Adam Wolfond’s video installation What if My Body is a Beacon for the World? will be open to the public at Koffler Arts from January 9 to 26. Curated by David Liss, the exhibit allows audiences to move through Wolfond’s world by showing how a member of the neurodivergent and autistic community, who is non-speaking and types to communicate, moves through the atmospheres that surround him.
The video, presented with dis assembly, the arts organizations he co-founded and co-directs with his mother, Estée Klar, an artist who has a Ph.D. in Critical Disability Studies from York University, has been two years in the making. But that’s not all the pair has been up to in the time leading up to the exhibit’s opening. Wolfond has published two poetry collections The Wanting Way and Open Book in The Way of Water, and just this month, dis assembly, which operates as a lab for neurodiverse artistic experimentation, was featured in Koffler Arts’ most-recent exhibit, Another Decade, showcasing Wolfond and Klar’s Covid Calendars and Poet Trees.
Wolfond is also enrolled in an individual masters program at Concordia University with a concentration on film, movement, and collaboration. He is the first non-speaking autistic person in Canada to attend university. One of his interests lies in, he shared with me, giving people the opportunity to understand, through artistic expression, that “making a ceaseless calm flow of patterns is the way I need to think.”
Klar has fought hard to open doors for her son and give him a platform for his work. She was the original blogger of The Joy of Autism and the founder of The Autism Acceptance Project (2006–2018).
I had the pleasure of sitting down, over Google Meet, with Wolfond and Klar who spoke with me from their condo in Toronto. On one wall sits rows and rows of Wolfond’s prized bath toys, some of which are featured in Poet Trees. The collection is as kaleidoscopic and vibrant as their passion is for access and creation.
I wanted to begin with what has inspired your work on neurodiversity. Can you tell me more about it?
EK: If your perception is intertwined with many things in the atmospheres it does result in different mannerisms and movements and tick-like movements. We learn how that reconfigures perception. And that’s a lot of the work that’s coming up in the video installation happening at Koffler Arts. We’re digging into that together.
And how do you support Adam in his endeavours?
EK: Adam would not be able to type if he didn’t have an activating touch-support. When you have what’s called autistic catatonia, in clinical terms, you have trouble with your motor planning. While Adam can type a few words on his own, it’s hard to sustain that movement unless I touch Adam on his back. It’s activating a movement. He calls it a “grounding” or a “landing.” As a facilitator, supporter, and parent, I have to feel alongside them. Adam has taught me a lot about the mutual nature of support and care that I hope will still seep out into the community and shift the way that we support autistic people in Canada.
Have you seen any progress made in the field since you started?
EK: It has come a long way. We hear neurodiversity a lot more in our culture because it spans more than the autistic person or the autistic body. You can be neurodivergent and autistic. Lots of people who claim that they’re neurodivergent are not autistic. The fact that we can perceive differently, that we think differently, has really caught on, but it hasn’t caught on to the same degree we want in our educational systems, in academia. Adam is the first non-speaking autistic person in Canada to be at university, never mind a master’s degree. We had to work for that. We had to find people who were empathetic to our cause and fighting the forms that we’re supposed to abide with, and even our dissertation, I call it our dissertation because there would be no dissertation without Adam’s collaboration and input. I wasn’t allowed to put his name on the front of my dissertation. So what does that say about the quote, unquote, participatory methods in research creation? It’s really problematic. And then the Applied Behavioural Analysis therapy (A.B.A), which is called Intensive Behavioural Intervention in Canada, has people who are still promoting it, so it’s difficult. It’s a system that then never really changes. So from that side, there’s still a lot of work to do.
You are setting an example for others, and giving people who are going through similar situations the ability to see themselves in Adam and in you.
EK: That’s the hope with our artistic practices. We founded an artistic practice that was process oriented, experimental. Adam calls it “the rally,” the way we rally together, the way that Adam’s ideas can come forth, because it’s like a new form is being created in what Adam calls “languaging.” Going outside the lines of what’s expected. As a mom, I feel that’s been enriching for both of us.
