TEDxWomen 2012
Sue Austin: Deep sea diving ... in a wheelchair
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When Sue Austin got a power wheelchair, she felt a tremendous sense of freedom -- yet others looked at her as though she had lost something. In her art, she conveys the spirit of wonder she feels wheeling through the world. Includes thrilling footage of an underwater wheelchair that lets her explore ocean beds, drifting through schools of fish, floating free in 360 degrees.
Sue Austin - Performance artist
In repurposing her wheelchair to create fantastical art, Sue Austin reshapes how we think about disability. Full bio
In repurposing her wheelchair to create fantastical art, Sue Austin reshapes how we think about disability. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
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It's wonderful to be here
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to talk about my journey,
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to talk about the wheelchair
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and the freedom it has bought me.
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I started using a wheelchair 16 years ago
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when an extended illness
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changed the way I could access the world.
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When I started using the wheelchair,
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it was a tremendous new freedom.
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I'd seen my life slip away and become restricted.
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It was like having an enormous new toy.
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I could whiz around and feel the wind in my face again.
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Just being out on the street was exhilarating.
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But even though I had this newfound joy and freedom,
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people's reaction completely changed towards me.
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It was as if they couldn't see me anymore,
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as if an invisibility cloak had descended.
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They seemed to see me in terms of their assumptions
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of what it must be like to be in a wheelchair.
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When I asked people their associations with the wheelchair,
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they used words like "limitation," "fear,"
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"pity" and "restriction."
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I realized I'd internalized these responses
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and it had changed who I was on a core level.
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A part of me had become alienated from myself.
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I was seeing myself not from my perspective,
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but vividly and continuously from the perspective
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of other people's responses to me.
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As a result, I knew I needed to make my own stories
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about this experience,
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new narratives to reclaim my identity.
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["Finding Freedom: 'By creating our own stories we learn to take the texts of our lives as seriously as we do 'official' narratives.' — Davis 2009, TEDx Women"]
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I started making work
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that aimed to communicate something
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of the joy and freedom I felt when using a wheelchair --
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a power chair -- to negotiate the world.
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I was working to transform these internalized responses,
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to transform the preconceptions that had so shaped
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my identity when I started using a wheelchair,
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by creating unexpected images.
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The wheelchair became an object to paint and play with.
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When I literally started leaving
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traces of my joy and freedom,
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it was exciting to see
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the interested and surprised responses from people.
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It seemed to open up new perspectives,
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and therein lay the paradigm shift.
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It showed that an arts practice
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can remake one's identity
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and transform preconceptions by revisioning the familiar.
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So when I began to dive, in 2005,
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I realized scuba gear extends your range of activity
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in just the same way as a wheelchair does,
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but the associations attached to scuba gear
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are ones of excitement and adventure,
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completely different to people's responses to the wheelchair.
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So I thought, "I wonder what'll happen
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if I put the two together?" (Laughter) (Applause)
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And the underwater wheelchair that has resulted
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has taken me on the most amazing journey
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over the last seven years.
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So to give you an idea of what that's like,
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I'd like to share with you one of the outcomes
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from creating this spectacle,
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and show you what an amazing journey it's taken me on.
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(Music)
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(Applause)
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It is the most amazing experience,
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beyond most other things I've experienced in life.
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I literally have the freedom to move
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in 360 degrees of space
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and an ecstatic experience of joy and freedom.
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And the incredibly unexpected thing
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is that other people seem to see and feel that too.
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Their eyes literally light up,
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and they say things like, "I want one of those,"
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or, "If you can do that, I can do anything."
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And I'm thinking, it's because in that moment
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of them seeing an object
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they have no frame of reference for,
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or so transcends the frames of reference
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they have with the wheelchair,
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they have to think in a completely new way.
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And I think that moment of completely new thought
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perhaps creates a freedom
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that spreads to the rest of other people's lives.
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For me, this means that they're seeing
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the value of difference,
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the joy it brings
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when instead of focusing on loss or limitation,
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we see and discover the power and joy
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of seeing the world from exciting new perspectives.
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For me, the wheelchair becomes
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a vehicle for transformation.
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In fact, I now call the underwater wheelchair "Portal,"
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because it's literally pushed me through
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into a new way of being,
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into new dimensions and into a new level of consciousness.
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And the other thing is,
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that because nobody's seen or heard
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of an underwater wheelchair before,
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and creating this spectacle is about creating
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new ways of seeing, being and knowing,
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now you have this concept in your mind.
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You're all part of the artwork too.
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(Applause)
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ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Sue Austin - Performance artistIn repurposing her wheelchair to create fantastical art, Sue Austin reshapes how we think about disability.
Why you should listen
Multimedia, performance and installation artist Sue Austin keeps a fascinating mission at the center her work: to challenge the idea of disabled as “other” and represent her experience as a wheelchair user in a brighter light. She does this by creating quirky, unexpected juxtapositions -- bringing a sense of whimsy and empowerment to the discussion of disability.
Austin is the founder and artistic director of Freewheeling, an initiative aiming to further the genre of Disability Arts. In 2012, she was asked to be a part of the Cultural Olympiad in Britain, a celebration of the arts leading up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games. The work she created for the event, called “Creating the Spectacle!,” is a groundbreaking series of live art and video works of an underwater wheelchair.
Sue Austin | Speaker | TED.com