writings
events
about

What if... Neurodiversity?
Symposium

ATD Research Month


A one-day event that brings together artists and thinkers that experiment with the potential of neurodiverse movement, poetics, and perception, along with their many intersections, to create new (neurodiverse) futures now.  (More context here ➶)

With Tito Mukhopadhyay, Sam Metz, Hamja Ahsan, Rajni Shah, Sanne Kersen, Risa Horn and shy*play


Risa Horn ➶ provides live captioning for the symposium

Link to ATD’s symposium page ➶   

Photos by Simon Pillaud


PROGRAM


Session 1: Drawing as Stimming


10.30 - 12:00 Drawing as Stimming
Workshop by Sam Metz (online)
Online moderator: Sanne Kersten

Sam Metz invites participants to draw for neurodivergence and celebrate stimming. Stimming is behaviour often seen in autistic or neurodivergent people and can include repetitive actions such as rocking or hand flapping or making noises. At this workshop, you will explore movements of stimming by mark making that support listening to the body. 

https://drawingstimming.co.uk/ ➶
Biography Sam Metz ➶
Biography Sanne Kersten ➶


Session 2: Introfada distro: the zine table and Speculative Activism


12:30 - 13:30 Introfada distro: the zine table and Speculative Activism 
Presentation by Hamja Ahsan
Moderator: Rajni Shah

Hamja Ahsan explores the extended practice of his book Shy Radical: Antisystemic Politics of the Miltant - a book imagining a Liberation movement for quiet, awkward people and neurodivergent with the federal nation of Aspergistan as utopic homeland - in the world of DIY culture and activism. His presentation explores the zine table  within the zine fair as a site for building coalitions, alliances, making friends. He brings his collection of “neurodiversity” zines and radicals mental health publications. He reads a patchwork of zine extracts, from his DIY Zine bank collection, archived over 30 years  - subverting official modes of knowledge and identification. He explores the notion of a speculative activist organisation called Neurodivergent Against Genocide & Aparthied (NAGA) as movement against in the current genocide Gaza. He reconsiders the adoption of the book by the neurodiversity movement and being at the crossroads of breaking away.

www.hamjaahsan.com ➶
Biography Hamja Ahsan ➶
Biography Rajni Shah ➶


Session 3: A Neurodiverse Fabulation: Techniques for Neurodiverse Futurities


14:30 - 15:30 A Neurodiverse Fabulation: Techniques for Neurodiverse Futurities 
Presentation by shy*play (antje nestel and Aion Arribas)

Guided by the question "What can neurodiversity do?", shy*play stories their art and pedagogical practice of Doing Neurodiversity. Aion and antje tell one of the many stories that make up the ever-evolving world of shy*play, foregrounding its urgency, emergence, desires, and techniques of improvisation. These techniques are crafted to shift the conditions of participation away from neurotypicality and towards the creation of neurodiverse socialities together-in-difference. The presentation is storied through a combination of autoethnography, philosophy, poetry, projected photos, and the various materials that will perform in the space, among other fabrics and papers that shy*play will bring in. A story for shy*play can never be told without also exploring and emphasizing the rich interrelationships of human and more-than-human at all times.

Biography Aion Arribas ➶
Biography antje nestel ➶


Session 4: “When I try to fit myself into the bucket of humanity, I always spill”


16:00 - 17:00 “When I try to fit myself into the bucket of humanity, I always spill”
A conversation with Tito Mukhopadhyay
Moderators: Leni Van Goidsenhoven, antje nestel and Aion Arribas

This session presents a conversation specially recorded for the symposium featuring autistic writer and poet Tito Mukhopadhyay; Soma Mukhopadhyay, the creator of the Rapid Prompting Method (RPM); Leni Van Goidsenhoven, Assistant Professor of Critical Disability Studies at the Department of Literary and Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands); and shy*play. The discussion centers on Tito’s work, particularly his latest book, Teaching Myself How To See. In this book, Tito explores the intricate relationships between his sensorial world and language. Concepts and embodied ideas such as synesthesia, imagination, relationality, poetics, and autism are interwoven throughout the discussion, offering insights into how Tito writes with the world. Here, language functions as a sensing practice, forming an ecological dialogue where he co-creates with the environment.

https://www.uva.nl/profiel/v/a/l.van-goidsenhoven/l.van-goidsenhoven.html ➶
Biography Tito Mukhopadhyay ➶
Biography Leni Van Goidsenhoven ➶