braille book: artist statement

Arts House Listening Program

(braille book): Seeing through fingers with the eyes of my body feels good --- One of the wonderful things about this project was finding out that some people who are partially sighted or have low vision have a strong relationship with stimming. It is sad to find out that they have experienced similar forms of shaming and restraining to me. I love to rock my body and use proprioception to sense where I am in space. I have 20/20 vision and the backs of my retinas are enlarged. I’m very light sensitive. I can see the flicker of electricity in LED bars, hospitals and supermarkets look strobe-lit to me, and I see slightly better at night. Just like a cat. When I was a child, I didn’t respond the way other children might. My year one teacher at Albert Park Primary School thought I might be blind. It was the 80s and she was doing her best to help me. I liked her. I was placed in a class a few days a week where I got to learn to read braille and work with a braille typewriter. I’m very dyslexic and it turns out that reading braille is a similar level of difficulty to letters, if you’re not blind. I remember those classes fondly. It was one of my most beautiful schooling experiences. I remember moving my fingers over the braille and the beautiful boy with vision and hearing impairment next to me. Our lovely teacher let us stim our hearts out. She was always fighting the force of sticky. She would check our pockets for candy to protect the braille typewriter (and my hair, following annoyed reports from my mother after a number of bubblegum incidents…) That sweet brown-haired boy was always texturally seeking; mixing furry pocket fluff with water and hard sugar candy into sticky, and mushing flowers into paste to smear on my body. Even sharing their chewed chewing gum with me. They made comforting sounds flailing their arms and rocking their body. They loved to lick their lips and drool on everything, the braille, and me. It was the first time I felt safe to stim with others. There was a wonderful joy between us, even though we didn’t speak in words. The different kinds of pastes and mushes that we could get onto the braille and each other was our naughty and secret language. Concept & Content: Mishka Braille Typer: Marisa Sposaro Transcriber: Sarah Rowbottam