Type
Trail
John-James Laidlow's Museum Remix video is inspired by a 16th-century iron prosthetic hand in the Fitzwilliam Museum's Armoury. The advent of gunpowder warfare in the 1500s saw soldiers sustain horrific injuries and more amputations than in previous centuries. Prosthetic hands (which were very, very expensive) contained complex mechanisms to allow for some movement.
John-James says, "I wanted to explore the inner-shame (due to internalised ableism) and feelings of confusion about how we as disabled men can build a relationship with and respond to ideas of masculinity if we can not perform them in a way that society demands, that is through white, cis-heteronormative, capitalist and able-bodied norms."
