‘The One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart’ (2007)
Examined Life - Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor - Interdependence
Carmen Papalia, "Mobility Device," a High Line Performance
[at this point we had a break - in this break we had some water, stretched, got fresh air, discussed what we had seen and i encourage you to do the same. During this time - we tuned in live to the weather warlock in prep to continue on]
'WEATHER FOR THE BLIND' - Created by Quintron, Used in performance and collaboration by Carmen Papalia
‘Elegy for the Elswick Envoy’ (2007) - Nancy Willis
A lot of my work centers access as a tool of power to be reclaimed. Selective access in terms of who you are speaking to and who and who you are not and how these groups engage with what you present them with.
While building this, we came across what feels like a gap. Struggling to find footage of performances or clear context behind works.(love to The National Disability Arts Collection and Archive for all that they do )
We wanted to explore the expansion of the medical aid as part of the network created by disabled bodyminds. This is not to devalue in any sense the significance of traditional disability aids but to stretch beyond expected aids. When following the social model of disability, do we then create a social model of disability aid?
The late Anne McDonald writes “one's perception of time is dependant on ones dependency… I use an alphabet board, and I communicate at the rate of 450 words an hour compared to your 150 words in a minute—twenty times as slow. A slow world would be my heaven. I am forced to live in your world, a fast hard one. If slow rays flew from me I would be able to live in this world …’ This description illustrates criptime (the way time and place is experienced by disabled bodyminds) as a force, slow rays. These rays have material impact “…I need to speed up or you need to slow down.” Combining this idea directly into ‘aid’, “slow rays” stitch together medications, microwaves, bed frames and care networks. Arm in arm they link together into extended limb.
A body built and a body taken apart -
dissected per function but animated by disabled bodies and their aids
This project is imperative. Mobility aids are transformed further than a tool to meet abled standards but as a creative extension of reach.
It is an excellent case of “cripping” in action.
There is something
(crip) to say about
robots that I feel
is suffocated through
the push for
streamlined
advanced ai.
Monotone, a body
of repair...
He is very special to me
Although we couldn’t screen
the full production, the
sculpture alone is incredible.
It serves as a site and
map of the ‘social model
disability aid’.
Not able to be operated
alone, he is animated in
and by community.
‘Synonymous blasphemy’ (which I’ve been translating to) ‘Same Sin’
5min experimental short exploring analogue recording, translation and exchange between mediums. Using a hearing aid, 2 CODAs and an electricity pylon (amongst other tools)
To close out, we are going to watch Nancy Willis’ documentary which runs for 22 minutes.
Nancy Willis (~1953 - present) is a contemporary artist whose work “explores universal themes like love, loss and human vulnerability from her experience of life as a disabled woman”. Her short documentary ‘Elegy for the Elswick Envoy’ (2007) (E.E.E for brevity) Is a self-made documentary filmed by Willis and friends, highlighting aspects of disabled life that are not often covered in mainstream media. It depicts Willis's journey with her Elswick Envoy, a rare accessible car model from the 70s that was amongst the few vehicles that allowed wheelchair users to have full autonomy driving whilst still seated in their wheelchair. The Elswick Envoy stands out with intention, with most accessible vehicles being modified stock cars, made for the able body, and then refitted for a disabled one, leaving a clunky mishap of unnecessary size and features. The Elswick Envoy, however, was made with only the disabled body in mind. It allowed seamless access into the car from a ramp at the rear, and its small, compact size meant that a wheelchair user could access all components with ease.
- Lisa Bufano, Sonsherée Giles
BUTLER: So what seems clear to me is that we’re always conditioned to take a walk. Certain conditions have to be met. We need means of mobilization, we need support, we need surfaces. And it seems to me that having the use of your feet is not a necessary condition for a walk. That’s one of the thing that becomes most clear when you talk about taking a walk or taking a stroll. Feet can be one means of mobilizing the body, but certainly not the only one, and not even a necessary one. And that means we get to rethink what a walk is in terms of all the thing that power our movement, all the conditions that support our mobility.
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When exploring disability aids, especially within art, we find that with explicit connections between objects and the disabled body, an exchange is created. The table legs within ‘The One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart’ are intentionally replacing a ‘dead’ limb with another dead ‘limb’.The exchange of support, weight shared, animates our environment like a force. Demanding support and creating aids, as expertly highlighted through the table legs (for example), lays bare the outcome as more than aspiring to be abed. Non normative aids explicitly create with agency alternative:
ways a body will move,
sounds they (body and aid) will make,
directions they can and cannot go,
And how they do not have to be something they are not
“The Weather Warlock includes two main components:
a weather sensor tree that sits outside, and
a main console that sits inside — which looks like one of the first home stereo systems of the 60s.
Outside, on the sensor tree with Sebastian, you’ll find:
Wind sensor — looks like spinning plates or saucers.
Moisture sensor — a pipe with a metal cap and two screws; when water touches the screws, it makes a rain-drop sound.
