AIMEE MULLINS // A WORK IN PROGRESS
Mullins is probably the world’s most famous amputee. After having both of her legs removed aged 1 just below the knee she has gone on to become a record breaking Olympic athelete, actress, model, and ambassador for progress and technological advancements in prosthetics.
As you might expect she has given a number of talks on her famous carbon-fibre ‘cheetah’ legs and her accomplishments as an athlete, but what sets her apart is her unapologetic addressing of issues to do with aesthetic beauty and ability and the confines of social ‘normality’. I was amazed by her enigmatic speeches given on these subjects on both The Moth and TED Talks, especially her wirey observation:
“Pamela Anderson has more prosthetics in her body than me and nobody calls her disabled!”
In both talks Mullins speaks openly about the pressure to be viewed as having a disability, especially in terms of how that defined her apparent right to be viewed as an empowered and beautiful woman. In her more candid Moth talk she even alludes to the fact that when she was invited back 10 years after her original TED Talk (I put the pieces together) worries were vocalised that she was too accomplished and successful in varied fields of sport, fashion, pop culture and academia, for the audience to now empathise with. An outrageous comment for an organisation that is championed for supporting innovation and progress.
On the contrary, in this latest TED Mullins explores deeper theory involving the concept of humanity, and how her own aspirations have brought her to view her own body in a much more abstract form. By viewing her legs as metamorphic forms she is challenging the notion of what the human form, and therefore an aspect of her own humanity, is.
She has modeled for McQueen wearing carved legs of ash, pushed athletic innovation, collaborated on sculptural glass prosthetics and can vary her height as she pleases. By rejecting a wish to mimic human form Mullins has excelled the possibilities for her own body in a way a ‘fully able’ human could not manage.
As she states, by using these new forms of innovation, ‘disabled’ individuals can:
“Become architects of their own identity, and can continue to change these identities. By designing their bodies from a place of empowerment.”
WHERE WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO VISIT ON YOUR PLANET?
Australia, even if everything there is out to kill you
More on this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00vt1xp
Kinetic sculptor and artist Theo Jansen builds ‘strandbeests’ from yellow plastic tubing that is readily available in his native Holland.
The graceful creatures evolve over time as Theo adapts their designs to harness the wind more efficiently. They are powered only by the wind and even store some of the wind’s energy in plastic bottle ‘stomachs’ to be used when there is no wind.
