are becoming more unpredictable, is the word. A lot of my practice does kind of explore site specific works. So I might just actually kind of explain one or two, and then kind of use that. And then use that to kind of delve delve into different topics more. One of my artworks is a piece called entirely hollow aside from the dark. And it was, it's an audio installation inside underground caves that I toured around the UK and Ireland in 2017/ 2019. And I worked with a writer Sue Rainsford and composer Ian Dunphy and we created an audio piece in the form of an inner dialogue of earth going through a mental health breakdown because of the environmental impact on its body. So audiences would go inside the caves, in darkness and then listen to this kind of multi channel audio installation around them in the cave, as the cave kind of, as the kind of the dialogue and the inner dialogue of the earth kind of breaks down kind of surrounding them. Yes,
Julia Watts Belser
That's so powerful. That's so beautiful. For me just listening to you describe that, and thinking about the invitation to into the cave, as a really exquisite kind of invitation. We were speaking before about different modes of what I at least would describe as kind of intimacy with Earth. Closeness, physical closeness to trees, to land like dirt and that piece is bringing people really close
AlanJames Burns
What we've done as well as when everyone people are walking into the caves, we had the caves, speakers all over and as people were walking into the cave, the cave was breathing, so like [Breathing Noise]. But that kind of resonated a lot. We kind of developed that because caves kind of in a sense do breathe, there's hot air and cold air passing through kind of the mouth of the cave. But it became kind of, that was the sound was quite visceral, but you're kind of also on raw ground, raw earth, gravel, whichever. Kind of some caves were like sea caves, so there was still there were like bugs, creatures living in these things, we had to work obviously with a lot of environmental specialists to make sure that the projects were kind of, were not harming the environment and kind of wildlife that we were working with. But one of the things that really worked was bringing people into the like, like into the outdoors, and to discuss the climate emergency whilst in the outdoors. And I think that kind of actually relates a little bit to like, the philosophy of like Nothing About Us Without Us, it's kind of like if we're creating climate inspired work or climate emergency work, it kind of lands harder, or lands stronger when it's within the outdoors when intimate in the environment. But it obviously creates many nuances, around bringing audiences with different, diverse audiences, which has diverse access needs to these locations.
Julia Watts Belser
Yeah, I'm actually thinking that, you know, I have had the experience of being in in my life as a wheelchair user, I have, have been able to enter into two different caves, I love caves, this is a very impractical love for me, I love caves and love, love mountains in high places, and all sorts of things that are, you know, my life is full of impractical loves. It's, it's alright. But I think there's something here about, I actually think it's quite interesting to think about difficulty as a, as a part of the experience, not to, not to skidder past it. But to really sort of slow down into the question of what might access look like not as a one size fits all piece. And not necessarily to say, you know, there may be certain spaces that some some of us can't enter. I certainly that's been a part of my own experience as a lover of wild places, also acknowledging that there are times and places where I cannot go. But I think it's to me, it's really quite beautiful to be in the muck of trying to figure out access, care, the protection of making sure that there's, you know, that you're working in ways that don't harm the insects, the cave, it's the cave herself, you know, the, the, the land, and people, I think that one of the things that doing cross disability work has really helped me learn is the importance of working slowly and deliberately and in a, in a way to work in a very consultative way right to, to recognise, for example, that I won't be able to anticipate everyone's access needs from the start, obviously, as a, whenever I create something, I feel a responsibility to do as much of that preparatory work as I can. But I think there's also something really significant about recognising access as a kind of open question, a commitment that we make, but a commitment that is also a kind of question like, What do you need? How could you? How could we set things up? That work for you specifically, you know,
AlanJames Burns
I find sometimes when we do try and kind of set off projects, we're trying to get access, right, or environmental impact, right. That might kind of stumble us or kind of create barriers into kind of how to approach things. So, so I've kind of developed my practice, I have an access policy and a disability policy. And it's kind of about making it a process of like always trying to work from better sustainability and better access, but in my projects, knowing I'm never going to achieve it. And that's always going to be a process that I have to kind of work with for the rest of my, for all projects I do and kind of keep building on it. So for me, there's also spaces I can't go so I have a heightened sense auditory sensitive sensory experience. So there's a lot of spaces that are just far too overwhelming that I cannot enter and have to retreat and back out of that. So I like understand certain things to different other disabled people. There's lots of different barriers that we can all resonate with. But I get really interested when I'm working on outdoor like kind of locations because and how those nuances of how to make things more accessible, that usually aren't accessible, kind of really excite me because I guess it's like my ADHD brain wants to like think of solutions over and over and kind of connect and create connections that aren't quite obvious. My brain and I think a lot of Neurodivergent brains are great or can be great at it. So when I come across a problem or an obstacle kind of arises, I'm so excited to try and find solutions to it. And I think that's why I love kind of the that's why I work as an artist, as a producer, rather than just an artist because I want to make I want to, I'm excited about how things kind of come to being and how I can create kind of things. And working outdoors is one of those situations. My recent project was an audio installation that I done in a castle around about climate grief. And we had to bring audiences to to it, bring them out on boats and listen to, sit on the water while listen to this castle, perform a lament or a keen, an Irish keen, lamenting the biodiversity loss it's witnessed over its lifetime.
