Resource Roundtable: perspectives on loneliness from autistic artists
Short video artworks reflecting on faux pas, masking, sensory overwhelm and loneliness
Hello!
Thank you for joining me here this week in the Neurodiverse Universe. I love a plan and knowing what to expect. If you, too, thrive with predictability, you can refresh yourself on the monthly post structure at the bottom of this post.
The third posts each month I’m calling Resource Roundtables (who doesn’t love a bit of alliteration?). The idea is to bring you a selection of resources that have some kind of educational or community-building purpose. Essentially: things I hope you’ll enjoy and also find useful. This first sharing is more of the enjoyment type than a directly educational resource, but there’s still insight to be gained from the short videos I’m sharing with you.
A loose theme has been brewing this month – one about connection (with ourselves through time, with non-human others) and disconnection (and research into autistic people’s experiences of loneliness). The following videos come from a collaborative project I was involved in with Figment Arts – a community arts organisation providing workshop space and mentoring for neurodivergent artists and artists with learning disabilities – exploring the themes of loneliness and communication barriers. The original plan had been to co-create an accessible video sharing the findings from a piece of research I’d done into communication between autistic and non-autistic speakers. We did make this, but most of the fun came from the artists spending time on their own videos, riffing with the themes and making them their own.
Café Faux Pas
This first video, by Eleanor Button, was an absolute hoot to see come together. Eleanor focussed in on communication ‘faux pas’ and how they can isolate people with atypical communication styles.
From the Station
From the Station by William Hanekom drew on noir film imagery and the artists’ love of all things trains and spooksome.
Will thought about masking and close connections with animal friends.
Bear
Bear by Ryan Medlock is part of a wider ecosystem of Bear-based artwork. In this video, Ryan explores the impact of sensory overwhelm on autistic people’s ability to socialise and connect with others.
Loneliness
Loneliness by Debbie Caulfield captures Debbie’s poignant meditation on loneliness, spoken directly to camera by the artist herself.
Finally, none of these videos could have been made without the funding from the Economic and Social Research Council – so props to them!
The structure / a monthly posting map
This is the third week of regular posts, and a structure is forming! It might feel a little bitty at the moment but every four weeks the pattern will repeat.
The first kind of monthly post will be a long-form essay, reflecting on bigger-picture ideas and concepts, loosely related to neurodiversity. You can read this month’s essay, about interspecies intimacies, here. The second monthly post will be an episode from mini-pod / audio note series Echoes from the Neuroverse, where I’ll be reading aloud an article I’ve written elsewhere, or introducing a podcast and sharing a link to the full episode. You can hear the first episode, about some research into autism and loneliness, here. Every third week will be a Resource Roundtable post like this: introducing and reflecting on educational neurodiversity resources and every fourth week will be an episode of the Beyond the Abstract mini podcast episodes – breaking down one piece of academic research on neurodiversity-related topics.