Methodology of Authentic Bodies: Diverse Embodiment and Disabled Identity in String Performance Practice

Niamh Gallagher's practice research combines string performance, embodiment, and disability studies to illuminate the knowledge-generating work of disabled musicians, their perspectives and adaptations in musical discourse. As a disabled musician, Gallagher project explores the knowledges and agencies of diverse embodiment, and critiques pathologising and therapeutic narratives which tend to dominate discourse around music and disability (e.g. Magee, 2002). Gallagher asks how foregrounding the experience of disabled bodies may offer a framework for interrogating embodied experience in musical practice. The specific embodied and technological practices of this project will be concerned with her instrument, the viola, and her specific body. The processes explored and findings will be applicable to practitioners both disabled and non-disabled. As part of her doctoral research, the substantial practice project will develop new musical material for the viola, taking Gallagher's embodied identity as the stimulus.