INTERVIEW: Watch mine 46’26” (plus those with Steve Silberman & Rees Finlay)

ranscript

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unfolding together in dialogue village
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kai thanks so much for sparing the time um i’m just i just felt like giving you um
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a short introduction in in the in this uh conversation because there’s a few quotes which jump
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out to me on your page um absolutely instrumental somebody’s described you as i love that i might
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want to unpick that um hyperactive and tentacular what fantastic words
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and um this project’s messy and magical entanglements and
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and that and i think that’s that’s something that really one thing that i really like to talk to you about um
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during our time together but welcome to the dialogue village podcast and and i’m glad to meet you for
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the first time yeah and you and thank you for having me um yeah i’m really glad to be here and
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really glad to talk with you about tentacularity to talk to you about
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magical and messy entanglements i mean i love wordplay so yeah if i don’t know if you are
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transcribing this or the or if there’s captioning well we’re definitely we’re definitely going to need some editing if
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there is that okay i’m always full of new new neurologisms like new words
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yeah yeah yeah i got you that’s that’s i’ll have some fun doing that great um
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yeah the the the the entanglement the messy entanglement is is something that
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it gives me some um uh comfort in the fact that
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i don’t like planning things and i don’t want to have a settler i said this to you in the email i don’t have a set list
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of questions and you know there’s there’s so you know neurodivergency and and normal
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ways of doing things is so like homogenous and predictable it just gets boring so
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i love just diving in although there’s this sense of risk and and fear and
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but the phenomenon of subjectivity is something that i’m really yeah yeah but it’s it’s also
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absolutely about bouncing off each other right it’s also about kind of
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being a little bit vulnerable yeah and saying okay i’ve never met johnny before
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he might be a serial killer but luckily we’re on screen so i’m gonna be fine and let’s see where we can go together
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that you can’t go alone that i can’t go alone let’s just kind of mess about a little bit let’s if we come to detours
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we might dive into that together if we come to rabbit house we might go and explore that or we might say okay
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another time another date another day so yeah i mean i love the fact that things
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aren’t kind of fixed and i love the idea that you know we are not trying to get
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fixed and i mean that in all senses of the term getting fixed you know yeah
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yeah yeah and already my mind’s going down the rabbit hole
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certain things are fixed and we have to take turns talking right and that can be like yeah that can be a
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problem can be a challenge that’s actually a good point especially
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with covet and people learn how to use this sort of online
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format of conversation and we learn to mute ourselves and we learn to let other
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people have the time to speak and we learn how to hold the space to an extent for other
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people when they’re thinking and so on so i think yeah that’s that’s quite interesting and you’re right there are things that are kind of fixed one of the
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things that’s interesting because i’m an artist um and
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one of the things that i i like to think of many many artists and creative people
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and neurodivergent people are like like to think is that the fact that there are rules
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the fact that there are fixed ways of doing things i mean we try to many of us try to fight
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against that and try to come up with ways comes up is come up with strategies
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against that but also at the same time the fact that there are these kind of restrictions also enable us or it brings
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out the resourcefulness that many of us have had to become like
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by choice or also by circumstances yeah and we have to work around things and we
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have to you know try to hack yeah heck structures and so on so yeah
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it’s interesting yeah that reminds me of something i heard a couple of years ago that um
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disabled people so to speak they don’t have um
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a choice to fail and therefore they make good leaders and and often good choices
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in the workplace yeah i absolutely agree with that and disabled people people
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from a lower from a working class background people who are not
