Situating deaf-gain: performance and writing in the work of and Aaron Williamson

ABSTRACT

This article takes the form of an interview, between performance artist and writer, Aaron Williamson, and the poet, artist and teacher, Larry Lynch. Talking across Williamson’s practice of the last three decades, and its compositional, conceptual, and contextual development, the conversation focusses on the situating of language and writing in, and around, a broad conception of performance. The discussion is further framed by Williamson’s experience as a d/Deaf person, a subject position that invigorates a radical socio-linguistic critique.

KEYWORDS:

• Performance writing
• performance art
• deafness
• disability
• poetics
• punk

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Aaron Williamson

Aaron Williamson is an Artist and Poet. His work is informed by his experience of becoming deaf and by a politicised, yet humorous sensibility towards disability. At a University of California San Diego lecture in 1998, Williamson coined the term ‘Deaf Gain’ as a counter-emphasis to ‘hearing loss’. Over the last thirty years he has created more than 300 exhibitions, performances, interventions, videos, installations, and publications for galleries, museums and festivals including: Tate Modern, Tate Britain, The Serpentine Gallery, and The Whitechapel Gallery, in the UK. Internationally, his exhibitions and performances include, The Venice Biennale, Nippon Performance Art Festival (Japan), ANTI Festival (Finland), and Eruptio Action Art (Transylvania).

Larry Lynch

Larry Lynch is a poet, artist, and teacher. He is Professor of Performance Writing at the University of Southampton in the UK, where he currently serves as Head of Winchester School of Art.