Arts House Listening Program

(Film): Culture expressed through gesture, sensations all over, and the way the world understands itself: we don’t want to put anything in here that doesn’t make it better. A 20 minute film, played on loop, is projected on a large 3 by 4 metre wide screen which has been hung in front of a black curtain. The film presents diverse people sitting or standing in relaxed postures or stimming, all in front of a hand painted blue and orange abstract sky. At times the camera captures close-ups of their faces, torsos, in and out of focus. While the people discuss their lived experience of autism, they often express their stimming as they describe it, such as: eating various types of food, skin stroking, hair twirling, arm flailing, painting, palms pressing into one another, skin being pushed and manipulated, lips sucked, and fingers tapping. There are further glimpses of these physical details recorded through a macro lens, conveying extreme close up imagery of fingers, eyes, skin, hair, and other fragments of t