Join us for an evening talk, as part of a series of talks in tandem with the exhibition Ailbhe Ní Bhriain: The Dream Pool Intervals; programmed with curator Sara Muthi.
These Thursday evening talks and performance-lectures feature artists working at the intersections of critical research, performance and experimental writing, whose practices explore how bodies, histories, and images are shaped by the structures—both visible and invisible—that surround them.
‘Comms Fail: autism poetics at the end’ with artist Roy Claire Potter
Thursday 14 August, 6.30-7.30pm
What if satellite connectivity failed? Solar storms, global war, or even space junk could cause this. Of the nearly 10, 000 active satellites in space, more the 50% enable public-access communications services through mobile networks, television, digital radio broadcasts, GPS navigation and weather forecasting. The remainder are for military operations and scientific work more often conducted by first world countries and, increasingly, private corporations. Amateur or ‘HAM’ radio is a vital alternative when satellite systems fail. Operators can maintain remote, long-distance and regional communications without relying on centralised infrastructure or commercial power. As such, amateur radio societies across the world maintain emergency communications protocols for use in environmental crisis or global outage scenarios. However, the success or failure of HAM communications is also dependent upon celestial conditions: rogue voices rove the airwaves offering partial messages and sonic textures that we might derive some meaning from; radio astronomers detect frequencies from deep space mapping barely known radio galaxies.
Responding to the spectre of loss and destruction in Ailbhe Ní Bhriain’s, Dream Pool Intervals (2025), Roy’s talk draws into its orbit theories of narratology, neuroqueerness, interpersonal communication and a ‘sociology of associations’ and presents these ideas alongside extracts from their recent body of work with radio communications technologies, to make an artist’s case for the recuperative social value of what we might call an autism poetics.
Free, book on Eventbrite or come on the day, subject to availability.
Roy Claire Potter is an artist who performs, publishes and exhibits. In 2026 they will present a new major work with Liverpool Biennial addressing the resonant associations of autistic knowledge and radio communications. Recently they have presented audio, performance, experimental writing and drawing with Somerset House (2025), Book Works (2024), Serpentine (2024), Bergen Centre of Electronic Arts (2023/24), and A plus A gallery, Venice (2022). Roy has written on the demonstrative practice methods of artists Sarah Browne and Lucy McKenzie in relation to autistic being, and along with Iarlaith Ní Fheorais is co-selector of the 41st EVA International’s Platform Commissions–an initiative focused on expanded ideas of ‘access’ in the arts.
Free, book on Eventbrite or come along on the evening, space is limited.