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part of the system people who would have contributed a lot of labor to the system but they that the
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system isn’t designed for them or with them in mind and then
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we have had to many of us have had to just find ways to be resourceful so we
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are not many many people who are not part of the
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who don’t have that social capital or cultural culture capital or who are not who who who haven’t
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who who um who are not who are not partials going on at 10 downing street etc
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it’s not by choice but we we have had to be creative we have had to be leaders otherwise how would we have survived
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yeah then structures that aren’t built for so many so many of us you know when i say us i
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mean i don’t i mean a huge diversity of people neurodivergent people disabled people
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and however people like to um define themselves um and also racially diverse
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people also people who are queer i mean people
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who are trans etc we’re just seeing so much amazing as astonishing kind of backlash
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going on it’s just incredible so yeah yeah there’s like um i think the
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the pandemic um and lockdown and everything’s really just had a huge
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shift on on collective consciousness there’s a real shift into values
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um and like an upsurgence and you know it’s a neurodiversity movement
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and i know i’m going to probably keep pulling towards that yeah
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um can can you say something i suppose that that leads to what i read about when you
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came over to the uk from malaysia singapore and
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that’s that’s quite touchy i thought no i didn’t worry i just did a wiki because my geography is rubbish and
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i just did a wiki and that was mine yeah i’ll i need to brush up on you
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okay um so so when you came over and and and you described uh singapore as not having
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any differences everybody is a tropic in a paradise and and and when you came here you realize
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that you’re really gonna have to um [Music] explore your own identity and maybe
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maybe utilize some of these avenues labels even which is something that speaks to me
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because i i had to do that in order to succeed and to find out you know how come i don’t
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fit how come nothing’s working here yeah yeah yeah it’s interesting so and yeah um
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that sort of not just it’s it is in the moment that kind of process of kind of being becoming yourself
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and yeah it’s interesting and and what the type if it’s diagnosis or the the
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understanding that you are different how that then kind of how then you
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negotiate that because for me i don’t think that’s a given it doesn’t like okay i’m autistic i’m this oh that’s it
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that’s no and it so happens that i have so many labels that i have to play with or i’m given by
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choice or not by choice being a woman being vertically challenged being a
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non-white person being a person of color being from the global south et cetera global majority et cetera so yeah in in
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singapore that i didn’t know anything about neurodiversity
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uh even not i mean even if you’re not neurodivergent the singaporean kind of
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educational system is brutal it’s it’s been well it’s been well discussed it’s it’s
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it’s been well discussed to an extent where it’s still pretty much sadly the reality um lots of people struggle
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there’s a lot of um and myself included so and of course i didn’t know of the kind of additional
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um element but i i did did not like
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for a few years in my secondary school i just didn’t talk to anyone but it was also it was
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also because i just felt okay um i don’t fit i i just do not fit into everything
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so for two years i didn’t speak and it was also because i was in a school full of girls from
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wealthy backgrounds because i come from a working-class background speak mandarin at home
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and those girls speak english at home so they’re really westernized really progressive et cetera and so so i didn’t
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know any of that but of course fortunately for me i’ve always had art to turn to
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and i’ve always had a space which was where i could create my own
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worlds and i literally did that when i was young so i would make fantastical drawings of other worlds and
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like the one behind me huh is that one of yours behind you oh
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well this is this is current um yeah yeah uh yeah yeah yeah that’s one example do you want
