An Alternate Sensory Reality
Psychedelic as a framework for looking. Neurodiversity and film practice as tools for understanding of the psyche and relationships with the world.
Geraniums are flowering and the weather starts to feel a bit warmer - walking part of the way without my jacket on feels like a long-forgotten pleasure. Two weeks ago I accidentally knocked over a long-stemmed geranium, but yesterday we potted the break-out plants: now we have three instead of one. That makes it thirty nine all together. There are new separate leaves coming up in my sansevieria and an unidentified seed sprouted in the draecena, one of my oldest plants. We placed the monstera in a larger pot with a moss pole and it’s now the hugest plant in the flat. I miss having a garden, the kitchen floor is not ideal for handling wet soil.
It’s still the Easter break and perhaps I should have taken some time off working on my research, but instead I’m writing new paragraphs.
Ken Johnson writes about analysing art “through a psychedelic lens” - instead of commenting on one “type” of art, he suggests psychedelic consciousness as “the collective psychic origin”, from which art since the 1960s, such as Minimalism, Conceptualism, and certain tendencies in installation and video originated (2011). His focus lies in an approach to art that requires “a heightened, Zen-like attentiveness, a kind of receptivity to subtleties of space and time and forms and materials” that could be achieved through ingestion of a psychedelic compound. I like the idea of psychedelic as a framework for analysis, rather than a specific type of art and film, which would present only a narrow lane in the field.
However, the heightened senses he writes about, along with the focused attention and openness to experience do not have to originate from a psychoactive substance. In the view of neurodiversity, and tools such as Sensory Profile Questionnaire and Tellegen Absorption Scale, it is necessary to consider that these states of direct experience and intense sensory absorption can be readily available to different individuals depending on how their brains process information. Heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli is often characteristic of autism. As an autistic self-advocate Temple Grandin notes,
“what if you’re receiving the same sensory information as everyone else, but your brain is interpreting it differently? Then your experience of the world around you will be radically different from everyone else’s, maybe even painfully so. In that case, you would literally be living in an alternate reality” (2013).
The differences of neurodivergent perception and experience are currently highlighted and explored in artistic initiatives such as North London’s DYSPLA, who are developing the concept of Neurodivergent Aesthetics, while working with VR amongst other media, the work of autistic multidisciplinary artist and neurodiversity consultant Sonia Boué, and the organisation Autism Through Cinema, who run series of podcasts and organise conferences in London. Naturally, there are and always have been innumerable neurodivergent artists out there. Sometimes I ask how big a part autism plays in my work, rather ridiculously, knowing full well that it is an inseparable part of who I am - so I am really asking how big a part I myself play in my work. I guess what I really mean to ask is whether I want to be disclosing my diagnosis in my practice.
In their book Thought in the Act Manning and Massumi look into the neurodivergent perspective through interviews with autistic creatives, noticing that “Autistic perception dances attention, affirming the interconnectedness of modes of existence, foregrounding the relationality at the heart passages of perception” (2014), which serves as a poetic insight into the important element of psychedelic film’s ethos and my Psychepoetic Film Practice: the study of sensory relationships with spaces, objects and nature carries the significance of exploring the place of self in the interconnected world.
My interest in and focus on sensory experience, altered states of consciousness and film as a medium for expression and communication of what cannot be accurately communicated in words and in social interaction are all bound, as I have learnt, to my experience as an autistic woman. It did take a while for me, at the beginning of my filmmaking practice, to understand that attempts to separate my self, my psyche, from my work, are fruitless and result in stripping the films of feeling and soul. There are different ways of building a relationship with filmmaking practice, and it also took time to figure out what mine could be - I hope it continues developing with every project. As I learnt to extract and accept the reasons behind my various interests I welcomed my practice as a tool for reconnecting with the unconscious, for transformation and reunderstanding. The more I make, the more I will learn - not only about what can be done with film, but also about myself and the world.
Seagulls screech behind the windows. I love living in a seaside town. We need a garden like the monstera needed a bigger pot. I’m looking forward to the sun coming out, I’d like to plunge into the grass under blossoming trees.