Neurodiversity in Relation: An Artistic Intraethnography

We move research creation by inventing with neurodiversity. Neurodiversity is relation. This moves autism away from the concept of dis-order and as non-relational and we untether from the pathology paradigm (Walker) to express and language otherwise. As my non-speaking son and collaborator suggests, this is a new way of languaging neurodiversity through art and movement to consider the question: can a good body feel without another body? to address concepts of independence and agency as it is imagined by neurotypicality. Invention allows us to remain open, without goal and directive, letting movement, relation and creation unfold to think of what we may not have yet conceived. We extend the idea narrative towards artistic experimentation and relational expression to blast (Wolfond) form, inspired by Melanie Yergeaus call to queer the lines of rhetoric, humanity and agency (Yergeau, 2018, 25). We create the concepts of aligning and wayfaring to think about relation and support as a way of lining to pace (Wolfond) with perceptual and expressive diversity, and also to experiment. We question notions around authorship and intelligibility that forces to a dominant neurotypical body and form; a form that is instrumental and directional. We propose the notions of relation and support as mutual, and also, incorporeal (Grosz) thereby eliding the false binary between dis/abled and my supposed hierarchical role to fix my son or direct this project. An ecology of practices as a tool for thinking through what is happening: a co-becoming as a habitat of practices (Stengers, 2005; Manning, 2016; Massumi, 2015b), becomes within the relational event as artistic intraethnography that thinks about the conditions and techniques for neurodiversity. We think that creative and collaborative speculation through the arts to find our own language. Our practices think with sticks, (Wolfond), rubber bath toys, tics, hums and hand-flaps, space and pace, and our work emerges through improvisation, movement and poetry in our film S/Pace (Klar & Wolfond, 2019). Synesthesia and proprioception are the intramodal-relational expressions that shift our thinking about support, care, and research-creation outside the pathology paradigm, moving us toward mutual attunement that changes the way we intrarelate.