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to buy it i’ll give you a discount i do really like it it’s a drawing it’s a digital drawing
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but it also exists in um it also exists as a print so i’ve always had art so
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that’s always been my go-to place but when i came to the uk first when i was 19 on a scholarship and i was really
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really fortunate and for so many in so many ways i was really really
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fortunate my parents didn’t i mean they didn’t want me to be a lawyer because i’m so argumentative and they thought
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you might as well make some money while you’re arguing with people them but then they also because they’re
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really traditional and chinese and people of chinese as um
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they want me to make money right but i was like no i’m making art and i got the scholarship i came to the uk
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and that was actually when i for the first time in my life i was free from this sort of claustrophobia
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and when i say claustrophobia i mean geographically singapore is a really small place but also in other senses it
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i just felt okay and i can try things out i can be different kinds
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of me i don’t know what me was yet at that time to be first you don’t know what me
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could be or is but i was kind of then
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also able to just work on my art full time and that was that slowly became
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um that slowly became something that i had i took ownership off
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and that was how i became me and then the the actual realization of how i am
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clinically considered as different is really recent like five years ago or
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so so that that’s that’s like whoa wait wait a minute i’ve been me for
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nearly centuries or yeah a long time yeah what what am i going to do with this
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label what am i going to do with this additional yeah there was a lot more unpacking to do
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yeah did you find that um there’s a there’s a there’s a bit of a cost to that as well with the stigma and and
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this bit of confusion as well on the side a bit of you know denial
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absolutely i’m very critical of um that the many process there are many
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many have been many people have just tried to say 20 sentences that one
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okay okay okay slow down um there are many
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i love the nhs it’s it’s an amazing outstanding system yeah unparalleled
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however there are there are issues in terms of
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trying to get access to service which is also i’m very critical of terms like service users what what service i don’t
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actually have access to service but also the whole basis of diagnosis is a very medical model right
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and but that is still the that remains the kind of standard in
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that student’s workplace etc you need to have a medical
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diagnosis you need to go through occupational health you can work with someone at occupational health in order
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to start to have access to support and that’s not it each time you’re still asked are you sure people ask me do you
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have a like are you officially registered as a disabled person so
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you really i mean you’ve got a phd you don’t look etc so there’s always still that kind of so
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so the whole premise of diagnosis i have a real um problem with and many
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colleagues have written about it discussed it um ginny russell she um
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she’s at the university of exeter she’s done like 20 years of
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just solid excellent research and including around diagnosis
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um but so the whole premise is really problematic so
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so the label that’s being used like oh i’m autistic or i’m this or that that’s really problematic as well um
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even though it also opens up a lot of revenues like you can find people similar to you but it’s also quite
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problematic because often the the labels are very um um what’s the
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word they they they point to certain features but
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oftentimes and humans are messy and we have messy and magical entanglements so i’m not
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just autistic other other processes co-occur you know
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dyslexia learning differences um so it’s synesthesia etc so it’s complex
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and therefore frameworks like neurodiversity is useful because it is it takes a step back and
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it kind of looks at things in a more holistic way and also
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neurodiversity looks at it is aligned with the concept of
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biodiversity which i which i think yeah it makes it
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um the frame that when you frame it like that then it yeah of course
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every being has a place in a biodiverse world
