In this interview, Mariana interviewed Nwando Ebizie, an unclassifiable polymath, British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist. Nwando creates afrofuturist speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music, and multisensory installations.
Transcription of the podcast episode:
Mariana: Hi everyone, welcome to a new episode of the DARCI Podcast — The podcast on Disability Accessibility and Representation in the creative industries. My name is Mariana Lopez and I’m a professor in sound production and post production at the University of York. Today I have the pleasure of welcoming Nwando Ebizie, an unclassifiable polymath, British Nigerian multidisciplinary artist. Nwando creates afrofuturist speculative fictions and alternate realities at the intersection of live art, experimental music, and multisensory installations. She proposes new myths, rituals and provocations for perceptual change, radical care, and transformation of the sapphic community, drawing from science fiction, black Atlantic ritual cultures, biophilia, neuroscience, her own neurodivergence and Nigerian heritage.
Hi, Nwando. It’s so nice to have you join the podcast today. How are you doing this morning?
Nwando: Yeah. So this morning’s a bit of a crazy morning. This is the morning we found out that Trump was elected president, so not great, but I think it’s good to be here and talk about things we care about.
Mariana: Well, thank you so much for for joining us today in this very bleak morning, and we’ll make sure to talk about how to make the world a better place…
Nwando: Yay. [laughing]
Mariana: [laughing] … through work and disability, accessibility representation. So we’ll start with a very general question, and that is, would you be able to tell us a little bit about the work that you do?
Nwando: Yeah. So, I’m a multidisciplinary artist. And I’m really interested in creating work that brings everybody in. So, I I don’t tend to talk about audiences, I talk about visitors that are invited into my work, where I’ve created parallel realities. So, it’s really a work of speculative fiction where you can explore the the what ifs. What if we created better communal experiences? What do we need to do that? And so, I work across multiple art forms, performance art, visual art, sound, music. And underpinning it, it’s really, yeah, they’re really this speculative fiction idea, a research into ritual cultures of the black Atlantic, ritual cultures from my heritage. And, yeah, and an attempt to make the work accessible in the widest ways that work can be accessible, and pose ways of seeing to transform people’s perceptions.
Mariana: Oh, really, really interesting. And what brought you into this kind of work?
Nwando: Oh God.
Mariana: I’m sorry, that’s a big question, isn’t it?
Nwando: Yeah, that’s a big question. I think I have a unique way of seeing the world as everybody does. That’s not unique. That is what it is to be human, and I think it’s my way of grappling with the world, of dealing with the issues and questions and realities and unrealities. I like to create alternative realities.
Mariana: Oh, thank you very much. And I’ve recently come across a project that you worked on that has this wonderful title, that is Distorted Constellations. Could you tell us a bit more about that project?
Nwando: Yeah. So, that came up, um, I tend to work in quite a long, like, research-led way. And, at the time, I was struggling with my mental health, and I was also questioning a lot about my perception. And so, my sensory perception is in, like, things that I see things I hear. And, I started looking into something that had just kind of been discovered by scientists called Visual Snow Syndrome. And I realised that was something that I had. So, Visual Snow Syndrome now is categorised as a neurological syndrome. Really, the first studies into it were in 2012 and I was looking into this in 2016, so it was really, like, brand new, in terms of understanding it. And so, it’s something that the scientists are still understanding, but there’s about 16 symptoms within the syndrome, like I said, it’s neurological, it’s things that happening in the brain, and it’s the some of the main symptoms are visual. So Visual Snow is that can be described as like a TV static. So, for some people, it’s black and white. For me, it’s more kind of coloured, more like just like the visual light spectrum kind of colours, and also seeing things like after images, you know, so like, if you look at a light and look away, you see an after image, but I see after images all the time. It’s things like seeing things called starbursts around lights. It’s like these kind of streams of lights that emit from light and halos around objects and lights, or you could describe them as like auras.
And then, yeah, and then there’s non visual symptoms like tinnitus, and then there’s more kind of, like, cognitive symptoms like, derealisation or depersonalisation? So yeah, and different people have different combinations of those symptoms. But yeah, I was looking into that. I started talking to a group of scientists who are studying it at Kings College in London. And particularly working with a neuroscientist there called Francesca Pauletta. Who’s, yeah, who’s really gone on to kind of pretty spearhead, a lot of the research globally into Visual Snow Syndrome. And I started, yeah, at the time, it was the first time I’d really looked into something in the science world, and I was wondering, “Oh, how how does this research turn into a creative project?” And I think one thing that was important to me was to keep the scientists as part of the work. And to open up the idea of, I wanted to open up the idea of what an art experience can be, and I wanted it to create an art science environment. I wanted to create a space, where scientists could be creative, and people visiting the experience could become part of the scientific process, so there could be experiments within it.