How has it been working together over the years and what have you learned from each other?
AW: I have learned that I can offer more to research when I am leading the way it is done.
EK: I think we learn from each other. And Adam, you’ve said a lot about how we lead together. I’m here to support. So it does put me in a number of different roles. Yes, I am a mother. I’m a trainer of other people, assistants who support Adam’s work. I’m an academic doing this in the field. What other options really were there for us if we didn’t do this kind of work together? I don’t think I could have lived with putting him into some home or institution or school that was A.B.Aing him. It wasn’t feasible. How do you have to live? How do you need to live? Those were the questions that were always coming up and that’s how we got to this place.
In your poem, Adam, what does the line “I am the pace of my body, not language,” which also serves as the title, mean to you?
AW: I want it to be emphasized that language is a way to produce meaning, and I make meaning also in the ways I move with the atmospheres and that paces of things are as important as words, and the body says more things.
Since the formation of dis assembly, what has the organization and the art that has come through it taught you both?
EK: Improvisational artistic practice has honoured the processes that we invent with neurodiverse ways of living and expressing. We learn how to support and think alongside and with people.
AK: Making in ways other than normative meaning is a blessing that people need to hear about. And I hope many non-speakers like me can access communication and empathy.
Shifting focus to Another Decade, I am interested in how the installation Poet Trees came together.
EK: Adam has these movements that settle his body. His body always has to move, and the weight of certain things are also very calming to the body. We were going on lots of walks during the pandemic and thinking a lot at that time about synesthesia and perception. I guess you can say the work is always about that. And so you see a lot of colours. You see, in Poet Trees, his Tabasco bottles that are woven in, some poetry is woven in, the rubber bath toys that he would tap or need to collect are in those trees, amongst other items that we had on hand, and that weaving or going around, around motion was feasible. The branches we would find on those daily walks are heavy. We would lug them back to our condo, where we worked. The weight of the wood, the colours, the sensory experience woven into it, is sort of how his poetry moves.
It’s interesting what affects us and how that crosses into our lives, and into the art we make, and into the stories we tell.
EK: As a mother and supporter, I’m learning. I’m still thinking about how to convey this different aspect of mothering: how I learn what is mutual, how I support outside of this neurotypical mothering that follows these developmental timelines and typical strategies, which hasn't been my life either.
I think there’s so many things we need to unlearn.
EK: If people are open to shifting the way we do things, or shifting the way we move from westernized forms of knowledge, it can be an exciting time too.
To shift, we need that openness. We need a lot more of making support visible. A problem in our culture is that we’re a very oralist society, so we prove our competencies through speaking. We think that competence is independent of any support. And so we problematize this kind of relation that Adam and I have, or that he has with his other assistive support workers. And we need to totally rethink and get away from that because we know that non-speakers and other disabled people are competent and have different views of the world, and we need to open that up.
I’m learning from this conversation too, and I also hope everyone is open to learning. In January, Adam’s exhibit will open at Koffler. What can we expect?
EK: We played with different types of cameras and used an endoscopic camera, a body camera, and Zoom recorders. The idea is to bring you into a more sensorial world, where detail comes at you, or things are blurred. It immerses and saturates the body that Adam uses. I think that pace and pattern are really important, and we’re thinking along with a lot of quantum theory.
Do you have anything you want viewers to take away with them?
EK: It’s the first ever such project by a non-speaking autistic person. And typically, many of the films with non-speaking autistic people in them are more narrative based. I'm not putting these films down, they’ve been very useful. The camera is focused on the autistic body. And being a critical disability scholar, I was thinking about the gaze, and I wanted the view from Adam outward, rather than looking at him. You don’t really see Adam in any of these video-based pieces. The only thing you see is some of his words will be projected on the screen, and his typing pace. Hopefully people will come away with a completely different experience of autistic perception and the way an autistic person can represent themselves.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Adam Wolfond’s video installation What if My Body is a Beacon for the World? will be open to the public at Koffler Arts from January 9 to 26. Curated by David Liss, the exhibit allows audiences to move through Wolfond’s world by showing how a member of the neurodivergent and autistic community, who is non-speaking and types to communicate, moves through the atmospheres that surround him.
