Brainwave #4 Worlding beyond Wording

What happens when the container of communicative norms starts to leak, or even overflow beyond the verbal and textual? What new ways of relating, connecting, and understanding emerge when neurodiverse expression and ways of engaging with the world are seen not as deviations from the norm, but as starting points in their own right? And how might artistic practices and research explore the possibilities that follow?

Practical information
For whom: All body-minds and neuro-types are warmly invited to join.
This programme is free and everyone is welcome, but we kindly ask you to register.

The word remains the dominant form of expression in our everyday environments. Through it, we connect, share intimacy, voice our vulnerabilities and needs, and exchange knowledge—knowledge shaped by the conventions and structures of this mode of communication. In short, words construct the spaces we share and inhabit, defining the scope of our perception and understanding.

As one mode among many, verbal communication opens possibilities but also imposes limits on what can be expressed and, crucially, by whom. In this first gathering of the two-part programme on neurodiverse artistic research, we focus on the spills and seeps of expression: forms of articulating and connecting that slip through the grooves of preconceived norms, against which other ways of expression are often negatively judged.

By foregrounding the non-verbal, the non-textual, the always-too-little or always-too-much, the silence, the noise, and the embodied as valid modes of communication that reflect the full diversity of body-minds present, this session not only questions the dominance of verbal conventions but also explores the emergent forms of worldings beyond wording. What kinds of relations and ways of knowing become possible, within and beyond the university, when we step outside the comparative frame?

Together we turn the conversation toward practice—exploring methods and modes of communication and understanding rooted in neurodiverse experience—and ask how artistic processes can not only give shape to these, but also generate and transform what we mean by relating, expressing, and knowing.