Process – Fine Art – Samuel Mathias

Looking back on this project, I can safely say this was the most crucial and eye-opening project I had done at the time. I learnt a lot about myself and how I view the world just by doing research into my subject matter and figuring out things I didn’t even know about. This project will be one I will remember and carry with me for the rest of my life due to the issues I addressed and the strength I gained when talking about my autism openly with my peers without fear of negativity and indifference towards me.

Free Writing + Introduction to Manifesto

Now when this week was starting I was going in blind. When that day came I had no idea what a Manifesto was and I’m going to be honest I still don’t, but hey that didn’t stop me from trying my best. For the beginning of this project we were given the task of completing 20 minutes of free writing. Free writing is when you non-stop writing straight from your head and don’t go back until you’re done, basically it’s this blog but without spell check.

This exercise then led to us constructing a statement based around the concept of “I am…” which would then lead to the beginning of our manifestos. Now when discussing manifestos, it was mainly described as how people feel from a social/political standing but due to my lack of knowledge and/or interest in those set topic, I was clueless as to how to create my own manifesto. That is why I changed the whole concept of “I am…” to “What if…” which basically allowed me to question the way I see the things around me and how my views of the world are different to that of everyone else.

Idea & Manifesto Generation + Development

After creating my statement, It was time to expand on that idea and decided how to generate a Manifesto based around it as well as create something to visualise the manifesto itself. I knew from the start that since this project would be personal I would want to do it about autism and how it feels from my own unique perspective as every person with autism is different. This led to the creation of ideas for an interactive storytelling piece which is both informative and easy to understand for people who don’t know the knowledge about the autistic spectrum properly. The concept consists of a zine explaining the main misconceptions of the autistic spectrum, how autism itself effects me personally and also a small information section regarding autism and what questions people tend to ask a lot about the subject.

“The A Word”

When constructing this zine, it was an emotional and incredibly passionate project as it was the first time I openly talked about the autistic side of me as well as pour that information into something creative. My main fear when carrying out this idea was the outcome of how people would react, if I would be treated differently now that this side of me was public knowledge. However as this project progressed, I learned a lot about the spectrum myself and discovered things about myself that I didst already know which allowed me to become proud rather than afraid of my autism as its as crucial part of me as is an arm and a leg is important to everyone. It’s not something I an control or turn off but it’s something that if I didn’t have, I would be a person I wouldn’t recognise or even like. Hopefully I get to do more projects based around topics like this in the future as this side of me will always be present in my work as well as influencing the way I see the world around me.