Georgia Cranko

 



GEORGIA :: OI!

Writer / Performer. Sydney, NSW

You probably don’t know me, but I am yet another clumsy artist, and a disabled-weary activist in this expansive world. If I had to put a label on it, I would call myself a privileged, queer, disabled feminist, but really I don’t know what those labels mean half the time. So, I often just say my political/artistic leaning is towards “abjection” (as defined by the cultural philosopher, Julia Kristiva). Abjection connotes jarring behaviours, things and feelings that produce a visceral blurring of boundaries that all social orders essentially rely on, because it also enables an uncomfortable collapsing of subject and object, self and other. This paradigm provides me with a way I can reframe my messy, non-linear and disabled lived experience as something that struggles against (and with) all kinds of arbitrary norms. In this reframing, rather than a source of shame, my inherent vulnerability becomes one of the primary sources of my formidable truth and resilience, and only then can I feel the transformative power of my own insignificant story.

I have been involved in all kinds of artistic expression ever since I can remember, I move, act and write.

I am very interested in participating in the ‘Being Human and Aesthetics of Access’ residency, because I find the banal contradictions of being human both stunningly difficult and beautiful, and I am constantly looking for ways to make sense of these dichotomies. I feel I have a lot to offer the project, since I am very familiar with challenging other people to connect differently, and to expand their consciousness of what humanity means. In doing so, I continually question my own sense of identity, because nothing is stable, everything is in flux, especially human ability.

A while back, I devised and performed a solo piece called ‘Living Within Context’. It was based around my experience of not having any speech. It was a performance filled with my poetry, video works, sign language and movement that celebrated the joys, challenges and complexities of an ordinary life being disabled. Since 2011, I have been working towards my bachelor degree in gender and cultural studies at the University of Sydney, and doing various arty things when I can – and when my mental stability isn’t too unpredictable. I have performed at poetry slams/presentations, danced, created short films and modelled for a photo series.




Here are a few links to my work:

I would love to explore and broaden my artistic practice with Jenny Sealey, and perhaps confront a few more able/disabled boundaries.