But, fundamentally it was about trying to open up my world and my perception to people who won’t have experienced the way that I experienced the world, but also who maybe never even questioned their reality, who assumed that they are the norm, which is again, this is a very normal human thing to do, is assume that your experience of perception is what everybody experiences. And I wanted to really, like, chip into that, and, because I believe that if you can open up that type of thinking, you can open up a wider type of thinking around bias, and yeah, thinking that you’re the neutral and the norm and everybody else is somehow related to that or different to that, you know, othering people. So, it’s like with all my work, there’s a political underpinning to it that is about showing, yeah, the spectrum of human experience, and posing to people that were, yeah, were all sitting on on this spectrum rather than in binaries.
Mariana: Oh wow, that sounds really, really, really fascinating. And what format did this project take you? You mentioned it was an exhibition?
Nwando: Yeah. And it’s still ongoing. It’s toured quite a lot and it’s been, most of the times it’s been an exhibition. So, within a space, within an art gallery where you enter and there’s different rooms. I created something called the Anti Chamber, which was based on sensory rooms, which if people don’t know a sensory room is a place where you can go, where you can experience, say, like stimulating things for your senses and relaxing things for your senses, because some people need certain senses to be stimulated, and some people need them to be relaxed. So, I think it’s a really useful space and something that I wanna bring more into popular consciousness that people quite often would enter the space and not even realise there was something they really needed or wanted, like somewhere to kind of float or…
There’s a lot of people who just stare at the bubbles, the bubble machine, and people just stare at the bubbles for hours sometimes. So yeah, so you’d enter that space and there was an art, there was different people in that space. Sometimes there was an artist who helped you think about your perception, you might draw, you might do some plants, some seeds, you might rub your fingers through some stones, you might lie down. Sometimes there was a researcher there who would talk about disability and access. So, it was a way to, like, this thing I have, this obsession I have with creating worlds, it was a way to create a buffer zone between the outside world and the installation which was the the main part of Distorted Constellations.
So, you’d go in there first and then you’d go to the installation and then you’d return there afterwards. And maybe decompress or talk to the researcher or the artist. And so, the installation was an attempt to create my perceptual world, my experience of the world. I say “attempt” because it’s something that I keep on trying to refine because I think it’s impossible. I think, I mean, I worked a lot with, like, immersive tech people, and I was exploring a lot around VR and AR and mixed reality, and I mean, in the end, it ended up being this kind of labyrinthine space that you walk through that was filled with all these projectors and 360° sound, and lots of those video recorded of me kind of in animation form that danced around you, and I tried to recreate some of the symptoms of Visual Snow Syndrome within it.
And yeah, and then there was also like a festival. So, sometimes it ran for two weeks, sometimes it ran for like 3 or 4 months. But, there’d be lots of events happening. There’d be scientists doing talks. There’d be, like, these ritual events that I’d preside over that would have lots of different elements and play within it, and dancing, and ASMR performances, and dance pieces. And yeah, when I talk about it, it always makes me feel a bit dizzy, because I’m like, “Oh god, how am I going to do all that?”
Mariana: But sounds amazing. Sounds really really great.
Nwando: Yeah, I think it was really the first piece of work that I did, and in a way I can see why I felt like it had to have everything in it. But, it was, yeah, I think one of the important things for me was that I wanted it to also serve as this place where people could come and find out that they have Visual Snow Syndrome or come and find out that, “Oh wow, there’s a way to soothe my fibromyalgia.”
There’s lots of things we found out during it that people came with access needs that they didn’t know that they had or access needs that they didn’t know that could really be met in this kind of experience. And yeah, and lots of people found out about Visual Snow Syndrome, and lots of people were directed to resources for different things that they needed.
And I think it’s for me, it was also me trying to create the world I wanted to live in. Which is like, yeah, making the world more accessible for people, making, creating the type of space that I think should exist in society, anyway. It’s creative and it’s art, you know, that’s my medium, my medium art. But, yeah, it’s about, yeah, reframing what can be.
Mariana: Yeah. Oh, wow. That’s amazing. Do you have any 2025 tour dates for the exhibition that you can share or are they not set yet?
Nwando: Not at the moment. Yeah, not at the moment.
Mariana Lopez: Okay. But, people can visit your website and find out more potentially?
Nwando: Yeah, they can visit my website and also… because there’s an exhibition, but there was also continuing versions of it. So, I also made an online, kind of offshoot of it, which is a 360° music video, basically.
And it also has an attached, like, a visual description video. So, you can also know what you’re going to see in advance, if you want to know, or if you’re blind or visually impaired. And then you can watch it as well. So, those are on YouTube and they’re called Distorted Constellations as well. And they’re also on The Space, The Space’s website.