The video, presented with dis assembly, the arts organizations he co-founded and co-directs with his mother, Estée Klar, an artist who has a Ph.D. in Critical Disability Studies from York University, has been two years in the making. But that’s not all the pair has been up to in the time leading up to the exhibit’s opening. Wolfond has published two poetry collections The Wanting Way and Open Book in The Way of Water, and just this month, dis assembly, which operates as a lab for neurodiverse artistic experimentation, was featured in Koffler Arts’ most-recent exhibit, Another Decade, showcasing Wolfond and Klar’s Covid Calendars and Poet Trees.
Wolfond is also enrolled in an individual masters program at Concordia University with a concentration on film, movement, and collaboration. He is the first non-speaking autistic person in Canada to attend university. One of his interests lies in, he shared with me, giving people the opportunity to understand, through artistic expression, that “making a ceaseless calm flow of patterns is the way I need to think.”
Klar has fought hard to open doors for her son and give him a platform for his work. She was the original blogger of The Joy of Autism and the founder of The Autism Acceptance Project (2006–2018).
I had the pleasure of sitting down, over Google Meet, with Wolfond and Klar who spoke with me from their condo in Toronto. On one wall sits rows and rows of Wolfond’s prized bath toys, some of which are featured in Poet Trees. The collection is as kaleidoscopic and vibrant as their passion is for access and creation.
I wanted to begin with what has inspired your work on neurodiversity. Can you tell me more about it?
EK: If your perception is intertwined with many things in the atmospheres it does result in different mannerisms and movements and tick-like movements. We learn how that reconfigures perception. And that’s a lot of the work that’s coming up in the video installation happening at Koffler Arts. We’re digging into that together.
And how do you support Adam in his endeavours?
EK: Adam would not be able to type if he didn’t have an activating touch-support. When you have what’s called autistic catatonia, in clinical terms, you have trouble with your motor planning. While Adam can type a few words on his own, it’s hard to sustain that movement unless I touch Adam on his back. It’s activating a movement. He calls it a “grounding” or a “landing.” As a facilitator, supporter, and parent, I have to feel alongside them. Adam has taught me a lot about the mutual nature of support and care that I hope will still seep out into the community and shift the way that we support autistic people in Canada.
Have you seen any progress made in the field since you started?
EK: It has come a long way. We hear neurodiversity a lot more in our culture because it spans more than the autistic person or the autistic body. You can be neurodivergent and autistic. Lots of people who claim that they’re neurodivergent are not autistic. The fact that we can perceive differently, that we think differently, has really caught on, but it hasn’t caught on to the same degree we want in our educational systems, in academia. Adam is the first non-speaking autistic person in Canada to be at university, never mind a master’s degree. We had to work for that. We had to find people who were empathetic to our cause and fighting the forms that we’re supposed to abide with, and even our dissertation, I call it our dissertation because there would be no dissertation without Adam’s collaboration and input. I wasn’t allowed to put his name on the front of my dissertation. So what does that say about the quote, unquote, participatory methods in research creation? It’s really problematic. And then the Applied Behavioural Analysis therapy (A.B.A), which is called Intensive Behavioural Intervention in Canada, has people who are still promoting it, so it’s difficult. It’s a system that then never really changes. So from that side, there’s still a lot of work to do.
You are setting an example for others, and giving people who are going through similar situations the ability to see themselves in Adam and in you.
EK: That’s the hope with our artistic practices. We founded an artistic practice that was process oriented, experimental. Adam calls it “the rally,” the way we rally together, the way that Adam’s ideas can come forth, because it’s like a new form is being created in what Adam calls “languaging.” Going outside the lines of what’s expected. As a mom, I feel that’s been enriching for both of us.