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every being has a place in a neurodiverse world so so yeah so so it’s interesting so so
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it’s interesting when so to bring us back to your question so that having
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the label is not the end of the story so the confusion the questioning and which is
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what which was also why i started to do a which which was also why i initiated a two three year project at
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king’s college london to kind of unpack that so yeah yeah it can answer
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questions it can it can bring relief to people but it also isn’t
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the end of the story there’s so much more kind of um negotiations to to to make so i always think of that as a
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process rather than okay that’s it excellent so is that what um whoever said it about you
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um meant by absolutely instrumental you are because when i was doing my fine art
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degree i i got i got immersed into live art with hester reeve and and then um
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and then dia and then i got introduced to boom dialogue um which was which was i think the best
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part most most productive part but do you think that um do you think that you are the art you
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are the art and the artist at the same time um oh absolutely um
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and the and the tension arising from all that is is almost like the the
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generator of your arm yeah yeah great question um first i’ll address the the quote about being
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absolutely instrumental so there was a colleague writing in a publication in a in a peer-reviewed article about my work
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in something called running studies and it’s basically looking at running
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running but looking at it not just in terms of oh fitness yes we
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do talk about that too but but also saying oh how does that change how you understand
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people around you how does that when you’re moving at speed how do you then see
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the the streets around you for instance so so it’s about just saying oh what if we kind of
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look at other aspects of running so my so that that was a large part of
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my work and that was before i knew anything about neurodiversity or before my
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discovery and or diagnosis so so that was something i was involved in but basically it’s it’s just me being
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nosy and like oh let’s what if it’s just me going around
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the world like oh why don’t we do this why don’t we look at this this way and i did that
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for running so and that and that was really fortunate to find yourself with with a with a
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vehicle um or a framework to to be able to explore that as an artist and not many
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artists have that confidence um yeah well it was it was also it’s also about being
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opportunistic it’s also about being well i want to have a say on it and
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great and that that really that really relates to what i’m doing now and that relates to your question
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about how i see my how i see art
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penetrating into every aspect of life or in my life and
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because because you know like people people social scientists or people who are politicians
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they’re like oh i have a say in everything i have a say about women’s bodies for example right yep that’s something
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that’s just happening right now as we speak um and i can’t convey the kind of
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shock and disgust at what’s happening but an artist i’ve also always done that
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like oh i’m oh this is a piece of i don’t know what i’m going to bring i’m going to use it in my art nobody ever
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gave i don’t know from koozie or anyone permission to well
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i’m going to play with you or picasso collage nobody said oh you’re allowed to do that no andy warhol is like oh i’m
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gonna put some soup cans and that’s that’s all so nobody also ever gave artists the permission to to to kind of
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play with things but we but many artists would say oh what if you know i i want
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to kind of mess around with it and that that’s basically me doing that to things but also
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getting frustrated with just things in the art world and kind of saying oh
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um i i i want to i think artists have a role in in social aspects and political or what
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what has been defined as social or political aspects of life and obviously there’s a huge
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tradition i’m not the first one there’s socially engaged art there’s there’s um um life art obviously
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people using their bodies to protest people using their bodies as creative
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medium of intervention so somewhat so my work very much is kind of
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um entrenched in some of those movements so i’m saying yeah as i move about in