Mariana: Yeah. Oh, wow, I need to check that out. I have definitely now an activity for this afternoon. And one of the things that really drew me to you that a lot of the focus is on creative accessibility. And I was wondering, why do you feel bringing creativity to the field of accessibility is important? And how do you feel creative accessibility interacts with more traditional forms of access?
Nwando: I think… I guess the way that I see the difference between creative accessibility and traditional forms of access is where they’re coming from. I think, traditionally, when people in institutions have thought about access, it’s about how do we add on to this already existing thing. So that now a deaf person or a blind person can also experience this thing that wasn’t initially made for them, and they weren’t considered in.
And I think with creative accessibility, the way that I see is it’s, you know, it’s including people at the inception, including consideration for people, including them in the design of whatever the thing is. And the creative element of it is really then, well, then that changes what you make. And that for me, I think it’s something that people in all spheres, but you know, I’m in the art sphere, so I can talk about that, they can be afraid of because it’s sounds expensive, it sounds difficult and the expertise. But, it’s just like, you know, me as an artist. That’s like, I don’t know, that’s just my life. “Difficult, expensive. I don’t have the expertise.” [both laughing] It’s, you know, that’s what it’s always like.
But the point is that it’s exciting and it’s interesting and it’s led me to collaborate with really cool people and see the world differently. And you know, I’m all about seeing the world differently and through other people’s eyes, through the people’s ears. I don’t know. It’s weird when talking about accessibility to say that, but, through the people’s perceptions, and I think that it makes the work more exciting. I think you know as well as the fundamental things that makes more accessible, makes more exciting.
I’d say the other difference is, I think people who are working in creative accessibility are really at the forefront of understanding that accessibility can be like a very wide term. So again, traditionally it was about “physical impairments”. And I think a lot of people in create accessibility are newer divergent are understanding how different brain types have different access needs. I think that’s something that’s led my work a lot. So yeah, I guess for me creative accessibility is just is is a much wider, deeper, more inclusive framework.
Mariana: Yeah. And I think, I don’t know how it is for you, but I collaborate a lot with filmmakers and making productions accessible for visually impaired people, and there’s always a moment when we’re working collaboratively in which you think, “Oh, there’s this problem we can’t solve. How to use this method for this.” And then there’s this click and you come up with this thing and it just sounds so beautiful. And it is just inclusive, it’s accessible, but it’s also poetic and artistic. And I always love those moments when you think, “Oh my God, this just came together.“ And we came from a point of thinking, “How are we going to do this?” to a point of, “Oh, actually, we’ve actually made something new and something accessible and something beautiful as well.”
Nwando: Yeah, I think that’s brilliant. And I think for me that’s also part of the point of being creative is creating new processes, like process of me is really, you know, the point is process is most of what you’re always going to be doing, so it should be interesting and change. And I think, yeah, I don’t know, just doing the same thing again and again, I don’t really see the point.
Mariana: Yeah, I think you put it really nicely that the idea is the process. It’s enjoying the process of figuring out how to how to do something.
Nwando: Yeah. So, I think a good example of creative accessibility as a project I recently did with London Sinfonietta. And so they commissioned me to write a piece of music, and I… I think this happens to me quite often that my first thought was, “Okay, music. How do deaf people experience music?”
Mariana: Hmm.
Nwando: “And how could I create? And do they? Do deaf people enjoy music events? And how could I work with deaf people to create a music event that prioritise them within it?” And so, it’s quite a good example of my work, because again, it was a long, took a long time, because I’m not deaf and so, it involved a year of me learning British Sign language and collaborating for a couple of years with an amazing deaf performance artist and dancer called Chisato Minamimura. Yeah, connecting with deaf culture, more understanding politics of deaf culture more, and like all that was really important before I even began working on the piece. And it was, yeah, again, it was fascinating. Funnily enough, I had a dream. I was dreaming in British Sign Language last night. I was speaking it. That’s really funny cuz I haven’t had a dream like that for a while. But yeah, so the collaboration led me to think about, “Okay, so the music experience I think needs to be not just audio, and not just about adding in a BSL interpreter.” Instead, I thought about how do I create an immersive environment, so there’s a visual element to the experience. And how do I… What about if there was also a tactile experience? So, I collaborated with Sam Steiner and we made this system where you could feel the vibrations of the instruments if you lay down on these platforms. And the piece of music really came from talking to deaf people about that vibrations and we talked about balloons and how some of them in school had used balloons to feel vibrations or if they had some hearing to like to hear a little bit. And so, the whole piece came from this idea of balloons and the environment was filled with giant balloons. The balloons are projected onto… there was a clarinettist who at the beginning blew up a balloon with his clarinet. The cushion players played balloons sometimes. The pieces was all about the idea of falling and rising.
