Eighteenth International Conference on the Arts in Society

Abstract

This project looks to extend memoir, and the constructions of ethnography, especially autoethnography, merging them into simultaneously individual and collective art-making practices. Working collaboratively with communities of disabled students and scholars, this project asks: What stories of ours are not seen? How are we not visible? And how can our stories offer us a voice, a space to share our experiences with the university and the world? The animations are then ‘mapped’ onto the buildings of the institution. Different than projecting a film onto a surface, ‘projection mapping’—also referred to as video mapping or spatially augmented reality—is a technique used to turn objects, such as buildings, stages, or landscapes, into a display surface for video projection. This project formed through a series of monthly workshops with groups of participating students and scholars whereby ‘we’ collectively narrated disability experiences within academia and participated in interviews and discussions with each other. Collaboratively, we consulted on a series of animations exploring our experiences and metaphorically (through projection mapping) embed them into the very structure of the institution through the screening/ performance of the works. As a multidisciplinary artist, my creative practice is generated from my lived experiences. Often taking the form of visual memoir in comics, animation, three-dimensional sculptural works and performance. My work as an artist often negotiates the grounds of privilege and inequality—my own and others—and works to open dialogues, at times uncomfortable, between people as we experience each other’s narratives in ways that illuminate storytellers, audiences, and the space in-between.