It's wonderful to be here to talk about my journey, to talk about the wheelchair and the freedom it has bought me.I started using a wheelchair 16 years ago when an ____ changed the way I could ____ the world. When I started using the wheelchair, it was a ____ new freedom. I'd seen my life slip away and become ____. It was like having an enormous new toy. I could whiz around and feel the wind in my face again. Just being out on the street was ____. But even though I had this ____ joy and freedom, people's reaction completely changed towards me. It was as if they couldn't see me anymore, as if an ____ had descended. They seemed to see me in terms of their ____ of what it must be like to be in a wheelchair. When I asked people their associations with the wheelchair, they used words like "limitation," "fear," "____" and "restriction." I realized I'd internalized these responses and it had changed who I was on a ____ level. A part of me had become ____ from myself. I was seeing myself not from my ____, but vividly and continuously from the perspective of other people's responses to me.As a result, I knew I needed to make my own stories about this experience, new narratives to reclaim my identity. I started making work that aimed to communicate something of the joy and freedom I felt when using a wheelchair -- a power chair -- to negotiate the world. I was working to transform these ____ responses, to transform the ____ that had so shaped my identity when I started using a wheelchair, by creating unexpected images. The wheelchair became an object to paint and play with. When I literally started leaving traces of my joy and ____, it was exciting to see the interested and surprised responses from people. It seemed to open up new ____, and therein lay the ____. It showed that an arts practice can remake one's identity and transform preconceptions by revisioning the familiar.So when I began to dive, in 2005, I realized scuba gear ____ your range of activity in just the same way as a wheelchair does, but the associations attached to scuba gear are ones of excitement and adventure, completely different to people's responses to the wheelchair. So I thought, "I ____ what'll happen if I put the two together?" (Laughter) (Applause) And the ____ wheelchair that has resulted has taken me on the most amazing journey over the last seven years.So to give you an idea of what that's like, I'd like to share with you one of the ____ from creating this ____, and show you what an amazing ____ it's taken me on. It is the most amazing ____, beyond most other things I've experienced in life. I literally have the freedom to move in 360 degrees of space and an ____ experience of joy and freedom.And the incredibly ____ thing is that other people seem to see and feel that too. Their eyes literally light up, and they say things like, "I want one of those," or, "If you can do that, I can do anything." And I'm thinking, it's because in that moment of them seeing an object they have no ____ for, or so transcends the frames of reference they have with the wheelchair, they have to think in a completely new way. And I think that moment of completely new thought perhaps creates a freedom that ____ to the rest of other people's lives. For me, this means that they're seeing the ____, the joy it brings when instead of focusing on ____ or limitation, we see and discover the ____ and joy of seeing the world from exciting new perspectives. For me, the wheelchair becomes a ____ for transformation. In fact, I now call the underwater wheelchair "Portal," because it's literally pushed me through into a new way of being, into new ____ and into a new level of ____.And the other thing is, that because nobody's seen or heard of an underwater wheelchair before, and creating this spectacle is about creating new ways of seeing, being and knowing, now you have this concept in your ____. You're all part of the artwork too.

U. 5&6. TED talk. Deep sea diving... in a wheel chair

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