Claire Cunningham

07—19.02.22

What is the choreography of Crip navigation?  What are the maps we would draw?  Of place, scale, time, energy. Of the scenic viewpoint.  What might be learned from the compass of Crip knowledge and journeys taken? Those of us who learn the contours of place from the way wheel skids through stone, hangs suspended over the ridgeline of a rut, the way a crutch explores the temper and texture of moss upon rock?  Those of us who reach for the ground through crutches as 4 legged creatures, feeling through wheels which trace the terrain of a place like a trickle of water. Who run like rivers.

Building on research started years ago through the work Hermit Crips – a series of walks and conversations with various disabled individuals and journeys with non-disabled individuals involved in long-distance cycling, mountaineering and mountain rescue, Claire will use the residency time to begin considering how to continue the research, and how to physically engage with the knowledge and where it meets with her own physicality and dance technique Quanimacy.   Drawing parallels between those who take part in extreme pursuits with those of disabled and other marginalised individuals navigating their way through the world, the research will go towards a new work, Songs of the Wayfarers, exploring how the same skills exist in people perceived to be at opposite extremes of physical capacity.


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