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the world and i am going to be making
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artistic or artful interventions and that that’s the term i use to describe my word so
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so for instance i volunteer for instance i sit on um i help out at a
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charity for that uses music to work with detained migrants
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and that i’m not creating an output artistic output but i see that completely as part of my
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art great does that make sense it really does yeah and i was hoping you’d mention the word agitation as well
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yeah yeah education yeah yeah um yeah it’s about
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it’s about trying to make art and make change um or
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not make direct changes because it’s always very hard to track a linear and i
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i i wouldn’t be so immortal just to say yeah because of this this happens yeah
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but i think it’s to catalyze conversations and other actions and other
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other provocations by other people that can lead to changes it’s little stuff
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it’s little things that build and build and build and build that can create
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what could be culture change practice or changing attitudes in one person or one
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one one institution or yeah so yeah
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yeah um um i don’t know how far down the down this road we can go but i’m i’m
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thinking about because i was introduced to boehm dialogue um
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and it’s now a compulsory part of of the of the um undergrad the ba honours fine
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art at hallam first first years have to take part in some bone dialogue basically for for
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everyone listening if you don’t know what it is is um it was brought in we’re basically we’re
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taking the art we know we sit around and you and you critique a piece of art as a group
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you take take away the art and what’s left you’ve just got thinking and language together
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and and um hester reeve brought it into the curriculum she’s been she’s been
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attending boom dialogues for for many years in in the uk after professor david bowman
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and it’s it’s a very simple but very profound creative process
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and and um why was i talking about that oh it’s gone out my mind now no no it
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sounds really useful and the fact that it’s now compulsory because i i’m not
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familiar with that so yeah so what i yeah that’s it thanks so what i wanted to do when i left uni i i dabbled with
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it with school kids and refugees for a bit and turning the art gallery into a classroom yeah and then and then the
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some of the big government cuts came in um this was like 10 years ago so i went down a different route but then
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i got my diagnosis after having a couple of failed businesses including um including a
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healthy chocolate spread business why didn’t that work i don’t know but i got so confused i went to my gp
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and he referred me to the autism service and they said yes pass burgers yes adhd
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right okay so then i have to turn the other way and then that’s when the autism dialogue popped into my head
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i can use dialogue to inquire about also yeah but what’s happening now is i spent five
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years with with a very minimal amount of funding but it’s so important to me to
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just keep creatively agitating people’s minds exactly we’re tr we’re hoping you know
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we’re a cic now we’re just hoping to we’re done wow to be recognized
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but if that doesn’t happen i know that a few people’s minds have been shifted because because of what
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they say the fact that you are creating these spaces and you are broadcasting literally
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these voices that is so important i mean in
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in some communities this is not discussed it’s not a thing to start with and you
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can’t talk about it it’s taboo so yeah and they’re still they’re still compara
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they’re still parallel so you know like if you’re gay in certain communities or if they’re queer or whatever like oh no
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shut up you know it’s not a thing or and in in where i was growing up or
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obviously you’re supposed to just be working hard and to put your head down and not not raise your hands and ask
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questions if you don’t understand something in the classroom yeah get on with it so so the fact that we are and i
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don’t i don’t use the word normalizing because i i think that it’s quite an
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ableism and binary kind of approach but the fact that we are creating these
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noises and it’s a cacophony it’s not just one voice it’s different voices and
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different different accents different focuses focus
