To make artistic works from a body that often felt like it couldn't fully inhabit itself is hard.
This research has showed a few ways that this could be done – be it by extending the definition of selfhood to contain the space that one's attention travels through, or by focusing on pleasure and stimulation as ways to bring sensation closer to the body, or by becoming curious of what lays creatively dormant in the experience of being absent or overwhelmed.
All of this has been enabled by sonic strategies of sensory knowledge building that are activated by the power of voice. These strategies brought hope, purpose and value to the innate sensory impulses of my ADHD body and have foregrounded voice's power to work with the specifics of the ADHD self and its felt intensities.
My neurodivergent composition practice works best in co-creative contexts in which the power, risk and responsibility are shared between all participants in the creative act, in a flexible format. Some questions remain open to do with the specific conditions that need to be communicated to others before they step into this co-creative process. These conditions are to do with the ambiguous and imprecise but deeply felt types of relation this process works with, as well as the entanglement of these felt affects with potentially vulnerable emotions that can surface through embodied work.
Oftentimes, the only way to activate radical difference has been to advocate for its importance while simultaneously undergoing the act of creation and putting myself at the centre of this research. This exhausting triple role needs to be fully given its dues. For now the no-bullshit Adriana that can do this work has taken a leave of absence to sleep, sing, eat or drink tea. When recovered she will carry on opening expressive routes for other people, both like and different to her.