Accessibility Aids 2022
Brighton, UK: Draw to Performance festival 2022.
A live performance working with various forms of drawing tools: Digital pen, Programming code, Robot pen-plotter & Paint.
The drawing tools are used as assitive aids acting as different extensions of the body and enabling movements that my body finds difficult. The relationship with assistive technology and disability is complex and in using them we are not trying to erase the disabled identify by fixing people. These tools have a resistance in how they are design to be used, or how they are perceived. These failings and contrasts between machine bodies and human bodies are present in the soft lines of hand and the precision of machine.
The work begins with a hand draw line which acts as the input for all of the performance. Working interactively with programming code and exploring the parameter space the line is turned into a pattern. Paint is carefully placed by hand on a canvas and finally the pen-plotter using various clay sculpting tools manipulates the paint.
There are indirect forms or accessibility aid present in the performance in the form of wheelchair and glasses. These tools are so directly absorbed into body that while they are present they are not conscious parts of the performance.
The performance draws from the blurring line between bodies and machines that comes from the experience of living with a wheelchair as a body.
Supported by: The Studio Recovery Fund 2022, Bath Spa University
