I grew up looking out to islands.
E land [my corruption of the Gaelic word for island, Eilean], is the inkling / imagining of a place for D/deaf and neuroqueer experience of sound. Not as a definite destination but as an ever-evolving reality.My E land piece is live visuals and installation with 3 related but separate audio. The visuals and audio have contextual and sensory origins, less about a final outcome and more like a conversation. Each audio interacts with the constellation of ideas and relations that have come from my exploration of sound from Deaf and Neuroqueerculture and the parallels to Gaelic and the land. Gaelic as the founding language of my homeland, Scotland. Engaging with Deaf culture is relatively recent despite myself and my mother’s lineage being deaf/hard of hearing. Neuroqueer, a term borne out of neurodivergent discourse, is a practice I've come to through my creative community. It is to explore and expose limitations of dominant ideas of sound, language and modes of communication to give way to more freeing forms of expression. It is a repositioning myself to the imagining of E land, a place where language and communication are an ever-evolving means of expression and connection to ourselves, others and the land.
> Pictures of event and other participants
> Collection of ideas and people that guided E land
15 minute VJing performance with 3 audiovisual parts :
> Sentire
> Sea
> Salm
Audio by Catherine Joan Macdonald (who kindly granted permission to use)
Audience watching Jané Mackenzie's E land piece, with focus on Derek Williams (one of the participants) wearing a Woojer vest