Reader-in-Residence: Julia Gruson-Wood

This session will engage STIM CINEMA by focusing on repetition—and visual representations of repetition—as a microcosm for contemporary Autism politics. In a collaborative, creative, and hands-on environment, we will incorporate multimedia texts to consider repetition as a site of resistance and liberation within Autistic self-advocacy moments. We will also analyze the negative appraisal of Autistic modes of repetition within clinical Autism intervention practices—namely, applied behavioural therapies— which work to eliminate repetition in Autistic subjects by paradoxically subjecting them to highly repetitive clinical programs. We will watch and discuss short clinical autism therapy videos to parse the contradictory nature of the clinical gaze in relation to the meaning and value of repetition.

Julia Gruson-Wood (she/her) is a social studies of health researcher. She is an Adjunct Faculty with the Social Practice and Transformational Change Doctoral Program at the University of Guelph, an Affiliate of Re·Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Change, and a Research Partnerships Officer at University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus. Her book, Autism and the Culture of Therapy (UBC Press, forthcoming 2025), is the first empirical study of the highly controversial field of applied behavioural therapies.

Throughout Fall 2025 a lunchtime Reader-in-Residence series on UTM campus will offer group readings, discussions, and embodied activities led by guest contributors whose ethical, political, and social commitments complement the exhibition. Centring the practices of UofT faculty and graduate students, these sessions offer multimodal responses to neurodiverse cultures, aesthetics, and modes of perception.

Each session will be held in the exhibition’s Co-Creation Studio, located in the e|gallery, CCT Building lower level.

Lunch will be provided.

Click here for a detailed campus map and here for directions to UTM.

The e|gallery is located on the ground floor of the CCT Building and is accessible to people who use mobility devices, with doorways measuring over 32” wide. All entrances at ground floor level are equipped with power-assisted doors. The e|gallery is accessible via the east entrance (adjacent to parking lot 9) at ground level, or by elevator from the main floor entrance and at parking garage levels 1, 3, and 5. Accessible multi-user gendered washrooms are located at ground level, and accessible multi-user all-gender washrooms are located on the third floor of the CCT Building.

is an exhibition and moving image installation that explores neurodivergent perception, agency, and communication in an era increasingly defined by misinformation, polarization, and systemic distrust.

Curated by Christine Shaw, the exhibition features work by The Neurocultures Collective (Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Sam Shown-Ahearn, Robin Elliot-Knowles, Lucy Walker), a group of neurodivergent artists in collaboration with artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood.

At its core, the project asks: What does it mean to trust one’s own perception when dominant narratives privilege certain ways of sensing, knowing, and being? How do neurodivergent experiences of movement, repetition, and sensory engagement challenge dystopian conditions of control, standardization, and hypersynchronization?

Comprised of tactile zoetropes, a three-screen film installation, and a studio featuring the collective’s collaborative process, STIM CINEMA critically intervenes in the dystopian conditions where difference is pathologized, sensory processing is disciplined, and trust in institutions is eroded. Instead of reinforcing logics of neurotypicality, this project explores other linguistic and embodied possibilities for being in relation—where trust is built through sensory connection, shared experience, and an ethics of care.

To learn more about STIM CINEMA and the contributors, visit the .

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Host or Publisher Blackwood Gallery