CONTENT WARNINGS: In this conversation, Jens and Lenh talk about experiences with inaccessibility, being restricted by the people around you (conservative/religious environment), forced self-identification, consent in art and activism and an autism diagnosis.
The pictures featured on pages 3 and 4 contain nonsexual nudity and (partially reclaimed) homophobic slurs.
Jens
february 2020
@jenshols
I’m Jens and I’m 19 years old. I go by any pronouns, whichever you prefer… I identify as queer, also tomorrow I’m maybe, maybe not, getting my ASD-diagnosis; we’ll see what it ends up being, but I’ll have a discussion about it tomorrow, it will be very nice to be able to focus and have something clear to work on.
I just got diagnosed today. Not to devalue self-diagnosis at all, I think it is very important to acknowledge that healthcare is a privilege. However, I experience a certain context now, where I feel like this is of value to me personally.
Jens when they received their ASD-diagnosis a little after this conversation
I study Fine Arts and I do whatever I feel like.
Lenh: How do you go about that, about whatever you feel like?
I can be so caught up in wanting to make these big dramatic statements and wanting to achieve something very clear and visible, but I feel you can only achieve that when you agree with yourself and are in touch with yourself.
So, I work in a way where, when I experience a feeling, I try to make space for it and discuss it with myself first, with the people around me, and it doesn’t always go smoothly but in that way you figure out eventually a way to work that is very fluid, and there’s no clear answer as to what you can do or what you can achieve, it changes up, and I think that is very important to be aware of.
L: It sounds like that demands a lot of flexibility from you, how do you do that in practice? Because there are always so many things that limit our flexibility, like school, work, finances, family…
Goalsetting, you set a goal. So, I have my financial plan that I work on, to make sure that I have money. Money comes in from whatever projects I’m doing, so that’s very valuable. But when it comes to those projects, it’s about planning in time to work on that, to work on professional projects, planning in time to work on personal progress, on my art, so allowing time to reflect, meditate, mindfulness etc. … So, yeah, being goal-focussed and planning and being aware that that can change up every once in a while.
Oh, and when it comes to family and stuff, my parents share a similar attitude with me, so… they are very much the same mentality. My mum just changed her job, and she just turned 50, so they always set the example of ‘you can do whatever you want to, whatever you feel like, be aware that it comes from a place of privilege but also let that be a motivation’. It’s very privileged to have all these opportunities, but don’t grab them, and also speak out about unfairness in the world. So, I try also be socially engaged in that sense.
“It’s very privileged to have all these opportunities, but don’t grab them, and also speak out about unfairness in the world. So, I try also be socially engaged in that sense.”
And also thinking more about my mother, she was never very politically engaged per se, but she always stood for everyone getting an equal opportunity, giving everyone space and allowing them space but also space for yourself, because you can’t offer something if you don’t have the space yourself.
So in that sense I feel like the art and the projects I do aren’t per se politically engaged, but I feel like my presence can already be like a lot, and since I like to speak up about that, I feel like I still create a space in that sense, because I would not want to work with someone who doesn’t offer that space.
L: What you mean when you say that your presence is already a lot?
My presence is queer, and possibly on the autistic spectrum, and by being in touch with that and accepting yourself with that, and loving yourself for that and showing that to the world, you already invade what would traditionally be a white, cis, heterosexual space. Toning down my presence would also be systematically working against myself and I’m just not in for that. So, by being somewhere and being aware of it, I create a space already.
A great example would be interviews like this, where I feel like it’s important, and although I’m not doing anything explicitly tied to activism right now, there’s a certain presence in that way.
L: Could you talk a little about how concretely you do that in your art or in your projects?
“My being in the world influences the way others think and perceive maybe the world around them.”
So, I switched from the Teacher’s Department to the Fine Arts Department at the start of this year, to Fine Arts and Design in Education, and for my entrance letter, I needed to write why I wanted to switch. What I know is that I want to work on personal progress; my being in the world influences the way others think and perceive maybe the world around them, because that is the purpose of art, it communicates…
But for my entrance letter actually I wrote about the idea of safe spaces for autistic people, about sound levels and how we can work on bettering those spaces. Yeah, I think that’s a very clear example, where – tying it to me personal progress – I felt it was important to discuss safe spaces.
