Self Defense - Joni Whitworth and Sam Tam Ham (Portland, Oregon)

Self Defense is a short film documenting a poetic performance art piece. The piece explores my time navigating the world as a neurodivergent person. Neurodivergence refers to variations in the human mind — variations in sociability, learning, mood, sensory processing, and behavior. Many people are leaning towards the word "neurodivergent", and away from the word "autistic". I don't mind what term we use, so long as we can have a creative conversation about the label's implications. Against the violence and degradation of this year, marginalized creatives are tasked with generating an equal and opposite response. This piece is an attempt at such, knowing that queer and autistic writers have a lot to offer in terms of social and cultural feedback and constructive criticism.

The work addresses several cultural issues, including how an autistic person can defend a Self moving through various categories of spaces and relationships. The words unfold as slowly, in juxtaposition to the most commonly known cultural narrative of autism, which is that of Rain Man or a weird or quirky man. Many other types of people are autistic; there are dozens of unexplored autistic elements, areas that may be not related to math or memorizing facts but details that are more generous, emotional, or sensual. 2021; 20 min.