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i like that so yeah um octopi octopus
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yeah yeah octopi doesn’t it’s not actually a word i found that out yesterday definitely
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so it’s octopuses yeah look at that
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don’t quote me on it i am quoting you on that i’m really disturbed i’m gonna edit
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this out never mind no no because because my work i look at octopuses and
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of course i didn’t invent that it’s so unoriginal but i like cats and i
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like octopus so i just put them together yeah well the plural of cats is cacti no
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i’m only joking that joke that is a really bad joke
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that’s a bit cruel that’s a good one it’s a good one yeah so what so just to finish that
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dialogue thing and a little and maybe we’ll come on to come on to your thoughts about about um
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mind wandering i want to talk about that in a sec um but we’ve i mean the interesting thing is
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that neurodiversity uh dialogues have have really shown me
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um systemically how this this conversational this personal link what started out as a
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personal inquiry um is now a collective inquiry but but it
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relates to the to the wider world and the system as much as it does on a
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personal level you know we think about politics is politics really creative
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or does it need agitation you know and the way that the way that society works
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you know the dominant mindset is so it’s so stagnant it does need agitating it’s
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necessary so absolutely yeah that um so a lot of
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my current research precisely looks like that and i look at the notion of leadership yeah a lot of us are like
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us oh i mean just look around us we don’t have good role models at all putin you know
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poshos anyone yeah so and and in the arts many of us just
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cringe like oh don’t use the word lead it’s such a neuro liberalist construct etc but i’m also saying you know we need
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to go back to the drawing board with those terms and actually take ownership of that and we
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we need to look at creative explorations creative um um creative approaches
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um emeline is it i mean sylvia penkers of the pancreas fame of the suffrage
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suffragette fame she was an artist right so how did she what what is the connection
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of course zelensky was an actor right yeah so i think
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so there have been oh and of course leonardo da vinci right and also he was neurodivergent he’s been he’s been
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thinking about flying he’s been helping us try to try to so he’s been externalizing those
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wild visions which helped to create a blueprint even though they didn’t really work because
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he got the kind of mechanics wrong but it it helped to say oh okay we can think about flying
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process that’s leadership right because that’s innovation so we don’t necessarily use those terms
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and and so in so i’m currently um the whole reason why i moved my whole life from
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south london and singapore well london to to manchester up north is to to be a
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program leader of a new program on leadership and it’s exactly to kind of
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say look artists have been doing leadership for centuries and now everyone is talking about
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creativity but artists need to be in the same room to have that discussion and so do
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neurodivergent people because world economic forum nesta everyone’s saying oh neurodiversity is such a great thing
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oh because look at silicon valley yeah oh yeah so that’s there’s a lot of discussion but neurodivergent people
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need to be the ones doing that talking also so not just talked about so that that’s part of
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my work i’m saying okay i’m gonna use that language i’m going to try to unpack that and we’re going to say look
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how about this we need to look at a much more diversified
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um approach to leadership so it’s not just about this charismatic one person
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who who is lucky etc but to look at co-creation is to look at how you know
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alternative ways of organizing is to look at yeah all kinds of um resourcefulness
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that we were talking about earlier so yeah so so yeah so you you hit the nail on the head when
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you said yeah we need to look at doing politics in a more creative way for example so there needs to be yeah we
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need to be and and and what’s happening now is the
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opposite right it’s it’s it’s a kind of a regression it’s like wow goodness what’s going on
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it’s yeah sorry yeah this is it’s got to be co-creative though isn’t it just take
