current project

In Search of Lost Stims

In Search of Lost Stims is a community-created disability dance film that moves and moves with disabled bodyminds beyond medicalization.

Throughout, we explore stims: repetitive bodily motions such as rocking, flapping, or spinning often associated with autism and neurodivergence. Stimming is a form of crip wisdom; our stims can express joy, create pleasure, and foster regulation. Even so, stimming is routinely medicalized in public spaces, interpreted as anti-social, disruptive, or threatening—particularly when those stims are enacted by trans, queer, and negatively racialized people. In order to survive these conditions, we often learn to suppress our stims, severing our relationship to our bodyminds and our communities.

In response, our project embarks on a search for our lost stims through engagement with disability dance. In contrast to clinical paradigms, dance often takes a flexible approach to bodily motion and its meaning. Here, the rhythmic motions of a stim can function as a choreographic resource, one in which rocking, flapping, or spinning are indistinguishable from other movement phrases. To put this in disability terms: dancing can invite a kind of covert stimming, allowing disabled people to collectively access the wisdom of our own movement vocabularies in community without attracting unwanted scrutiny. For this reason, In Search of Lost Stims positions stimming as both a physical behavior and a cultural movement practice, one that invites both dancers and audiences alike into divergent timescales, spatial relationships, and social arrangements—all conveyed through disabled bodies in motion.

Our film activates this divergence by weaving footage of contemporary disabled people stimming with images of midcentury dance writing authored by people held at Oregon State Hospital. These authors record how “dancers swung and swayed in the evening breeze,” imbuing their writing with a kind of rhythmic sensibility reminiscent of a stim. By taking up this rhythmic sensibility, our final film aims to both activate a deeper lineage of disability cultural movement practices—and make that lineage available in the present.

In Search of Lost Stims will premiere at the Center for Mad Culture/Press Here Gallery (Chicago, IL) in 2028.

image Description: Image 1: A photo of a previous film screening at the Center for Mad Culture, co-created with Stephanie Heit. Image courtesy aL mccarthy.

image 2: A cover of the Lamplighter, a monthly newsletter containing dance writing created by people held at Oregon State Hospital. image courtesy Oregon Public Library.

Ways to Engage

  • Movement Workshops

    Our movement workshops offer an introduction to disability cultural movement practices. Inspired by (though in no way mimicking) stimming and led by neurodivergent artists, these workshops take the repetition inherent in stimming as an entrypoint into somatic writing and/or movement improvisation. These workshops are open to autistic/neurodivergent, mad/mentally ill, and disabled people, as well as others who are interested in respectfully engaging disability performance lineages in an accessible, sensory-aware, and beginner-friendly environment.

  • Printmaking Workshops

    Inspired by the term stereotypy—a word that is both a technical term used in printmaking and a clinical term used to describe stimming—our printmaking workshops invite people who stim to translate their own repetitive bodily motions into print. Participants can choose to work independently or collaboratively, synchronously or asynchronously. In addition to keeping their print as a memento, participants can also choose to contribute to and/or receive a zine comprised of all the prints made during the workshop.

  • Portrait Sessions

    During our portrait sessions, people who stim can sign up or drop in for one-on-one appointments to film themselves stimming. Recorded by disability dance filmmaker Kym McDaniel and underscored by AuDHD composer Ali Pappa, the resulting short films showcase the aesthetic beauty and embodied wisdom of those who stim. In addition to keeping their footage as a momento, participants can also choose to contribute their film to the In Search of Lost Stims film, exhibition book, or digital archive.

  • Digital Archive

    We invite people who stim to contribute to our stim archive, a digital art gallery and community resource cataloguing all the brilliant ways people stim. Contributors can submit videos, photos, diagrams, drawings, writing, or other formats. Our stim archive is not yet up and running, so be sure to check back here for future updates!

  • Research Presentations

    Our research presentations provide an interactive introduction to disability performance lineages, with a particular focus on embodied methods for archival-based research. What material and ethical challenges inform historical disability performance research? How might arts-based methods help us address those challenges both in and out of the archive? These presentations can be tailored to different audiences, including (but not limited to) university classes, student organizations, and community groups,

Our Team

Creative Team

Director Alexis Riley
Composer Ali Pappa
Filmmaker Kym McDaniel
Choreography Consultant Molly Roy
Voice Over Artists Jazz Bell & Hannah Neuhauser
Audiovisual Descriptions Rebecca Fitton
Dramaturg Jenna Gerdsen
Outreach/Education Sam Nash
Project Manager Shannon Woods
Project Advisor Petra Kuppers

Community Partners

The Center for Mad Culture/Press Here Gallery
Chicago, IL

Bridge Live Arts
San Francisco, CA

In Search of Lost Stims is produced through generous grants from the University of Michigan Arts Initiative.