How has it been working together over the years and what have you learned from each other?
AW: I have learned that I can offer more to research when I am leading the way it is done.
EK: I think we learn from each other. And Adam, you’ve said a lot about how we lead together. I’m here to support. So it does put me in a number of different roles. Yes, I am a mother. I’m a trainer of other people, assistants who support Adam’s work. I’m an academic doing this in the field. What other options really were there for us if we didn’t do this kind of work together? I don’t think I could have lived with putting him into some home or institution or school that was A.B.Aing him. It wasn’t feasible. How do you have to live? How do you need to live? Those were the questions that were always coming up and that’s how we got to this place.
In your poem, Adam, what does the line “I am the pace of my body, not language,” which also serves as the title, mean to you?
AW: I want it to be emphasized that language is a way to produce meaning, and I make meaning also in the ways I move with the atmospheres and that paces of things are as important as words, and the body says more things.
Since the formation of dis assembly, what has the organization and the art that has come through it taught you both?
EK: Improvisational artistic practice has honoured the processes that we invent with neurodiverse ways of living and expressing. We learn how to support and think alongside and with people.
AK: Making in ways other than normative meaning is a blessing that people need to hear about. And I hope many non-speakers like me can access communication and empathy.
Shifting focus to Another Decade, I am interested in how the installation Poet Trees came together.
EK: Adam has these movements that settle his body. His body always has to move, and the weight of certain things are also very calming to the body. We were going on lots of walks during the pandemic and thinking a lot at that time about synesthesia and perception. I guess you can say the work is always about that. And so you see a lot of colours. You see, in Poet Trees, his Tabasco bottles that are woven in, some poetry is woven in, the rubber bath toys that he would tap or need to collect are in those trees, amongst other items that we had on hand, and that weaving or going around, around motion was feasible. The branches we would find on those daily walks are heavy. We would lug them back to our condo, where we worked. The weight of the wood, the colours, the sensory experience woven into it, is sort of how his poetry moves.
It’s interesting what affects us and how that crosses into our lives, and into the art we make, and into the stories we tell.
EK: As a mother and supporter, I’m learning. I’m still thinking about how to convey this different aspect of mothering: how I learn what is mutual, how I support outside of this neurotypical mothering that follows these developmental timelines and typical strategies, which hasn't been my life either.
I think there’s so many things we need to unlearn.
EK: If people are open to shifting the way we do things, or shifting the way we move from westernized forms of knowledge, it can be an exciting time too.
To shift, we need that openness. We need a lot more of making support visible. A problem in our culture is that we’re a very oralist society, so we prove our competencies through speaking. We think that competence is independent of any support. And so we problematize this kind of relation that Adam and I have, or that he has with his other assistive support workers. And we need to totally rethink and get away from that because we know that non-speakers and other disabled people are competent and have different views of the world, and we need to open that up.
I’m learning from this conversation too, and I also hope everyone is open to learning. In January, Adam’s exhibit will open at Koffler. What can we expect?
EK: We played with different types of cameras and used an endoscopic camera, a body camera, and Zoom recorders. The idea is to bring you into a more sensorial world, where detail comes at you, or things are blurred. It immerses and saturates the body that Adam uses. I think that pace and pattern are really important, and we’re thinking along with a lot of quantum theory.
Do you have anything you want viewers to take away with them?
EK: It’s the first ever such project by a non-speaking autistic person. And typically, many of the films with non-speaking autistic people in them are more narrative based. I'm not putting these films down, they’ve been very useful. The camera is focused on the autistic body. And being a critical disability scholar, I was thinking about the gaze, and I wanted the view from Adam outward, rather than looking at him. You don’t really see Adam in any of these video-based pieces. The only thing you see is some of his words will be projected on the screen, and his typing pace. Hopefully people will come away with a completely different experience of autistic perception and the way an autistic person can represent themselves.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.