Spoons (after Carolyn Lazard) (2023)
Jamila Prowse – Watch with BSL
Spoons is a moving image work based upon Spoons Theory; which uses spoons as a visualisation of the disparity in energy reserves between disabled and non-disabled people.
Spoons are papier-mâchéd in newspaper clippings related to Covid-19, as an acknowledgement of a new generation of people living with chronic illness and disability as a result of long-Covid. While covering the spoons, two hands start to take them away, continually depleting the supply.
This constant production and decline illustrates the additional labour involved in being disabled and the all too frequent experience of running out of spoons entirely.
Over a six-month period, Jamila exchanged voice messages with three disabled artists: Leah Clements, Carolyn Lazard, and Bella Milroy. They discussed their personal relationships to spoons theory. The voice messages allow the artists to sustain a crip community, particularly for those who are bed or housebound.
As they discuss their relationships to labour, the film considers how disabled people often exist outside of the capitalist paradigms of value and productivity. Fittingly, while making the work, the artist was continually out of spoons.
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