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The Culture of Disbelief

 

Solo Exhibition, Phoinix, Bratislava

Measuring bodyminds against what is deemed ‘normal’, is the process through which the boundaries of ability/disability are formed and upheld. This process assumes that disability is a knowable, obvious and unchanging category, even as it is routinely disproved by fluctuating bodyminds, and realities that resist being seen by this operation.(1) The exhibition explores different aspects of this concern.

The 24 minute video work entitled Long-Covid and the Culture of Disbelief, examines the legacies of hysteria and disbelief in the condition ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis), that formed the vacuum of knowledge for current long-covid – a vacuum within which existing tests cannot see these bodyminds as anything other than ‘normal’ even when obviously sick. Individuals whose lives are shaped by such disability dis-identifications often experience a kind of bodily/textual dissonance, in which their experiences are displaced and superseded by a written authentication that overwrites their own bodily knowledge.(2) Socio-medical power relations and a politics of epistemic practice wield the power to confirm or deny the reality of everyone’s bodily experience.(3)

Soft cushions as letters spelling ‘EPISTEMIC injustice’, adorn the space. A harsh word made soft, and for visiting bodies to sit on, a place to rest and to watch the work. Woven through the artist’s personal accounts, the video narrative revolves in crip time – thinking through crip time as edited-time conflated with the extended time of sickness, and as time that dis-orientates the past socio-medical injustices with the embodied feelings of long-covid. A feeling of being caught between the suspension of disbelief and belief, or of being stuck in the culture of disbelief, is texturally explored through imagery that combines CGI with found, archival and the artist’s home VHS footage.

The series of drawings based on forensic calibration scales used to measure bodies, are made by a careful, precise hand, with inevitable human error, the drawings seek to crip the system of measure at play.

1 – 2014, Samuels, Ellen. Fantasies of Identification: Disability, Gender, Race. NYU Press, US.
2- ibid
3 – 1996, Wendell, Susan. The Rejected Body. Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, Routledge, UK.
The programme of the gallery is supported by the public funds provided from Slovak Arts Council.

 

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

Install photo of the exhibition The Culture of Disbelief by Rowena Harris at Phoinix, Bratislava. There are two rooms of white walls and wood flooring. Room one has framed drawings of reference rulers, room two has a wall mounted monitor showing a film, a grey settee and large cushions in the shape of letters across the floor and settee.

A near distance CGI image of pills falling from a light bleu sky to a pink suface, the tones are pastel, and the pills almost seem like sweets

A CGI image of a snowy mountain peak in near view, with pinkish-purple light and an ethereal feel. The caption below reads : "invisible disability"

A CGI image of the words “IF I FAILED TO RESPOND IN A TIMELY MANNER” in shiny metal, leaning on a blue sofa in close view, it is dark potentially night

A CGI image of the words “EPISTEMIC INJUSTICE” rendered in concrete text, floating in the air with a concrete wall behind, light streams through through a window from the right out of shot

A CGI image of a figure, head and shoulders, tilting the head. They have medium tone skin, short blond hair, a black t-shirt, non-obvious gender. A domestic room is behind and dark warm light, lightly blurred. A caption reads “disbelief still leaking”