Julia Watts Belser
I find this idea of of listening to, attending to, being present to, the grief of the stones, right? The grief of the castle itself, there is something about the choice to shift the question of whose grief. Part of what you're doing artistically in this project is asking the audience those who are present to tune in to the grief of an entity that I think most dominant modes of cognition would say, stones, Castle, buildings, right, they're things they don't feel.
AlanJames Burns
That's really interesting, because I think that for me, one of the things probably set me on my path of like, my artistic path was, I was always fascinated about how other people's thought processes worked. That mine didn't seem to work in the same way as other people's. I wasn't seeing things or understanding things the same way. So I, at a very young age, I became kind of very interested in personifying things, and kind of looking like kind of looking at it from another, another person or things perspective. And I guess that comes back to that when we're talking about vulnerability and empathy earlier on in the conversation. So naturally, my practice and the way up, I create kind of when I kind of personify castles or caves, etc, that kind of, I think that'd be like that. That's why I come, that's where maybe it comes to from me, because I just, I was I, my brain wasn't working the same as others. And I wasn't understanding it, no one was telling me why that was, no one was explaining it. And I had to kind of do those activities and find that way around or about it for me.
Julia Watts Belser
It really resonates with me. And in part, I think, because I don't think I've ever accepted the dominant notion that this distinction between only certain people have feelings that matter. I've always felt a kind of kinship and connection to stones, to trees, to physical objects. I mean, I think about the intimate relationship that I have with my own wheelchair. I've done an audio project with the Scottish artist, Claire Cunningham, where we talk about animacy and the relationship that she has as a disabled artist and performer with her crutches and the the relationship that I have with my own wheelchair. But for me, it extends beyond disability tech and also to my relationship with the world. That I remember as a young child that just not accepting the notion that rocks were like, dead things. And so in, in that sense, I feel that's this kind of kinship that busts out of the expected boundaries and hierarchies. I mean, it feels really clear to me it feels disability related to me. I'm not sure I can trace it quite as precisely as you do there. But it does feel like something that is a kind of affinity that my own queer disabled sensibility has accentuated so I love so many aspects of this project.
AlanJames Burns
Another thing that I think is noteworthy to kind of think about or kind of hold within this kind of topic of discussion is kind of access to the out there is access to nature, we are increasing a lot of we're increasing access within cities and built up environments, but we're not necessarily increasing in outdoor kind of outdoor spaces. And nature has been, nature is becoming, as climate emergency unfolds, and we go through deeper and deeper into climate change, access to nature is becoming more of a human right concern, which is more prevalent in the disability community. Well, I think that's because why I kind of, I also I want to make outdoor works and site specific works is to be able to kind of create these spaces to be able to engage different types of communities through art and through producing works, be able to create opportunities to kind of be outdoors to kind of talk about these affinities that we have, that I have, that many disabled folk have. Part of why I create these works in caves and in disused or unused structures is kind of, again, just looking at that kind of looking at what we already have, what is out there that I can work with, that, that kind of gives me inspiration, or kind of that we can rather than kind of creating everything from scratch, because these locations that I work with, have come with they're set. And I don't need to build that I don't have to create that.
Julia Watts Belser
Yeah, that's quite interesting to me thinking about using or being in relationship with the world that is, with all of its complexity, I mean, I think the advantage, you know, right, of, of working in a kind of traditional space with smooth floor and a gallery and a museum is, you know, maybe you at least like to think you know, what you get.
AlanJames Burns
I actually find it very difficult to work in those kinds of spaces,
Julia Watts Belser
say more
AlanJames Burns
Because they might the artwork, is Augmented Body Altered Mind is my my kind of new one of my newest body of work. So it does kind of create a work within a kind of gallery museum environment. And it's but it was kind of before that it took me a while to kind of get or to build up the ability to be able to do that and kind of I've learnt alot from kind of immersive experiences of it of cave and Castle base, like cave and Castle based works, and how I could bring that into a gallery setting and how I can kind of take elements of that. So like, for me, when I create works, I kind of try and kind of look at the narrative, look at how an audience kind of journey through the entire aspect of the work from booking a ticket or kind of reading it online to journey into the gallery space, or to a cave, etc. And going through and I think that and that also comes from an access perspective you're kind of creating a social story and easy reader, know before you go guide, but it also comes from a Neurodivergent I need to I need to know when I'm, when I'm going to event, an event, it's really important for me to know what's happening, probably because of how my brain works and how I need to kind of, I'm very, I kind of I tried to explore how an audience members viewing, how an audience members sensory experiences being interacted with all the different possible elements of a project. And that comes from my lived experience, like actually if i, because if it's if something's off, I have to leave or I can't really engage with something because it's really off putting for me.
Julia Watts Belser
So when you I'm thinking about a couple of the pieces that you've described for us, you, you talked about the cave, the caves, people are immersed in sound. And it's a dark environment. So there's a lot here that's I think really striking and probably quite out of the ordinary for most of your I don't know whether you think of folks as audience members or participants or what language you would use
AlanJames Burns
It goes in between. Yeah, no, I use many different words for audience or participants or viewers or friends.
