the lunatic ball & the majestic tic & pacing...(an excerpt)

In 2022, while preparing for a talk presented as part of KINGS ARI’s Other Body Knowledge programme on art and ableism, artist Fayen d’Evie unearthed a 1930 speech by William Jones, Inspector General for the Insane in Victoria, promoting eugenics. He described the insane, the mentally defective, the criminal, the inefficient, and the physically debilitated as akin to the spoil heap in the yard of a master potter: a pile of plates, cups, and saucers, “ill-shapen, cracked or crazed”, so that for the sake of the reputation of the potter, these articles must be rejected for the market.

After moving last year into the former Kew Asylum for Lunatics, d’Evie began to feel her way through the language of the Victorian eugenicists, their ‘progressive’ politics, and the early history of asylums in Victoria. She invited a temporary, disability-led collective of artists, writers, performers, designers and architects from so-called Australia, the US and the UK to gather. Together, the Language of Lunacy (LoL) collective have been reimagining an asylum as a place where people who refuse normalcy can individually and collectively hallucinate, perform, and construct temporary communities within which to live, dream, luxuriate in rest, and co-create.

Through performances and a creative captioning workshop, Fayen and fellow LoL artists Jon Tjhia and Nelly Kate (Boston) will share a few loose threads from LoL’s recent investigation of the fortnightly lunatic balls at the Kew Asylum. Within a provisional architecture featuring a new textile work by Chelsea Clarke (Houston), and paintings by Luke D King, Fayen and Jon will introduce a citational performance lecture, enfolding inter-sensorial contributions from some of the LoL collective: Joseph Rizzo Naudi, Poppy Levinson, Zena Cumpston, Adam Deusien, Justin Looper, Hen Vaughan, Ebony Wightman, Jenny Hector, Jordan Valageorgiou and Liam Benson.

Nelly Kate will lead a public workshop, experimenting with methods for roving captions; then close out the afternoon with a sound performance with prepared tape recordings from in and around Kew Asylum.

This event is presented in collaboration with La Trobe Art Institute. It arises from a creative exchange hosted by Access Lab and Library, MIT Spatial Sound Lab and We Are Studios, supported by an Arts House Warehouse Residency, City of Melbourne Arts Grants and Creative Australia.

For any access requirements please get in touch with beatrice@kingsartistrun.org.au

🍷drinks kindly by Heaps Normal and Little Brunswick Wine Co

📸: Jon Tjhia

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Fayen d’Evie (she/her)

Fayen d'Evie (AU) is an artist, publisher, and access advocate, and a co-founder of Access Lab and Library (ALL). A lifetime of fluctuating vision has spurred creative research into blindness as a critical and imaginative position. Her projects are often collaborative, and resist spectatorship by inviting audiences into sensorial readings of artworks and texts.

She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including major projects for the MCA Sydney, SAMSTAG Museum of Art, Art Gallery of NSW, Buxton Contemporary, V.A.C. and the State Museum of Vadim Sidur, Moscow, TarraWarra Biennial, and the Ural Industrial Biennial, Russia. Fayen is the founder of independent imprint 3-ply, which approaches publishing as an experimental site for the creation, dispersal, and archiving of texts.

Fayen has provided creative provocations and pedagogical guidance to arts institutions nationally and internationally committed to more inclusive structures and more ambitious curation of disability-led practice.

fayendevie.com

Nelly Kate (she/her)

Nelly Kate (US) is a studio artist with an expanded practice in sound, expressing its material power through tones, tapes, water, wood, metal, and fiber. Over the past decade, Nelly has experienced fluctuations between late-deafness and hearing. This informs her creative research and practice in slowness, the awkwardness of inclusion, collaboration, and repetition.

Her work takes the form of installation, performance, and print. She creates spaces for public imagination and healing, often working with trash, reclaimed, and repurposed materials.

Nelly Kate holds an MFA in Print Media from Cranbrook Academy of Art. She is currently a creative director at MIT Spatial Sound Lab, working across the unceded lands of Massachusett, Pawtucket, and Wampanoag nations.

nellykate.net

Jon Tjhia (he/him)

Jon Tjhia (AU) is a co-founder of Access Lab and Library (ALL). He is an artist, writer and editor working through literature, radio and podcast, installation, photomedia, music and publishing.

His works have most recently been published or exhibited by Office 3553, LOOM, the Powerhouse, Institute of Modern Art, Un, LIMINAL, Pantera Press and Radiophrenia. Other works have appeared at Manchester Literature Festival, the Barbican Centre, City Gallery Wellington, Sydney Opera House and Arts Centre Melbourne; the ABC, BBC and CBC; and written about by the New Yorker, the Wire and the Age.

In previous years as the Wheeler Centre’s senior digital editor, he co-founded and published the Australian Audio Guide as well as award-winning projects including digital publication Notes, and podcast The Messenger. He’s a member of the Manus Recording Project Collective.

informationjewellery.com