Authentic bodies: diverse embodiment and disabled identity in string performance practice.

This practice research combines string performance, embodiment, and disability studies to illuminate the knowledge-generating work of disabled musicians, their perspectives and adaptations in musical discourse. As a disabled musician, my project explores the knowledges and agencies of diverse embodiment, and critiques pathologising and therapeutic narratives which tend to dominate discourse around music and disability (e.g.

Magee, 2002). I ask how foregrounding the experience of disabled bodies may offer a framework for interrogating embodied experience in musical practice. The specific embodied and technological practices of this project will be concerned with my instrument, the viola, and my specific body.

The processes explored and findings will be applicable to practitioners both disabled and non-disabled. The substantial practice project will develop new musical material for the viola, including scored and electronic material, taking my embodied identity as the stimulus. Research Questions

How do embodiment and somatics discourses furnish frameworks for articulating disabled experience in string performance? What creative adaptations may facilitate a disabled musician in their practice?

How may foregrounding the experience of my disabled body offer a framework for interrogating embodied experience in musical practice? How can aspects of disabled musical experience offer insights for wider performance practices?