This work began as part of the DaDa Fellows scheme in 2021 to allow disabled and neurodivergent artists time and space to try new artforms and develop their craft, co-commissioned by DaDa and New Earth Theatre.
Koishii is Japanese for “I miss” referring to a person/place/thing that it’s impossible (at least currently) to reunite with. The word itself has an almost dramatic and slightly older tone, but is also used with tongue in cheek self-awareness, an equivalent to the word “yearn”.
The experience allows you to move a character to get a key, which lets you unlock a portal to the next day in your life. In order to get the key you have to navigate pools of lava, poison gas that slows you down, and the fact that your controls will change at random to make movement more uncomfortable. All the while Chris’ narration about their experience of chronic illness play in the background.
About Koishii from Chris Shapiro
For this piece, Chris uses gamification within their art to explore their experiences of disability and neurodivergence.
There’s a sense of masking and chronic illness/neurodiversity and how it’s kind of detrimental to us, in the sense of covering how bad we’re actually doing and then depleting a lot of energy to do so, especially in relation to things like benefits and PIP interviews and with doctors who might disbelieve how bad we’re doing because we mask as a reflex,
The game includes elements of the unpredictability and intensity of a random flare up, what brain fog is like, the exhaustion and overwhelming nature. You’re not sure if these are connected or unrelated, and having no way of finding out other than waiting to see if a link arises.
Chris used the design of the sea because it’s an environment that makes you feel small and aware that you’re at its mercy. This is to recreate that sense of how with both chronic illness and neurodiversity you’re really aware of how things you have no control over can change everything in a moment, and you sort of dread that or have it in the back of your mind constantly, because you have to adapt if something happens.
Chris thought it would be fun if sometimes you don’t get to choose where you go, and with the sea that’s a possibility to play with in a vague way that doesn’t have to be location specific and can be slightly randomised, echoing chronic illness/neurodiversity where there isn’t necessarily a manual, just a warning that sometimes there will be consequences, figure out what they’re from.
About DDFI40:
DaDaFest International returns 8th-31st March 2025 to celebrate DaDa’s 40th Anniversary and this time they are coming with ‘RAGE: A Quiet Riot’.
DDFI40 will showcase work by disabled artists that captures all shapes and sides of rage. From the internal quiet frustrations and righteous rage, to overt injustice and activism, DDFI40 will explore disability rights, disability arts, access, ableism and ‘Rage’ in an explosion of creativity.