This Friday (9th October)  is the spectacular annual Leeds Light Night arts event that takes place in the city centre. Residents and visitors of all ages are invited to come and take part in this completely free celebration of the city’s diverse and exciting arts scene.

Millennium Square will host a number of events, including awe-inspiring moving projections on the Civic Hall and a chance to draw with light and see your creations up on the BBC Big Screen. Discover the ‘lost art of conversation’ using yogurt pots and string, see moving artwork around the city at a travelling gallery, create your own planet and become part of the Light Night solar system or see angels ascend from heaven in the university chaplaincy. Just a snippet of the 80 events across 50 venues that are sure to keep you busy all night!

Motion Disabled

We don’t often have the time to sit and study physical movement. It passes us by as we go about our lives: all kinds of physical shapes and sizes constantly moving past us at various speeds – we see people run, walk, struggle and push as they stride through life. But, there is no one there who is ‘really normal’: there is only difference.

Motion Disabled aims to show movement using clear and unambiguous imagery: the kick boxer who is also thalidomide; the cyclist with Cerebral Palsy; the footballer with Spina Bifida; and others. These are movements that will not exist for much longer; society seems to want to be ‘normal’, to be squarer, flatter, more reduced and banal.

In the work you will see virtual movements based on the day to day reality of the disabled actors involved. Questions are raised: how do shower with short arms? How do you answer the phone if you have no arms?

The work enables the viewer to engage and explore ideas of normality and difference on a pathological and metaphysical level as a challenging art work that reveals who we all are to ourselves and others. A process that is particularly relevant at a time when bioscience is encouraging society to make complex genetic choices that will affect the future course of humanity. Is the future of difference going to only be virtual?

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Tags: Art, Festival, Tourism, United Kingdom, Yorkshire & Humber

This entry was posted by Craig Grimes on Tuesday, October 6th, 2009 at 5:39 pm and is filed under Art, England, Event, Festival, United Kingdom, What's On, Yorkshire & Humber. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.