On belonging

iJADE Keynote, Sonia Boué, 2022

Excerpt:

In preparing my talk, I have come to an extremely useful realisation. If (like me) you can’t absorb most of the rules of grammar, it pays to write short sentences. After a lifetime of misplaced punctuation, less is definitely more. My talk is therefore quite meta. In writing ‘as myself’ I challenge the neurological hegemony (the neuro-majority) and re-assert my belonging.

Today I will talk about my practice as research. I will also talk about the impact of the written and spoken word in erecting barriers and perpetuating inequality in the visual arts, through intellectual ableism. We rely on words to signify meaning, yet they can be inaccessible. Paradoxically, I must use words to express this thought, and very often it is assumed my brain can work in a linear sequential fashion. This is the kind of cognitive bias I want to poke a stick at, on behalf of those of us who think in layers and associations. For neuro-majority people, it may be difficult to comprehend that the strictures of linearity can be painful and the inability to follow sequence is not wilful inattention.

I will therefore present a series of fragments; interrelated thoughts and experiences that demonstrate moments of insight brought about through practice research…