Sensory Bat Womb
‘Sensory Bat Womb’ is a multisensory performance installation originally conceptualised in 2023 as part of my ‘Upside-Down People’ showcase of works at The Capitol, Melbourne. The work has since developed into something that better expresses the concepts and ambience I had initially hoped for and have been better able to achieve as my creative practice has developed. The work engages with the important, active role Bats take in growing my sense of autistic personhood. The work particularly emphasises the complexity of multi-sensory cross-species social interactions often belittled as ‘simpler-than-human’ in response to disability and non-human difference.
The work uses four pieces of footage layered together to express empathetic engagement with similarity, connection, and symbolic meanings. The footage includes the multi-textural fabric sensory womb installation and my performance within it, sonogram video from the ultrasound of a pregnant Bat and Narcoorte maternity roost cave generously provided by SonoVet Victoria and the Southern Bentwing Bat National Recovery Team, and a days-old Nyctophilus long-eared Bat pup held in my hands as a trained and vaccinated Bat rehabilitator.
Each piece of footage is layered next to or over other pieces to express meaning and connection. The sensory womb performance appears alongside the sonogram to show two different wombs both performing similar services: the protection and growth of strong, healthy persons. Similarly, a protective hand enclosing a vulnerable newborn Bat in an act of care and the Narcoorte maternity cave - an earthy womb for mother Bats - are layered over these, demonstrating connective meanings of care, protection, and nurtured growth through the interplay of rock textures, sonogram patterns, and enclosed hand merging together. Likewise, the circular Bat nest in the cave echoes the circular shape of the sensory womb, dotting my performing body with hundreds upon hundreds of furless Bat pups and indicating us both as growing, cared-for beings under the protection of Elder Bats. The immediately recognisable shapes of flying adults move back and forth from Bat and human pups, coming and going with attentive care and nourishment. Adult Bats take turns attaching to the cave walls, hanging diligently as guardians around the perimeter of the nest – and the sensory womb – to ensure the pups are safe and attended to while other mothers are away to feed. Their projected bodies seem to nestle and roost in the nooks and crevices of the sensory womb and my performing body within it.
The sensory womb itself is a circular structure made up of different textures of fabric – from pillow-y feather quilts and soft fleece blankets to knotted, ridged, striated, patterned textiles and possum fur skins culturally significant to my Aboriginal Ancestors. The colours of the sensory womb are dark and soft, a place for resting and growing, like the belly of a cave or a mother Bat. Within the sensory womb, my body is positioned in a foetal pose with tactile-sensing hands and feet in contact with different textural parts of the womb. The performance is one of autistic safety within this sensory space – a place to remember and imagine Bats, allowing my relationships with them to grow how I envision myself as a different, yet valuable person. Bats have actively supported the co-creation of my autistic personhood, growing me into someone empowered to fly in a strange body and mind. Bats offer social care and nourishment, a community of unrecognised people whose presence makes me feel visible – a worthy being in a real, tangible, touchable body and skin.
The ‘Sensory Bat Womb’ piece also expresses visibility of voice through sound. Surrounding the visual elements of the work is a soundscape of a living cave system breathing with swirling currents of air and singing with water voices. The wetness of the cave stands out – this is not a harsh, dry place; it is a wet place where lives can grow. Chittering and buzzing throughout the cave soundscape are the voices of different Bat species – including Bentwing, Long-Eared, Horseshoe, Freetail, and Wattled Bats. The presence of their voices is as active and sensorily nourishing as their visual presence – possibly moreso. It brings back powerful memories of camping at night with a Bat call detector under my pillow and the comfort of hearing other voices calling in frequencies silent to most human ears. Something significant exists in that shared experience of unheard Bat and autistic voices – the knowing that the voices are there, even when silenced by unlistening ears.
Accompanying the soundscape is strange, seemingly disjointed guitar melody. The warmth of each acoustic note gently reverberates around the dripping water, the echoing cave atmosphere, and the talkative Bats. Far from random notes, the melody is composed using my experience of alphabet synesthesia. Individual letters have pitch and colour, and part of my creative practice has been to use these cross-sensory associations to communicate words without verbally speaking. For this piece, I composed melody by spelling words with their corresponding alphabetic sounds. The guitar melody speaks without speaking a moment of conversation with Bats, thanking them for their presence in my life and the empowered personhood they have taught me through allowing me to observe their lives. It thanks them for growing me, nurturing me, and birthing me into a sense of self and self-worth specific to the strange-ness of autism I have learned to love and embrace through the strange-ness of Bats.
‘Sensory Bat Womb’ has been the most emotionally rich, yet calm artworks I have created. Everything about the audio and visual experience of the piece is gentle, soft, and supportively surrounding. Much like my reflections of the supportive nature of my autistic relationships with the many different Bat communities I have known. The calmness of the piece reflects the peacefulness I feel with Bats, as well as the inner peacefulness with my often tumultuous autistic self that Bats continually teach and remind me to reconnect with. ‘Sensory Bat Womb’ is a work of self-worth and the rare comfort in one’s own skin that feels most completely in reach only in relationship with Bats.
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