The livestream will start Friday 21 May at 20:00. Please click the image below to view.

A literary evening about Aspergistan, soulless psychiatry and Kurt Cobain. With readings, a performance and a discussion.

Writers Hamja Ahsan and Jonathan Griffioen will have readings and a discussion about different subjects regarding their works, poetics, and lives. Artists Nadh Lingyun Cao and Mica Pan will perform an untheatrical piece. Expect no loud music, no smalltalk, and no smooth-talking.

Neurodiversity and neurodivergence are terms that are increasingly gaining traction in a variety of fields. The terms were first developed by autistic self-advocates and activists in the late 1990s. Neurodiversity refers to the variation in the human brain regarding sociability, learning, attention, mood, and other mental functions in a non-pathological sense.

Hamja Ahsan is the writer of 'Shy Radicals' (2017 Book Works), a manifesto in which he writes about the fictional state of 'Aspergistan' - a utopic homeland for the liberation of shy, quiet, introverted, or awkward people, and people on the autism spectrum. With satire and humor, Hamja goes on to make a compelling argument for the radicalization of Shy, Introverted, and Autistic individuals who suffer at the hands of extrovert-supremacism. Introversion or anti-social behavior is no longer seen as a flaw or defect, rather, Hamja turns the tables around and shows why we must celebrate introversion. The book not only states the political demands of society's introverts, but it is also a sharp criticism of capitalism and colonialism, and the consecutive racism and islamophobia.

Jonathan Griffioen is a prizewinning Dutch poet who debuted with 'Wijk' [District] (2015), in which he cinematically depicts the boredom and lack of inspiration felt by a group of local youth, their search for identity and self-realization. His second poetry collection 'Gedichten met een mazda 626' [Poems with a Mazda 626] (2018) is a psychedelic road trip through a childhood, an exploration of psychiatry, social norms, and the human unconscious. Jonathan explores what it means to be diagnosed and treated as a child for being neurodiverse. He starts the collection with:

"pdd-nos (nl) was introduced in 1990 because psychiatrists sought a
dsm-category for kids who were not (quite) autistic kids
(who were considered as not quite autistic because these
kids could only satisfy one or two of the three conditions
or had not satisfied the conditions on time or could only satisfy
them at a later age and none of the psychiatrists knew
how to help when it could not be determined when it had
started) so that the not (quite) autistic children would also
feel supported and for their parents to be entitled to the help
available at the beginning of the 90s..."

About the speakers
Hamja Ahsan is an artist, writer, activist and curator based in London, UK and Maastricht, Netherlands. He is the author of the book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, now adapted into a film. He was awarded the Grand Prize at Ljubljana Biennial 2019. He is co-curator of the DIY Cultures festival of creative activism, zines and independent publishing since 2013. He was shortlisted for the Liberty human rights award for Free Talha Ahsan campaign on extradition under the War on Terror. He is on the editorial board of the Radical Mental Health magazine Asylum. IG/ Twitter: @hamjaahsan

Jonathan Griffioen (1987) was born in Amsterdam and grew up in Wijk bij Duurstede. He writes about growing up in this small provincial town in his first collection Wijk [District] (2015), which was nominated for the C. Budding'-prize. Griffioen made it into the semi-finals of the NK Poetry Slam 2015. His second collection, Gedichten met een mazda 626 [Poems with a Mazda 626] followed in 2018 and was awarded the J.C. Bloemprijs 2019. It was also long-listed for the Grote Poëzieprijs 2019.

Mica Pan studies at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy, she deals with minimal everyday gestures/movements and the feelings they evoke in different contexts in her performance work, and is obsessed with the subconscious.

Nadh Lingyun Cao graduated from the Gerrit Rietveld Academy in 2020, in fine arts. Before that, he was trained as an actor in Shanghai theatre academy. He is the protagonist of search year, a feature film, (half documentary/ half fiction) which is expected to be released in 2022. His work consists of performances, installations, video art and sound design.

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