An artist’s response to benefit stories by Lindsay Amanda Lowcock

Artist Lindsay Amanda Lowcock in collaboration with Louise Hardwick (University of Liverpool), Aidan Worsley (Uclan), and The Brain Charity. This installation is part of a wider dissemination strategy to report on the findings from the study ‘Seeking recognition for people with severe disabilities on benefits’. The installation is staged at University of Liverpool, School of Law and Justice, 4th Floor, 11am-4pm. Voice is an important part of inclusion in life: being recognised; taking part; being heard. The participants in the study were given a rare opportunity to vocalise their experience, and, in response, the artist Lindsay Amanda Lowcock (http://www.lowcock.uk) has designed an installation to display their voices. This is achieved by the voices of the participants becoming vocal performances that are heard through six monolithic speakers. Each performance consists of one word taken from the study which distils their experience of depending on disability benefits. The speakers appear like the standing stones of death monuments and create a space for the viewer/experiencer to wander around and hear the individual voices. The combined audio and physical interactional experience creates an oppressive, confining, baffling, and demoralising response, akin to that experienced by study participants. Beyond the field of sound, a light is situated: a tall and thin slit of simulated sunlight. This represents Judith Butler’s (2016) concept of recognition. In contrast, in the field of sound, the vocal performances and the people they represent occupy a hinterland not comprehended to the unimpaired, and in that hinterland they remain unrecognised. The installation will also be staged 18-21 May, The Brain Charity, Norton Street, L3, 11am-4pm. See here for details.