I am interested in the arts, so when Mediamatic uploaded their Autistic Artist Research internship vacancy, I knew that I had to apply. I had walked into my internship with the assumption that I was there to purely do research on the interdisciplinary between arts and autism. But I was very quickly proven wrong. Because Mediamatic is a small, non-profit organization, everyone works interchangeably. That is the beauty of working in such an intimate environment. You learn and develop your skill sets so much in the span of your internship, in this case, it was 5 months. The first two months of the internship were very research-heavy, and as you guessed, a lot of desk work. However, it wasn’t at all stressful, rather it helped me settled into the organization easily. It gave me some space to adjust to the organization’s culture, without being overwhelmed by a lot of meetings, and the rush nature of a work environment. In the third month, I started seeing a shift in the tasks assigned to me. It was still research, but the topic differed this time around. I was researching how Mediamatic can push its project into the public sphere. We came to an agreement that with Covid restrictions (only small groups gathering), we could do small meet-ups on Monday, every two weeks. We deliberately chose Monday because our restaurant and bar were closed then. It helped to accommodate our target group composed of autistic makers, artists, and researchers. So then, the last two months of my internship revolved around brainstorming interesting meet-up ideas, external communication with guests we want to invite, event planning, and event managing. External communication with potential participants of the meet-ups was a very interesting challenge for me. A lot of these individuals are autistic, which can mean that it will take them a while to answer my emails. So through a series of trial and error, I figured that I should send an invitation email out roughly one and a half weeks before the event. This gave the participants enough time to sort out their schedule, and time to respond to me. My favorite meet-up was the artist meet-up, where we invited autistic makers, art school teachers, and researchers to come together and discuss the following questions; “what is autistic art?”; “what is an autistic artist?”. It was fascinating to hear how each individual interpreted the questions we posed. One interesting initiative presented at the table was to modify the current diagnostic criteria of autism and apply it to and artwork to assess if the artwork exhibits autistic traits. I understand that this internship was rather unconventional, but it was hands down, a very enjoyable five-month period.
Word count: 449
Leave a Reply