Thursday, February 5th. Doors open 6:30 p.m, screening 7:30 p.m.
Post-screening discussion 8:30 p.m.
CAMH Auditorium, 1025 Queen Street West, 2nd floor
Free to attend—register on Eventbrite!

The Blackwood and Vtape are pleased to present The Stimming Pool, a film screening and discussion with Neurocultures Collective members Georgia Bradburn and Sam Chown Ahern, and filmmaker Steven Eastwood, moderated by Chris Gehman.

Co-created by the Neurocultures Collective (Sam Chown Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker) and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, The Stimming Pool is an experimental film whose drifting form is built around the concept of an autistic camera. The curiosity of this camera discovers a relay of subjects who stray through the world, revealing environments often hostile to autistic experience—such as a hectic workplace and a crowded pub—and quiet spaces that offer respite from them. Each of the characters exists in a separate world nested inside one other and often jumping up and down levels. But gradually we come to realise they have common experiences. Some are concealing their autism and dealing with the resulting feelings of isolation, while others thrive in the communities and support structures around them. All, however, have a shared objective: to find a place where they are free to move and stim, uninhibited by the tests and restrictions of normative society. This secret place is the Stimming Pool…

The Stimming Pool is presented as part of Oughtism, February 5-7, a multimodal seminar series which expands the Blackwood Gallery’s 2025­–26 exploration of neurodivergent doing, feeling and being, and sets out to conjure linguistic and embodied possibilities for being that resist neurotypical logic.

Oughtism is supported by the UTM/JHI Annual Seminar (@jackmanhumanitiesinstitute).

Image Credit: The Neurocultures & Steven Eastwood, The Stimming Pool (still), 2024. Super 16mm digital transfer to 4K. 1:10:00. Courtesy the artists.

Image Descriptions: home page: A deep purple background with white text reads “The Stimming Pool: Film Screening and Talk, Thursday, February 5th, 7-9pm, CAMH Auditorium, Toronto”; above: An image of a figure in a dog-like mascot costume stands with arms overhead in an empty swimming pool. Swim tools litter the bottom of the pool with chairs and a changing room in the background.