> 00.00 Space Candy ~ Marpolatic

> 01.47 [Read by Serafina]

To Neuroqueer, is to actively reimagine the many structures that seek to define, exclude and erase us. It is to reclaim our-being and to give more full expression to our uniquely weird potentials and inclinations.  

Neuroqueer* is a verb: is an action, a doing word- rooted in the practice of queering (that is: subverting, disrupting, defying, liberating oneself from) from normativity and is necessarily intersectional in nature.

This concept has grown out of the critical neurodiversity paradigm* that centers exploration of neurodivergent culture, ways of being, seeing, knowing and engaging in/with-the-world- that disrupt and challenge the normative ideal.

We hope and encourage that the space (E-Numbers) is one in which we can together attempt to reclaim/give power to and embody our most authentic selves.

*The term was coined by Athena Lynn, Michaels-Dillon and Nick Walker

> 2:56 In My Language - Mel Baggs

> 6:07

the previous part of this video was in my native language many people have assumed that when I talked about this being my language that means that each part of the video must have a particular symbolic message within it designed for the human mind to interpret but my language is not about designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret it is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment nothing physically to all parts of my surroundings in this part of the video the water doesn't symbolize anything I

am just interacting with the water it's the water interacts with me far from being purposeless the way that I move is an ongoing response to what is around firearm Italy the way that I move when responding to everything around me is described as being in a world of my own

whereas if I interact with a much more limited set of responses and only react to a much more limited part of my surroundings people claim that I am opening up to to interaction with the world they judge my existence awareness and personhood on which of a tiny and limited part of the world I appear to be reacting to the way I naturally think and respond to things looks and feels so different from standard concepts or even visualization that some people do no consider it thought at all but it is a way of thinking in its own right however the thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language no matter how we previously thought or interacted as you heard I pan sing along to what is around it is only when I type something in your language that you refer to me as having communication.

I smell things

I listen to things

I feel things

I taste things

I look at things

it is not enough to look and listen on taste and smell and feel I have to do those to the right things such as look at books and fail to do them to the wrong things or else people doubt that I am of thinking being and since their definition of thought defines their definition of personhood so ridiculously much they doubt that I am a real person as well I would like to honestly know how many people if you met me on the street but fully dilute this I find it very interesting by the way that failure to learn your language is seen as a deficit but failure to learn my language this scene is so natural that people like me are officially described as mysterious and puzzling rather than anyone admitting that it is themselves who are confused not autistic people or other cognitively disabled people who are inherently confusing we are even viewed as non-communicative if we don't speak the standard language but other people are not considered non communicative if they are so oblivious

to our own languages as to believe they don't exist the end I want you to know that this has not been intended as a voyeuristic freak show show where you get to look at us our workings of the autistic mind it is meant as a strong statement on the existence and value of many different kinds of thinking and interaction in the world where how close you can appear to a specific one of them determines whether you are seen as a real person dull or an intelligent person and in the world in which those determine whether you have any rights there are people

being tortured people dying because they are considered non persons because they're kind of thought is so unusual as to not be considered thought about only when the many shapes of personhood I recognized will justice and human rights be possible 

“I find it very interesting by the way that failure to learn your language is seen as a deficit, but failure to learn my language is seen as so natural that people like me are officially described as mysterious or puzzling. Rather than anyone admitting that it is themselves who are confused not autistic people or otherwise cognitively disabled people who are inherently confusing. For from being purposeless, the way that I move is an ongoing response to the world around me. Ironically the way that I move when responding to everything around me is described as “being in a “world of my own”.

They judge my existence, awareness, and personhood on a tiny and limited part of the world I appear to be reacting to

> 10:45 E land ~ Sea - Boy Lucid

> 16:01

[stepping on stones, wind, jangle of jewellery, breathing]

E land text, read on Udrigle rocks I grew up looking out to islands by Jané Mackenzie

> 16:28

[Jané speaks]

Sooo that last track was made by Boy Lucid was part of a project called E land and they made the composition based upon text I sent them, some videos, audio things and then also some rock from the place where I’m standing right now actually in Udrigle, a place in the north west highlands, a place where I grew up and I’m standing on this pier like structure that was apparently, man made I guess by my dad or his family to stop the sea coming into land where our house is it’s all these massive rocks, it’s really beautiful and my favourite part is you can see the Summer Isles

I grew up looking to Islands

E land [my corruption of the Scottish Gaelic word for island, Eilean], is the inkling / imagining of a place for D/deaf and neuroqueer experience of sound. Not as a definite destination but as an ever-evolving reality. E land is my project by and with d/Deaf or/and neuroqueer people growing from the constellation of ideas of sound from d/Deaf and neuroqueer culture. And through this exploration found parallels to Gaelic and the land. 

Following the idea of total communication (put by Project Art Works an amazing art project in Hastings) , that gesture, sound, signing and empathy allow for more expansive and freeing forms of connection. I wanted to explore total sound. Just as communication is more than spoken words, sound is more than what we hear. There is a social, visual, sensory and so on experience of sound. While it is widely accepted that communication is more than words, assumptions are still made about people's engagement with the world and personhood based upon a limited idea of communication. The same is true with sound. 

Evelyn Glennie, in her seminal Hearing Essay states: 

“Hearing is basically a specialized form of touch…The verb ‘sentire’ [in Italian} means to hear and the same verb in the reflexive form ‘sentirsi’ means to feel.”