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take the deficit model of of for example we can’t just we can’t be
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seen as too much of a challenge it’s it’s a it comes down to the right people being in the room
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and yeah and that’s something i’m negotiating or learning
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now and because it it isn’t easy to be in the room that i mean there’s a lot of
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architectural metaphors around this it’s about um the glass ceiling or the glass
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labyrinth uh get your get your what through the door something get your feet through the door
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or like you know like yeah and then break breaking down those barriers so
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yeah a lot of times we aren’t even anywhere near like my father couldn’t
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even go to couldn’t even complete school he wasn’t even a disease from the wrong class and wrong era so it’s it’s like we
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need to keep getting closer and then to get into the room and then to also change and that’s and and i’m quoting other
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colleagues who have been doing a lot of work they say we don’t just get to the same room or the same table you change the table
33:15
you change the dynamics of the table yeah or take away the table and actually
33:20
sit on the floor i don’t know something go for a run you know so you so but
33:26
you need to engage and that’s why for me a lot of my work is um open source a lot of my like the network
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i’ve set up i want to set up and and um i want it to be
33:40
open there’s just no kind of um what’s it called like a membership thing or i i
33:45
want it to be entangled messily with
33:51
the larger the larger world yeah you have things close so
33:57
yeah so so i like things to be leaky because i want to i don’t want to
34:04
the word could be ghettoized what i’m doing so i like i i because i
34:10
think it it a lot of this sort of work
34:16
needs to yeah it it needs to be in conversation with the rest of the
34:22
world and they’re missing out right it’s their loss
34:29
yeah yeah absolutely and i don’t know it’s it’s it’s brave and risky and and like he
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said right at the beginning yeah it’s making yourself vulnerable but yeah
34:41
to get the leaders from big organizations into the room because you we do need the leaders in
34:47
there otherwise it ain’t gonna work you do need to get the buy-in and you do
34:52
need to [Music] so yeah so there’s a range of there’s an artillery
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there’s a range of strategies so that’s one of the things that is important to do to engage with people who do have
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power to engage with people who who are who do
35:10
who do have the social political capital to engage with people who can help to
35:16
change the conversation and some people some of the
35:22
different terms can be used allies accomplices yeah but i’m also quite critical of
35:27
people some people who call themselves allies and they actually don’t help out they actually take take take
35:33
take take and so so yeah there’s a lot of um yeah it’s
35:39
interesting and it’s it’s yeah it’s definitely risky and it’s definitely
35:44
a lot of people say i’m really bold and courageous
35:49
often i’m just i don’t have that filter or i’m just foolish and i’m also like what what have
35:56
i got to lose kind of thing so i don’t really have that kind of sense of boundary but also often i’m like yeah i
36:02
know what about i know what the lines are and i’m going to go and
36:08
i think and i do make use of my privileges i absolutely do make use of that yeah
36:14
because also i mean i i’m five foot two and people think oh she’s so she’s such a innocent looking
36:22
nice i don’t know whose voice i’m doing he’s such a nice innocent asian little
36:29
oriental girl and submissive and kind and i’m like yeah okay get me in and
36:35
then i’m going to start turning tables and then get others in
36:41
yeah get others in mix things up so that just want to ask you pick your
36:47
brains a little bit about about about the idea of of a dialogue
36:52
where well so the the whole autism dialogue model where all my dialogue and and i’m i’m
37:00
trying to branch out into dialogue the world needs dialogue is what the academy of professional dialogue that’s their
37:06
motto we were for me the world is dialogue you know i’ll take it to take it to a metaphysical level every everything’s in
37:12
communication with everything else but let’s not go down there we haven’t got time today but the thing is like the frameworks are
37:20
constantly evolving yeah and and you know every every few years a new
37:27
a new model comes up like it was peter cenga’s fifth discipline and and now it’s it’s what’s the fifth discipline
37:34
uh it was it’s about 20 years ago it’s a best-selling big fat book all about organizational development radical new
37:40
ways of communicating uh leaderful environments there’s otto schenger theory you there’s a lot of a
37:48
lot of quite quite radical cutting-edge ways of
37:53
of seeing organizations how they work and that’s what that’s what’s interesting to me about boehm but david
37:59
bowen because he was a scientist and he saw that he saw the difference between thought
38:04
and thinking and thought is more like a static fixed and thinking is is a dynamic
38:11
so you know and he he entirely thought it possible that that a group of people can think literally think together
38:19
if you set up the parameters well in it yeah yeah and that and that turns it into a generative
38:26
dialogue you’ve got to get the buying right so um yeah i don’t know where i was going
38:33
with that no i like that the idea that yeah because if you can imagine what’s the
38:39
opposite you’re not allowed to talk you’re not allowed to it’s hush-hush you’re not allowed to and it’s not generated it’s not
38:46
generative it’s not iterative it’s fixed it’s aesthetic
38:52
yeah and some people say what it is a person is supposed to be like that that’s it yeah don’t come from
39:01
yeah and we do have to take turns you know and that’s that’s a human thing
39:06
and listen to others yeah no it happens all the it’s human
39:15
no some people believe in the silent consent they think it’s silent consensus that
39:22
