Disability Arts Online

Today I'm trying out a Japanese wheelchair to take home; not exactly the one I'd planned for or expected, but good. I hope.

I sense my eutopia moving closer. Actually Utopia moves like Michael Jackson; the moonwalk ever deceptive.

Having the iPad is great, the Brushes app frees me to explore previous frustrated trains of thought and practice, and being here in Tokyo inspires me to make more creative links between image and word, links I had previously been struggling to realise.

My search for roots and identity mingles with the desire for mobility. I come face to face with the need to acknowledge that my roots cannot be linked to a country or a culture; that I am genetically in the past as Scandinavian, in the present as European, and in the future as Asian. My search is no longer a search, but an exploration.

Who am I today? I am the artist who makes links with Toyota's Universal Wheelchair and Bruce Sterling's "Lobsters"; an artist who wants to explore the implications of Haraway's postgendered possibilities from a chairborne perspective.

As a wheelborne entity I'm asking how the concept "cyborg bodies lead to cyborg consciousness" (Danielle Devoss) might be creating my identity.

And my soft sculptures need to be more than seeking into the earth, they need to stretch into time and space. I need them to explore Thirdspace (Edward Soja).

 

 

Sumida today has a choppy quality,

lending an air of expectation and excitement.

The floating landing for tourist-boats squeals

like a stressed-up pig, but occasionally

emits a soft feminine moan. A flash of green

marks the flight of a Japanese sparrow

with a bamboo leaf in it's beak.

Here feels creative, is it just the change of scene?