Aut Splash. Victoria Dini. Art photography in London / Folkestone, UK

Aut Splash

2022-2025

All my life is playing a human, but I want to stop playing.

I was diagnosed with autism quite late in life, after turning forty, and was overwhelmed by the realisation that the very core of my personality was described in terms of symptoms, as if someone were trying to translate me from another language. Often with mistakes. I am now writing this myself, having finally acquired my own vocabulary and suddenly realised after emigrating that I am not a native speaker of any language other than the visual one.

My approach here is to take photographs at moments when I feel my autistic nature, my very essence, particularly vividly — working with a small camera that is always with me, through body movements, multiple exposures and interaction with my state of mind, I convey, as if through Morse code, the impressions of my consciousness captured through the camera—the visual embodiment of flashes of neural activity. Portraits of me without me.

I film from within, through the voice of my culture, which is practically unrepresented. In this way, I create a window of connection between our two cultures, neirotypical and autistic. For some, this will come as a surprise and maybe help to understand more deeply the everyday irritants and sensory overload we face. For others, it will be a recognition of their own experiences and a sigh of relief.

Looking at me in calm situations, you would never guess how the world is refracted through me, shattering into painful shards. It is not an illness, it is a state of being, and the fact that the local air is practically unbreathable for us.

These are my diaries as a Martian.

THE POEM INCLUDED IN THE PROJECT

To love is to call someone by name
To shoot —peel away—as if the skin of reality
To touch for the first time and feel for the first time too
To throw a poem onto the internet
As if there were a place for it there
As if I mattered
As if I were inventing words
As if no dictionaries existed,
and right now I’m writing the first
book.

I am a researcher. I study the behaviour of Earthlings.
I meet them, observe them, touch them and try
to make contact

People cry,
rejoice, laugh,
sometimes speak,
sometimes feel

Sometimes it feels bad

Sometimes, if there are too many feelings, says a special Earthling, it helps
to put on some drums and dance
uglily, furiously, wildly

I tried it just today — yes, it works

I sit down at my device, I place my sprouts on the keys, I write a report
in my own alien language:

Earth consists of
aliens
inhabited by each one
individually
in a special way

cataloguing is impossible

Aut Splash. Victoria Dini. Art photography in London / Folkestone, UK

Autistic Joy

as the sun travels from dawn to dusk, illuminating things with magical pollen.

the little joys that make me so happy — like the gift of each day.

colour. light. oozing like the impressionists.

I don’t need a special technique to see the world like this, it’s built-in

small things are friends,

they are solid, they stay the way they are

humans don’t

If I were living in Medieval I would be burnt already just because of fidgeting I do with my hands and soothing mutterings to myself when I walk alone. Were all witches autistic?

Autistic Rage

sounds

feelings

smells

breezes

light

touches

everything

E V E R Y T H I N G

too

much

cover ears

sway

spin

feel body like a rag

hang it out to dry in the street

forget until morning

can

the world

be quiet

ple a se

(a childhood dream: I have a magic stopwatch that can stop time so I can rest between sessions of being alive)

I just have to stand still to make room

for everything that flows through me from the world

I am a translator from my language to human language and back again. I do this in photographs, poems, and my existence on earth. Sometimes the translator goes on strike. Sometimes words disappear. They disintegrate into music or disharmony of notes. Is this an ancient curse?

Can’t remember that tale.

every day is a walk in the dark

nights are nowhere time to rest

having no task of interpreting

faces flow like a river

every moment of being is new

I can see what you feel not your features

I feel the sea like home, the most comforting place,

her sound calms me like a song, can I please come back

(yes)

You’ve got a fish not a girlfriend

For some days. I can’t feel. My love is like a tight suit, my human feelings, my thoughts. I just have to put if off. And stay. Inside the glass jar. Resting.

Underwaterrr

(once upon a time there lived a man who had a selkie bride and he burned her skin and she sailed away forever)