ABSTRACT
This chapter expands the conception of disability life writing beyond narrative or linguistic frameworks and shows the potential of literary disability studies to engage with innovative, experimental and mixed or cross-media genres. These include artists’ books, textile art, comics and digital storytelling that also blur the boundaries of art, activism and autobiography. In augmenting traditional approaches to narrative, building on recent work in health/medical humanities, the chapter forges additional connections across the disciplinary divide between cultural disability studies and critical medical humanities as well. It begins with a discussion of textile artworks that imaginatively convey the artist’s difficulty with textual communication as a result of dyslexia. The chapter focuses on to experimental conceptual art that explores “broken signals” associated with the experience of multiple sclerosis. It concludes with a relational and participatory narrative of schizophrenia which starts from poetry and evolves into a cross-media project consisting of a stage musical performance, a graphic novel and a digital narrative app.