Julia Watts Belser
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, the friends, right let's go with the friends, the friends who are coming in I, your I love this framework of thinking about inviting the friends in for an immersive experience. And I'm hearing you say that it's easier for you to do that in a kind of wild outdoor elemental space than it is in the gallery. And then it actually has taken you quite a bit of work in outdoor spaces to be able to figure out some of the different hallmarks of this immersive experience. And then try to create that kind of quality of experience in the more sterile safe space of a gallery.
AlanJames Burns
So I ever get, I never actually connected that until right now. And that kind of probably comes back to what we were saying earlier about kind of I think my body is made to be outdoors. I'm so I found originally creating artworks outdoors was a more, as a kind of a more a way that was a kind of more natural way from A to B. And then kind of moving into gallery settings kind of I could take that experience and that kind of knowledge in and that's probably why I started outdoors in that in that way. And now I obviously I've had lots of help to be able to bring my my work indoors from many different curators and collaborators like Marek, Augmented body Altered Mind is kind of the more most recent indoor work which was kind of curated by Marek Wolynski. It was commissioned by, originally commissioned by Carlow Arts Festival who were really supportive and kind of the nurturing and developing my journey into that artwork. And I think collaborations is also a huge part of who I want my practice and work. I kind of I really come to life when interacting with people and I connect, I seem to connect really well with people, I love it. That's the best part of life for me, is interacting with people. And I, which is why my practice is highly collaborative. But that but also, I know that just just think when I started learning about my neurodiversity, I started also learning about why I wasn't able to do certain things like I wasn't able to write a script, I wasn't able to, and I'm not able to and I don't like, I'm sorry, no, I am able to but it takes more concentration and energy for me to do these things. So when I started collaborating, I was able to put my energy into the areas that I excel at, like bringing people together, bringing collaborators connecting who might be good, who else? They're good at this thing. And they're good at that thing, actually, but they why don't we connect them? They could, what could,we could do something there. Which is, which is why my work, which is my practice, my practice is extremely collaborative. And I think that's very important for me. And I think it's also very, and it's also important, I think a lot for disabled folk to kind of resonate a lot with with it, kind of building community sharing kind of experiences and learning from each other.
Julia Watts Belser
Yeah, I think about collaboration as a Disability Strategy, you are talking about script writing, not being the thing that lights you up. Of course, you can do it. But it costs so much. I've been really interested in thinking about collaboration as a way to think differently about how to tap and invite people to sort of bring different look, it's not just strengths. I think it's also pleasures, like what do you like? What do you want? What makes the work feel good? I love the way that it seems that's a part of collaboration for you as well, sort of figuring out how to read and recognise these different affinities and strengths and bring folks together who might really enjoy working together.
AlanJames Burns
That's something I think we, because we kind of connect over that, because that's exactly what that's what you do in your practice with your initiatives and archives. And I think that's kind of one of the reasons why we can connect to each other on this. I also think that like if we are going to make change or kind of we're looking at we're all here trying to make more positive changes kind of make do kind of live better. And if we do we can only I, I want to live better by living together. Interestingly, one of the influences for augmented body altered mind the brain computer interface work on neurodiversity, and climate change was new theory of evolution called complimentary cognition spearheaded by Helen Taylor from University of Strathclyde. And they have proposed that evolution purposefully creates people who are Neurodivergent to each other. Because in a community if you have many people whose brains actively think different to each other, then they have a better chance of working together and creatively coming up with a solution out of it to get themselves out of a problem. So And obviously the artwork, then it looks at that true kind of the biggest challenge where we're a;; facing climate change, and how can we work together to collaborate to rethink your way out of the solution. But I think that that speaks the same to, like kind of speaks to like how humans are meant to live, like we live collaboratively, we're collaborative creatures, and the more diverse perspectives that they, that we have will give it will allow us to kind of come up with the best solutions.
Julia Watts Belser
That's been a really important principle that undergirds a lot of my own thinking and practice around censoring disability insights in the climate change conversation, exactly that. That sense that disabled people have knowledge and expertise and understanding that the world needs, right, we need these different ways of working and thinking and perceiving and experiencing. And, you know, and I think especially the recognition of that, the kind of complexity that disability and neurodiversity or neurodivergence bring to this conversation, that complexity may in fact, actually be a deep asset. One of the things that will will most help us make connections and draw insights that we haven't yet been able to make and that we really desperately need. Alan, I think we could, we could go on for hours. This has been an extraordinary conversation. It has been a huge pleasure to be in conversation with you today. Thank you so much.
AlanJames Burns
Oh, Julia. That the pleasure is, I feel like the pleasure is all mine. I feel like I've gotten I've been so enriched by this conversation. A thank you so much. And thank you to Disability Arts Online for the opportunity to have this discussion and for the content takeover. Thank you all very much.
Julia Watts Belser
It's been a huge pleasure. Thank you so much.
Outro
Thank you for listening. We do hope you've enjoyed this episode of Disability And... Next month, Mind the Gaps associate producer Paul Wilshaw chats with James Leadbitter, aka the vacuum cleaner about mental health and the arts.