Work-Place/ Chicago----2008
Site:
Chicago Cultural Center
Dimensions:
13'W x 14'H x 48'D (Entry); 49'W x 30'H x 135'D (Stimulus Space)
Collaborator:
Matt Butler, PACTT Learning Center and Vocational Training Center
These experiential spaces relate the theme of occupation to young autistic adults entering the workforce. In this installation, the audience moved through two spaces, the first an entry corridor that presents a sequence of symbols and icons, simulacra of the worlds we desire and work to inhabit. This condensed process of socialization may or may not have prepared the audience to cross the boundary into the Sidney R Yates Gallery, a heightened audio/visual space bounded by the monumental, civic facades of the space. A digital soundscape, a collage of workaday sounds, magnified the stimuli of the work world, prompting the audience to engage or recoil.
This participatory environment defined and engaged the meta-theme of occupation in two ways, through: 1) Our self-identification with our work within systems and 2) Our inhabitation of public workplaces. These themes are central to the experiences that young adults with autism encounter upon their entry into the work world.
Their preparation for the navigation of the behaviors, interactions and conventions of society, and their heightened reactions to visual and auditory stimuli suggest a parallel between autistic and normative experience. Our socialization through a barrage of pictorial and indexical symbols and icons are not unlike the pictorial languages that have been developed to aid communication for people with autism. Our reliance upon routines, repetition and predictability facilitates our functioning in society, echoing the anchor of routine that enables young adults with autism to enter the work world. While we usually process, filter and sublimate the illogic of social conventions, they cannot.
Constructed with digital film on aluminum panels, mirror balls, spotlights, audio loop