Event | What if… Neurodiversity? – Symposium

Event | What if… Neurodiversity? – Symposium
Date: 22 January 2025
Location: Amsterdam, Academy of Theatre and Dance
Organizer: Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Contact: laura.cull@ahk.nl
Registration: here
Credits: 1 ECTS

What if we don’t take the norm as the point of departure to think about neurodiversity but instead start with neurodiversity? What if, instead of seeing neurodiverse tendencies as something we must overcome à la neurotypicality, we began our thinking and doing from the perspective of what else neurodiversity can do? What if we understood neurodiversity as always relational? What if neurodiverse perception, movement, and poetics are one of the keys to a conception of the world and our bodies as always in-forming? What if we saw neurodiversity as a creative force that leads the path to different futurities and socialities? What if experimenting with what neurodiversity can do relationally is considered a processual art practice—a way of life?

“How can art think with neurodiversity?” (Adam Wolfond)

A big part of the neurodiversity movement today is aimed at shifting the prevailing discourse and culture away from the pathology paradigm and toward the neurodiversity paradigm. This shift implies two interlinked gestures: one is the continuous critique and research of the pathology paradigm, which operates on the assumption that significant divergences from dominant sociocultural norms of neurocognitive embodiment represent some sort of deficit or pathology. This gesture involves researching where the pathology paradigm originated, why it has become so dominant, how it operates, and how it is deeply intertwined with other modes of oppression such as whiteness, ableism, speciesism, heteronormativity, etc. Two, is the creation of the neurodiversity paradigm, which understands and recognises the tremendously rich diversity in human performance, embodiment, and thinking.

Many artists and scholars today have embarked on this explorative journey of creation with neurodiversity. They are engaging with neurodiversity in ways that unleash previously untapped potential for the creation of different worlds with new values, modes of relation, forms of knowledge, ways of communication, and perceptions. “What if … Neurodiversity” brings together artists and thinkers who explore and experiment with the creation of new neurodiverse futures through embodied movement, poetics, perception, and their many intersections, by always foregrounding the deep entanglement of the human and the more-than-human.

Provisional list of presenters

• Hamja Ahsan
• Sam Metz
• Aion Arribas
• antje nestel
• Tito Mukhopadhyay
• Soma Mukhopadhyay
• Leni Van Goidsenhoven (UvA)

Programme

Session 1: 10.30-12.00

A workshop with Sam Metz (tbc)

Drawing as Stimming

Lunch 12.00-13.00

Session 2: 13.00-14.00

A presentation by Hamja Ahsan

Shy Radicals

Break 14.00-14.15

Session 3: 14.15-15.15

A presentation by shy*play (Aion Arribas + antje nestel)

Techniques for Neurodiverse Futurities

Break 15.15-15.30

Session 4: 15.30-16.30

Tito and Soma Mukhopadhyay in online dialogue with Leni Van Goidsenhoven, Aion Arribas and antje nestel

Teaching Myself How to See

Drinks 16.30-17.30