Light sensors — one is a disc facing upward, others look like small showerheads pointed at the ground. They respond to UV index.
Built-in sensors include:
Temperature sensor — currently measuring room temperature.
Glass barometer — responds to barometric pressure changes.
The instrument was adapted with tactile features to make it easy for someone with vision loss to both play and maintain. And the live streaming app — as well as the backend of the platform — were built with screen reader accessibility in mind.”
As extensions of the body, our aids create their own waste. Cast a shadow, leave a footprint, come with packaging or a friend. They erode as joints, decay within their lifespan, chip and fall like dead tissue.
Source list:
Bailey-Evans, A. (2025). Synonymous Blasphemy. [online] Youtu.be. Available at: https://youtu.be/G-31oEvU80c?si=uEzDBP8qQZNwvsml [Accessed 9 Jan. 2026].
Butler, J. and Taylor, S. (n.d.). Interdependence.
Disability Intersectionality Summit (2018). DIS2018: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha ‘Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice?’ YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_0LSQKXqpw.
Willis, N. (2011). New Shoots: Elergy For The Elswick Envoy. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYAj94LC2GU.
Giles, S. and Bufano, L. (n.d.). One Breath is an Ocean for a Wooden Heart. [online] Sonsheree.com. Available at: http://www.sonsheree.com/project/one-breath-ocean-wooden-heart [Accessed 9 Jan. 2026].
Lee, S.H. (2020). [sound of subtitles]. [online] Seo Hye Lee. Available at: https://www.seohyelee.com/sound-of-subtitles [Accessed 9 Jan. 2026].
Papalia, C. (n.d.). Presentation Script and documentation on Weather for the Blind . Kindly sent to us after we reached out.
Quintron (2026). Weather for the blind. [online] Weatherfortheblind.org. Available at: https://weatherfortheblind.org/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2026].
Without Walls. (2025). The Iron Man - Without Walls. [online] Available at: https://withoutwalls.uk.com/programme/the-iron-man/ [Accessed 9 Jan. 2026].
www.youtube.com. (2019). Carmen Papalia, ‘Mobility Device,’ a High Line Performance. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UINvEeRM-Kw.
The weather warlock: A weather controlled synthesizer
The weather sensors are mounted to a post and detect temperature, wind-speed, UV index, barometric pressure, flooding, and atmospheric moisture. This all-analog synthesizer produces a wide range of tones and harmonics based around a consonant B flat major chord with special audio events occurring during sunrise and sunset.
“During my residency, I met two muralists from New Orleans — Felici and Joey of the Milagros Collective.
She asked me if I’d ever heard of something called Weather for the Blind. She explained that it was a website where Quintron was live streaming an instrument — the Weather Warlock. At the time, there were two streams — one from New Orleans, and another from Wave Farm in upstate New York.
Quintron explained on the site that “Weather for the Blind” was also the name of a circadian rhythm disorder that makes it difficult for some people with vision loss to sleep. The stream was meant as a kind of sound therapy — a soothing, rhythmic soundscape to help anyone who might benefit.
So I started listening. At first, it gave me this thrill — like I was eavesdropping on the environment in another place. I would turn it on while cleaning, relaxing — just letting it be in the background.
A lot of my work is about sensory perception and how we translate and describe what we sense. The Weather Warlock really resonated with me.
I learned that Quintron started developing it in 2011 after being diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. He wanted a meditative, grounding sound space to reflect on his illness — something calming, steady. That backstory drew me in even deeper.
It became part of my pain management routine — something healing I gave to myself.
“During my residency, I met two muralists from New Orleans — Felici and Joey of the Milagros Collective.
She asked me if I’d ever heard of something called Weather for the Blind. She explained that it was a website where Quintron was live streaming an instrument — the Weather Warlock. At the time, there were two streams — one from New Orleans, and another from Wave Farm in upstate New York.
Quintron explained on the site that “Weather for the Blind” was also the name of a circadian rhythm disorder that makes it difficult for some people with vision loss to sleep. The stream was meant as a kind of sound therapy — a soothing, rhythmic soundscape to help anyone who might benefit.
So I started listening. At first, it gave me this thrill — like I was eavesdropping on the environment in another place. I would turn it on while cleaning, relaxing — just letting it be in the background.
A lot of my work is about sensory perception and how we translate and describe what we sense. The Weather Warlock really resonated with me.
I learned that Quintron started developing it in 2011 after being diagnosed with stage four lymphoma. He wanted a meditative, grounding sound space to reflect on his illness — something calming, steady. That backstory drew me in even deeper.
It became part of my pain management routine — something healing I gave to myself.
They alter our evidence as bodies: a third footprint, concealed dna, tread tracks, interference.
Please feel free to stretch, move around, leave, ask questions and interrupt.
Audio for Synonymous Blasphemy ‘Same Sin’ couldn’t reliably be documented onsite. ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement, a post production technique used to ‘fix’ audio, most commonly poor speech), is used exclusively to limit dialogue as a product of digital translation and as a support for a crip camera unable to record sound independently and a 6 minute memory limit.
