Interdependent Practice

Interdependence is a core value of disability culture. Petra Kuppers, explores the connection of this within disability art and culture and specifically in poetry in her work, Disability Culture and Community Performance. She writes:

“Interdependence is a word with resonance in disability culture circles, where the self-reliant individual is often out of reach, and self-reliance’s ableist features discernible. So in my recent poetry performance work which is to me always critical work, I have become interested in what happens when the illusion of poetic loneliness is given up,  this romantic veil is ripped and poetry emerges instead in the lean against familiar words, in the interplay of voices and in communal effort. What happens to the lyrical eye in collaborative work? How do the boundaries of individual self, sound and utterance, structural positioning and lyric flight break productively in communal poetry?” (101-102)

“In the rhizomatic model of disability, I keep on the move and rest while leaning. I offer these energies to you. “(108)

As a core value, interdependence - and thus disability culture and embodiment, then feel at fundamental odds, with western framing of contemporary and conceptual art practices, where tremendous value is placed on independent creation, unique thought and the conceptual authorship of The Artist. An artist need not create work by their own hand, employing the labour of background painters, Brillo box makers, edition print-makers and Foundry technicians, nor do they need to work strictly alone - working in collaboration or with community (although this too is often undervalued) - but instead the value is placed on this concept of mental and creative independence.

Like Kuppers, I too “have become interested in what happens when the illusion of poetic loneliness is given up”. Interdependence, which I see as an close relative of collaboration, requires not that we just create or brainstorm together, but that we also mutually and willingly support and depend on each other, building a practice based on each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Artist Therapy

I went to Vancouver because I knew that I needed the creative support of long time art-pal, JD Derbyshire. I kind of describe our time together as Artist Therapy - Therapy for an artist to help make art (vs. Art for a person to help make Therapy). I told JD all the things I had learned so far, all of the questions and challenges I was tackling and the blocks I was coming up against. She noted my comments, asked me questions, challenged my assumptions, reminded me of things I was saying, and made me dig deeper. After a few sessions, JD shared with me this strategy of the brainstorming buffet. We put down every idea, no matter my assumption of its suitability, and then we put down more ideas and more ideas until we couldn’t think of any more. Then eat BBQ, went for long walks with dogs, had affogatos, searched for found objects and discarded treasures and came up with more ideas.

I showed JD the pivotal and foundational work In My Language by Mel Baggs and we had even more ideas.

Then we started to play.

Relational Aesthetics (of Access)

“It takes two to make an image” - Jean-luc-Godard

Working within a motto that JD often uses, “one size fits one”, we started experimenting with some of the values I had set out for my own self-premised practice: limited speaking/words, materials focused, non-representational, abstract. JD brought in: ongoing consent, playful humour, improv, scale-ability. We created through mutually agreed upon boundaries/elements - selection of the materials to work with, the space we would use and who would decide when the work was done. We worked together, playfully, with the materials in a way that felt like the creation process was a performance in and of itself. The installation / sculpture made from our performance was both a finished work and evidence of our creation-performance. The connections between interdependence, disability and relational aesthetics, were instant and obvious. The result is something I am calling Interdependent Experiential Abstraction. Here is an excerpt from our first session and the resulting work.