I worked as an assistant to a young boy called Arran (named after a Scottish island!) who had a broken TV he spent hours holding, feeling which continued to “break” as it played the same dvd on repeat. It’s gloriously hues dancing across the static screen, constantly changing as the screen hummed the tunes. This is just one of many he has created. His own sensory object. This energy also guided our walks, as he led us using his hands. As I learnt his sensory language I became more aware of my own. 

Engaging with Deaf culture is relatively recent despite myself and my mother's lineage being deaf/hard of hearing. Spending most of my life hiding that I’m deaf/hard of hearing by not wearing hearing aids, smiling along, guessing what I missed and aligning myself to a hearing world. My way in has been my creative practice and community. I have only come back to my creativity in the last few years and a significant catalyst for this has been my friend Derek. Creating together became our way of talking. He is also part of a community of neurodivergent artists. Here, I’ve come to the term neuroqueer by my friend Lizzie alongside other incredible neuroqueer work like Mel Baggs. 

For me this has led to a repositioning myself to the imagining of E land, a place where language and communication are an ever-evolving means of expression and connection to ourselves, others and the land. 

A constant theme in my life and creativity has been landscape, growing up in rural Scottish Highlands. There are over 60 words for mountains in Gaelic, the founding language of my homeland. Landscape and Gaelic are in some way entwined. Such as understanding of colours, which in Gaelic is beyond a hue but  "distinguished by a changing landscape". Part of Gaelic’s erasure came through the view of the land as a means of economic gain. As people were clearer and education systems banned its use as uncivilised. 

British Sign Language also, through the extolled Scottish inventor Alexander Graham Bell advocated eugenic messages against D/deaf people and the use of BSL, emphasising oralism. I wonder what it might have been like to learn BSL rather than be offered speech therapy. The friends, ideas and opportunities that could have grown from this. Christine Sun Kim collaborated with students of a Deaf School in London to create a mural which read - “If sign language was considered equal, we’d already be friends,” '. But then even if I learnt BSL as a child, existing in an education system and society with almost no space for d/Deaf culture could it have taken root?  How I might have experienced my homeland with Gaelic’s indigenous knowledge of the land.   Much energy when it comes to neurodiversity and being D/deaf is spent in systems to fit into a hearing and neurotypical world. A world that prioritises profit and consumption, whose frameworks erase personhood and connection. 

I love sounds innate resistant quality, how it engulfs and changes the environment. It’s ability to elude and transcend spoken word to communicate and congregate. Playing with sounds social, physical and visual dimensions has been a surprising solace. Exploring the contextual and sensory origins of a composition, less about a final outcome and more like a conversation. And using context as a means of understanding (in BSL signs change depending upon context, as does Gaelic) and also what can be found in the gaps between captions, languages, visuals, facial expressions and environment etc. How these tensions might reveal understanding and expose misunderstanding at the same time. Dissolving the ideas of a singular understanding and experience.

It is not about a set output or some expertise, but more positioning myself for discovery as a means of being. Allowing me to create and experience exhibitions and events in new ways, much like how Arran showed me his language which in turn helped me find my own and others languages. As I found parallels of Deaf and Neuroqueer culture and to Gaelic and the land. These experiences and imaging have heightened my experiences of self and the  land. Nan Sheperd’s The Living Mountain talks about walking in the Cairngorms: the body can be said to think. This project has been conceived on the rocks of my homeland (the ones I’m very standing on) and the sea, light and colours (that I’m now looking at) that fascinate me like a friend you never tire of. 

BSL signs for Gold, Silver and Bronze have this satisfying energy to them that (to me) capture how you might experience them. This resonates with my hopes for E land and E numbers. To give space to a multi sensory experience. To more environmental, personal and relational; embodied aspects of sound. Understanding sound as an ever evolving, multidimensional reality. 

> 24:23 E land ~ Sentirsi - LOVECAT

> 29:08 E land ~ Salm 23

To tune Bays of Harris  ~ by Catherine Joan McDonald and Anna Macleod.

A Salm/Psalm is a devotion song from the Bible. Sung in Gaelic by native speaker Catherine Joan Mcdonald with her niece, Anne Macleod. It is to the tune, Bays of Harris, an area of the remote Outer Hebridean islands. The British Sign Language interpretation is by Debbie Mcleod from the words of the Psalm/Salm. Captions are written by myself, who grew up in the Highlands amongst psalm singing and Gaelic (but never learnt). The captions offer my interpretation. Until recently Gaelic and Deaf culture/BSL have been mostly absent in my life. My learning of Gaelic and BSL has turned my world and words around.

> 31:37 Walking on Tin Cans (Car Park) by Katherine Smith, recorded by Coco Glitch developed through collaboration with I.Nakhla.

[Jané speaks] Walking on Tin Cans (Car Park)

> 36:49 [Jané speaks again] Walking on Tin Cans (Car Park) by Katherine Smith, recorded by Coco Glitch developed through collaboration with I.Nakhla.

> 37:02 Touch has become a privilege - IndoorGoblin

> 38:24 Flounder the glitchstreams.. - IndoorGoblin

> 39:16 before E land gig Feb25 - IndoorGoblin

> 56:46 The Moomins Theme -  Graeme Miller & Steve Shill

[fuzzy felt folklore}

[vintage electronics, concrète tape effects, pocket percussion, domestic synths]

[magnetic music of Moomin valley]