you you because you have to listen to somebody else talking you’re you’re being submissive well no that’s not the case you’re seeing things from a
39:28
different perspective and that’s what when you suspend your own some opinions and everything you learn something new
39:35
you know and those coming together of mine and there was a lot of that learning and
39:41
in the 2020 black lives matter reckoning and people were like yeah there’s a lot of learning to do there’s a lot of um
39:49
listening to do and it’s not like those voices were new but
39:55
those voices were not listened to for a long time it’s not that racism was new
40:00
or is new it’s like it’s just that people those those voices have been pushed
40:06
aside and silenced so yeah absolutely that that need to listen
40:12
and hold the space for the other person and you’re learning i’m i’m i’m i’ve realized i’m trying to
40:19
get you to buy into dialogue that’s what’s going on perhaps going on the back of my head you get a commission
40:28
i’ll send you the contract after this um yeah i just i just really think you’d be
40:34
it’d be great to to have another conversation i one aspect of my work is about dating
40:41
speed dating so i think of dialogue i’ve been thinking of dialogues in multiple different ways
40:47
and what so speed dating is one way where i have very quick
40:54
chats with other people because if they are boring i can end it you see you like that
41:01
very good yeah another another process of dialogue that i used was something that i started with a geographer ellen
41:08
latham and we call it productive antagonisms and basically we were trying to describe our dialogue
41:15
myself as an artist and him as a geographer and that and we were talking about our running work and we were
41:21
saying okay what happens when the geographer and an artist meet and how does running help to connect them or
41:28
contrast how they’re thinking so the productiveness productivity but
41:35
productiveness positivity of the antagonism is important so it isn’t just trying to
41:40
um collide for his own sake or being being um being controversial for its own sake but
41:47
it’s actually saying okay let’s see what happens when when when we collide are there creative sparks
41:53
that that result from this collision so so i really like that and it’s also
42:00
about going out of your comfort zone and being vulnerable etc and talk to members of other species talk to people who are
42:07
not like you talk to people that don’t that you think okay
42:13
not sure where this will go but let’s let’s try it and that was how i did my um
42:19
magic carpet work at king’s college london where i had a conversation with an amazing
42:24
psychiatrist which turned out to be amazing so yeah and you’ve got um there’s a there’s a
42:31
a symposium coming up isn’t there is that a in-person thing there’s a couple um
42:37
which one um there is one online
42:42
that there’s a few there’s one there’s a couple that’s online that
42:49
there’s one in person at oxford at the university of oxford and i am collaborating with a good friend and dr
42:57
mohammad rashid he’s a philosopher turned psychiatrist no psychiatrist term philosopher and now
43:03
he’s practicing again but we’ve worked together for a few
43:08
years and he’s invited me to help him out and we’re going to do a workshop
43:14
as part of the summer school for professionals and academics from all over the world and we are just going to
43:21
exactly explore kind of difficult relationships and in that case we’re looking at how
43:27
um when a clinician when a psychiatrist for example is working with with
43:33
a patient or service user whatever the term it is that you want to use and how can they meet how can how
43:42
such two very different people with very different lived experiences and understanding and ways of processing the
43:48
world how can they meet so beyond language so so i’m helping him up to kind of
43:55
um create some exercises to to to think of those possibilities
44:01
and then there are a couple more kind of online things that i’m doing and i can’t remember oh yeah also also
44:08
around kind of equity creativity and so on yeah and have you
44:14
got any art shows coming up i’ll just keep thinking about the beautiful stunning image of the car yeah yeah i am
44:21
i’m i am um in the process of making a couple of things
44:26
i’m not showing them just yet i do put some kind of work in progress on my
44:32
um website but because i’ve been using the motif of the octopusey so the cat
44:39
the kitty face the kid the cat the face of a cat a cat with a cheshire like a
44:45
cheshire cat with the grin and the body of an octopus so i’ve been exploring the idea of
44:50
tentacularity for a while and i’m going to
44:56
i am going to have something done so that it can be permanently on my body
45:04
i’m filming that and that will go to something else that i’m working on which
45:09
is um hopefully my first book favors last words
45:14
but i’ve been filming the passages and i’m gonna um distribute images
45:20
of the the the the process and onto the book so
45:26
that when you flip it hopefully it looks like a flip book kind of thing yeah great watch this thing
45:34
brilliant i think we could leave it there it’s been real exciting like condensed pleasure chatting with you
45:42
yeah thank then thank you for no i said i’m sorry i kept interrupting
45:47
you because i’m excited oh i was like you’re the host so
45:54
no thank you it’s been great chatting with you yeah it’s like
46:01
i hope we get to talk again sometime yeah yeah yeah thank you
46:09
[Music]
46:17
[Laughter]
46:26
you

As the website describes, Dialogue Village is ‘where our diverse human community can meet, relax and dialogue for a little while on the journey. Together we celebrate unity in diversity, especially the neurodiversity that means each and every one of us. We celebrate this with the gift of Dialogue.  There’s never been a more crucial time in history to harness the power of dialogue, to release the potency in neurodiversity, a subset of the biodiversity of our planet’. Dialogica (a UK based non-profit social enterprise) is dedicated to intelligent, compassionate understanding in discourse around health, well being and happiness, the human condition and unique ways of being and seeing the world. We particularly facilitate and encourage open dialogue in autism and neurodiversity, working with a wide range of people, to find and generate better perspectives on the condition of the human race and learn how to work with them. Through our networks we challenge the predominant neurotype and outdated scientific paradigms by new knowledge generation, empowerment and social and cultural change. Watch inspiring presentations and conversations here. Listen via your favourite podcaster Apple, Spotify etc, and here