Detectable via an electromagnetic microphone, speech is specifically recorded through the EM mic pressed against our mother’s hearing aid translating ‘acoustic’ speech to digital ‘noise’. This chain of equipment comes with its own noise interference, it felt important to preserve this and so any and all AV distortion is analogue, no digital manipulation has been used at any point of production.
Intended to be repeatable and intentionally slow and fairly simple, Synonymous Blasphemy ‘Same Sin’ works within a constant exchange, paying acute attention to medium and form- who is listening to who?
We will watch:
‘The Iron Man’(2011-2013)- [Play clips] Graeae Theatre Company
Examined Life/Interdependence (2010) - [Recorded conversation] Judith Butler & Sunaura Taylor
‘Mobility Device’(2019)- [Performance & interview] Carmen Papilla
Break - Tuning into the Weather warlock
‘Synonymous Blasphemy (Same Sin)’ (2025)- [Short film] Arlen Bailey-Evans
‘Elegy for the Elswick Envoy’ (2007) - [Documentary] Nancy Willis
“The Iron Man was to be 5.5m high, fully mobile and compiled of makeshift limbs making him overtly asymmetric. With parts like a wheel for his leg there’d be reference to disability whilst
remaining autonomous to his own identity.
The “mini” Iron Man was 80cm high and primarily held at the neck and steadied on it’s wheel leg. A second puppeteer manipulated the right arm and leg.
For the “big” man Mike Pattison built a base powered by electric wheelchair motors and operated by a wheelchair user. His internal skeleton brilliantly allowed an easy 90 degree pivot at the waist operated from a chair behind the body.”
The Iron Man is an adaptation of the children’s tale of the same title. “The Iron Man arrives seemingly from nowhere, and his appearance is described in detail. He first appears falling off a cliff, but his various pieces reassemble themselves, starting with his hands finding his eyes and progressing from there.
He is unable to find one ear, which was taken by seagulls earlier, and walks into the sea to find it”
The play was in production between 2011-2013 which i was
lucky enough to see live as a child. We contacted graeae for screening access to no reply so what we have is sourced from public & promotional media.
I was originally going to have no real language at all besides what you read/hear. In place of syncing I would remove any capability to lipread and instead embody the hand sign of speech (o _ o _ o _).
I was researching non verbal communication and pylons as a site of projection, a structure I can’t help but believe we personify and recognise some aspect of ourselves in as they age and weaken alongside us. Or just me, either way this project deals with explicit and secret crip narrative studies.
Image Credit: Seo Hye Lee, [sound of subtitles], 2021
Throughout the documentary, we get to see just how much she loved the car, and how it had become part of her like an extended limb. She states in one part of the documentary that it “almost clunks along” much like herself, relating the sometimes temperamental car to that of her own body (Willis, 2007). The documentary hit me on a very personal note, relating the car to that of my own chugging, creaking chair. E.E.E is able to highlight a true representation, a mirror into the self, through Willis’ relationship and understanding of her car, and in turn, an understanding of herself. We watch as the Envoy slowly deteriorates after over 25 years of use and Willis’s journey in search of a museum that would be willing to take it into its collection, to not only commemorate it as piece of vehicular and disabled history, but to give it a dignified resting place. The audience is led to grow fond of the car, developing a kinship, allowing us to empathise with Willis’ love and loss beautifully as the Elswick Envoy is given its final farewell, clad in balloons and banners.
we are all the rest we are all the rest we are all the rest
(00:00 - 01:41)
“In this performance, the dancers wear 28” wooden stilts secured to their arms and legs. The stilts are constructed from familiar, every-day objects to create illusion and are a visually compelling tool of transformation. The queen-Anne style table legs enable the dancers to create a basic illusion of table and chair shape. Through the quality of their movement, the dancers are transformed through a wide range of imagery: animated furniture, magical toys, 8-legged insect, 4- legged gazelle, 2-legged birds. During the development of this piece, Sonsherée noted the experience of being disconnected to the ground (via the 28" distance of the stilts). This affirmed Lisa's experience as a 15-year prosthetic user; someone who performs tasks using tools that prevent 'feeling what she's doing.'
While thinking about that specific experience of disconnection, Sonsherée and Lisa made a creative decision to try to remain physically connected in some way to each other through-out the piece, until the end when they part”
I am someone who does not rely on standard medical aids, bar a cane on the off it doesn't also hurt my back. I rely on subtitles, bed rest, pain killers, friends, sign language, no language, a chair with a back, tfl, joint supports, heat packs, slip on clothes and structured shoes.
I mentally have been looping back to “how far do we reach?”, as bodyminds limited in some capacity our aids give us length.
We are finding ways to map the web of care networks as something both physical and temporal (in experience of time), perhaps as cast shadows or silhouettes
- as extensions of the bodymind.
[BIG HUGE thank you to Carmen Papalia who sent us the following script and resources about his work - We have condensed the full script for brevity and time but have done our best to retain the intended description]