Panel Discussion: Neurodiversity & Languaging

This panel is convened to discuss the work of Adam Wolfond and Dis Assembly, presented in the exhibition What If My Body Is A Beacon For The World? at Koffler Arts (January 9 – 26, 2025). Poetry and artistic processes merge in this exhibition that explores autistic perception and movement as well as the techniques required to support and collaborate with autistic people beyond therapy.

The panel will include Adam wolfond, Adam’s mother and the co-founder of Dis Assembly Dr. Estée Klar as well as Dr. Erin Manning, professor of fine art at Concordia university and neurodiversity scholar along with Chris Martin, a neurodivergent poet.

Wolfond’s work asks us to reconsider autism as relational, where the vectors of human and more-than-human interrelationality come together in a fractalized perception of spacetime, and raises questions about neurotypicality and the dominant normative forms in which we have all been taught to move and think.

All panelists will provide a brief presentation on their work with Wolfond and other neurodiverse people, and how the processes with Dis Assembly participants are mutual collaborations rather than hierarchical assignments.