making space for the fumble, the fall: drawing a line
camera Jasmeet Sidhu, editing Miklos Legrad, thanks to Trinity Square Video
This video is a document of a performance addressing the precariousness of negotiating im-mobility through dis-ability and aging. For several years I have been falling, the result of a muscular degenerative disease that makes falling frequent and getting up almost impossible. This performance was a response to the accumulated trauma of being publicly shamed and outed as dis-abled and un-abled. It was an opportunity to reframe my own narrative. Although enacting a fall and its consequences, I was able to place it within the context of a conceptual metaphor: a line drawn in a notebook. It referenced both the vertical line drawn by my standing body and the horizontal line drawn by my walking sticks lying next to me and my body stretched out and struggling to move forward to a stool and my only way up off the floor.