Mariana: Wow.
Nwando: And then Chisato was a performer in it, and we created a piece of dance, BSL kind of theatrical dance, so that… and then I spoke the words of a text that I wrote, and there’s this long process of Chisato working with me and BSL interpreters to translate that into this movement piece. And I love that idea as well that… so the deaf people who are there, they’re not getting an add-on experience, they’re getting a kind of different, maybe even better experience. They’re understanding things on a level that people who don’t speak BSL can’t understand. And then also, there’s things there’s lots of practical things as well. Like, I had to work very closely with the marketing team to help them to understand, “Okay, we can’t just put on a piece and expect deaf people to come if they’ve never been invited into this space.” So, we worked with social media people who could get the word out, we brought deaf people into the rehearsal process and talked to them about the piece. And, you know, and deaf people spread the word, and we we changed the space so that deaf people could be like, very close to Chisato, they could be very close to the musicians. And we also exploded the experience, so at times like the musicians and the conductor even came out into the audience and there was more, it was more closer. And it was, yeah, it was, yeah, it was a beautiful piece. And what we’re hopefully going to be touring that over the next couple of years.
Mariana: Oh wow, that sounds amazing. Do keep us updated, because, I mean, I’d love to experience that. And it’s really, really honestly, I really mean it’s fascinating to hear you speak about your work and how much again that idea of process and how exciting going through different processes can be.
Nwando: Oh, I should say what it’s called.
Mariana: Yes, that would be good. [laughing]
Nwando: [laughing] So it’s called Fall and then Rise on a Soft Winter’s Morning. And I think there should be a YouTube video above it online.
Mariana: Oh, cool. Exciting. So, I have a final question for you and it’s—what are your hopes for the future of accessibility in the creative industries?
Nwando: I would love there to be somebody who’s focused on access in all organisations. And for it to be, you know, a real position…[laughing] that they really listened to and that it feeds into every element of organisations’ work. I think something that can be really difficult for disabled artists is that they get offered work more now, I think, than they used to, but then there’s like all these kinds of issues. Maybe you have an access rider, and I’ve showed my access riders to people and then they’ve rescinded the offer of work.
Mariana: Ohh wow.
Nwando: Or maybe they, you know, they’ll take the access rider, but they don’t read it. And then, so nothing is set up for you or you know, there’s this worry that, “Oh, working with a disabled artist, that’s going to be more difficult, that’s going to be…” And I’m telling you, you know, there’s disabled people in every level of all the organisations. People just will keep it quiet. And people will have really hard work lives and really hard lives and… Just a more, yeah, more acceptance of difference, you know, we’re really used to it, not that it necessarily happens, but, at least politically, we’re used to accepting ethnic difference, and I think with disability, that’s something that’s still coming. So yeah, it’s really about accepting difference and accepting and understanding that, you know, the more you make things accessible for people, the richer, more exciting, more interesting, everything will be.
Mariana: And do you feel that… This is a really great point. Do you think that this is about a lack of education on certain topics? And if so, how can we better educate people to be able to make them more understanding and welcoming and, well, knowledgeable really?
Nwando: Yeah, I think it’s a lack of education. I think that… But, what’s really great is that there’s so many artists who are willing to do their education, just need to pay them. I’ve done so much on paid work in terms of educating people. [laughing]
Mariana: Yeah.
Nwando: Yeah, the informations all out there now. You know, there’s great organisations, like, I know that you found me through Unlimited. They’re really great, and they’re really great at working with organisations as well, to help them. Sorry, what was the question again?
Mariana: How can we engage them better with matters of disability and accessibility? If it’s a matter of education, is there something we could be doing that hopefully doesn’t involve, as you say, disabled people doing free work, educating others? So I was just wondering if you had any thoughts.
Nwando: Yeah, I think, yeah, it’s fundamentally about bringing in the people who know what they’re talking about. And not being afraid of that, like, “Oh god, is that gonna fundamentally change everything about our art form?” I don’t know, maybe? That’s not bad. [laughing] Yeah, it’s seeing it as exciting rather than fearful.
Mariana: Yeah, and again, it goes back again to the conversation about processes. You know, change can be exciting rather than needing to be scary or threatening to a field. Thank you so much for being our guest today. It’s been really wonderful to get to know more about your work and what underpins your work and your processes. Thank you so much for joining us.
Nwando: Thank you.
Mariana: Thank you so much everyone for tuning in. This was such an exciting episode with loads to reflect on. We’ll be back next month with a brand new episode and more discussions on disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries.
