The figure of Tiresias penetrates Greek drama - the hermaphroditic shape shifter who has lived both as a man, as Zeus's priest, and as a woman, as a prostitute of great renown. Tiresias was blinded for knowing the secrets of man and woman, but was given second sight. Since then, Tiresias wields his and her staff throughout Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Bacchae and Ovid's Metamorphoses where his blindness, her cripdom, offers special status as advisor to the mighty. What is seen, what is known, what is spoken: these are the questions around photography and performance that fuel our exploration. Tiresias is a disability culture event - and much more than that. In our workshop/performances, we take Tiresias out of the background fabric of history. Now Tiresias and his disability, her undecidable bodily status, the malleability of his body, the shimmer of hir gender, her tri-pedal step and his blind/seeing eyes become the focal point of disability cultural work. This is an erotic show: bodies and desire intermingle, and we open ourselves up to an exploration of boundaries, try to reclaim seduction for disability: not as a freak parade, but as sensuous bodies engaged sensuously with the world. At the heart of our show are images of seduction, an erotics of encounter with disability’s non-binary difference which problematises conventional notions of disabled people as tragic, sexless or deficient. Through photographs, poetic memory and dance, we remember our future. In the Tiresias video, bodies touch and transform. Language becomes message and shape, and audio description and captioning become aesthetic elements of the film’s whole.
