June 2023 AIR: Nat Decker
We are excited to share the work of our June Artist in Residence Nat Decker
Q & A
Q: Hey Nat! We’re so excited to have you join the lab in June! I know you are originally from Chicago but have lived in California for over a decade, what are you most looking forward to about coming back to Chicago?
Thank you, I’m so excited too! It will be nice to have space to reflect, look back, indulge in some nostalgia, do some grief work. And I’m curious how that will inform what I make this summer and in my practice generally. Having left at 19 and being absent for so long, I don’t have many personal connections from growing up, but I have made some friends through ACRE residency, disability arts, creative open source software, so am looking forward to deepening those relationships, and generally getting more connected with Chicago community. And meeting all of you at Latitude! Visiting from somewhere so arid, I find verdant humid summers in Chicago absolutely intoxicating so am also looking forward to sitting in some parks and going to the beach.
Q:When I studied queer theory in school, we were taught that queering something meant taking it far beyond what was expected of it. I feel your work expands the idea of mobility devices through the use of shapes, colors, and objects, therefore queers it. How are you trying to reframe or reimagine mobility devices beyond expectations? What is success for you when reframing expectations?
I’m excited by the activation of theory through ‘queering’ or ‘cripping’ and the ways they intersect in my experience and work. I think those expansions come from a place of necessity, a need to resource yourself when provided with limited options and support. Reframing and reimagining mobility devices allows for agency in how aesthetic value is prescribed to my experience. It’s a method to demand more complexity, by deconstructing these necessarily rigid objects. Expectations of disability get so polarized between narratives of pity and inspiration and I’m attempting to occupy a very different space that’s more true to the dynamics of the experience.
Success is partly internal, serving as a cathartic exercise. But should hopefully affect the external, either offering validation and connection with people of shared experience, or provoking reconsideration of calcified beliefs and attitudes about disability. Then hopefully this can subsequently impact the actual construction of social infrastructures which have historically marginalized and excluded disabled people.
Q:You describe your work as fluid, creative, and liberatory. How is color a stand-in for liberation?
Color is so emotional experientially and symbolically. And something I use in response to the aesthetic sterility prescribed to the objects and experience of disability. So it can work in defiance of expectations. It can be a method of celebration, translating illumination into complex vibrancy. But I’m weary of the aestheticization of disability as a single method. Reconsiderations of beauty and representation are not enough - liberation required something more holistic and structural.
Q:I love the fact that a lot of your work seems to be grappling with the tension of binaries. Physical and digital. Fantasy and reality. What are your thoughts on binaries? Are binaries something you are trying to push against as well?
Hah yes I am holding some nuance there – finding value in dualistic frameworks, but also cultivating space for complexity and gradience. A friend recently quoted British statistician George Box who said “All models are wrong, some are useful.” I will continue to employ binary frameworks as far as they are useful, but with the desire for a constantly layered comprehension and a questioning of rigidity. This is relevant to the different models of disability – for example the medical model vs. the social model - and my understanding that each of these models offer something useful to a holistic understanding, but it’s not about subscribing to one or the other hierarchically. I’m embodied as a non-binary queer person, working in and existing in some in between places, so very interested in the expansive space beyond rigid frameworks. Always for some healthy pushing against.
Q: Latitude offers space to folks to make their images or artwork physical objects in the world. How does creating a tangible object allow you to be more in touch with the nuances of objects and their symbolic power? What might digital rendering offer that 3D models don't allow for?
There’s some interesting tension here for me - I have found digital creation allows a more accessible practice unencumbered by the physicality of traditional studio technique; it allows me to work from bed and avoid subjecting my body to excessive rigor. While the dimensions of light, space, time can all be simulated digitally, our bodies certainly experience them differently on a screen vs. IRL. This creates unique possibilities for both format. Looping back to the resistance of hierarchical binaries, it’s not a one or the other question for me, but how they can generatively overlap. I do notice a persistent issue with digital art being devalued within larger artistic contexts. These contexts and tools are still emerging - which I find thrilling - but it means there isn’t usually a well-formed space for that type of work to be showcased. And I’m not on board with the NFT thing, and concerned about the ways digital art can serve certain industrial agendas of neoliberal hyper-capitalist-hyper-growth tech. These decisions for how we create, what materials we use, what impacts those decisions make, are all important and deserve careful attention. I think computers and software are magical tools, I’m grateful to be able to create in ways that work for my body, I love experimenting with new physical techniques and materials, and I’m especially excited about what occurs within that process of translation between and in combination of digital/physical mediums.
There’s something undeniable about the impact of a physical object, and the response I often receive from people viewing my renderings of fantasy mobility devices, is that they want to see them fabricated. Further, people express wanting to see them as consumer objects, but I am more interested in the friction of generating these devices that are intentionally non-functional. Ableism isn’t solved when we have a better-looking wheelchair or walker for sale. I’m trying to reach towards something more fundamental about the politics of prescribed usefulness and disability, desirability politics, basic needs. But I do think creating these objects as physical sculpture, something that physical weight can be - perhaps precariously - applied to, is important for what I’m attempting. On the other hand, There are possibilities of forms, formats, and physics that are only possible within digital space, and that is important in exploring themes of fantasy, futurity, networks, and accessibility.
Q:What are some things that have been inspiring you and your work? Perhaps there's a poem, book, song, or film that's at the top of your mind.
I’ve been vibing with Tobin Siebers book “disability aesthetics.”
Also have been reading and learning more generally about the internet and web infrastructure. I just completed a great School For Poetic Computation class my friend Alice Yuan Zhang and others taught called Solidarity Infrastructures. I’m interested in technology as someone who’s body is hyper connected to metal and electric tools as a form of access. But there’s also something important about the many iterations of the network and how that translates to the ways I think about and engage with access work as something grounded in intersectional and coalitionary community building and liberation as work that expends into the many overlapping networks of experience and identity.
NAT DECKER
Nat Decker (they/them) is a Chicago born, Los Angeles based artist. In June 2022 they graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with a degree in Design/Media Arts and Disability Studies. Weaving these two fields, their practice investigates disability aesthetics, accessibility, technology, and crip fantasy.
Nat has shown work In galleries such as SOMArts In San Francisco and Spy Projects in Los Angeles. They have given artist talks for the p5.js Access day and Arebyte gallery in London, were interviewed for the summer 2022 Juxtapoz quarterly and have created illustrations for publications such as Able zine. Other residencies include ACRE and Softer X Social Service Club.
Nat has consulted on accessibility for a number of organizations such as Creative Growth Art Center (where they also facilitated the Digital Media Lab), New Art City, the Los Angeles Spoonie Collective and p5.js. Intent on supporting a care centered community, they have organized with various mutual aid networks and co-started the UCLA Disabled Student Union.