7 minute read. Content warning: Internalized ableism, anxiety
chatGPT Summary: Kay reflects on a full year of The Radical Silence Project, examining the evolution of their structured non-verbal practice from grunt gallery to FLEET Granville Island and now back to grunt, while preparing for a second FLEET residency in Burnaby; they explore themes of permission, reciprocity, and the complexities of equitable non-verbal spaces as they continue refining and expanding this work into its second year.
January 2025 marks a full year of the Radical Silence Project, and as I prepare to step into another month of non-verbal practice, I find myself reflecting on what has changed, what remains the same, and what new questions I am bringing into this next iteration. I am scared in a different way this time – as if failure or some unknown challenge would somehow reduce the wins I have achieved in the last year. Anxiety is a nuissance.
At the start of last year, even as I mark it the start of this project, silence was not new to me. I have engaged in non-verbal practice for years—sometimes by necessity, sometimes for survival, sometimes as a way of showing respect in Deaf spaces where speaking would be inappropriate. But those moments were always contextual, reactive, often tied to medical realities or the exhaustion of navigating a world that prioritizes speech and hearing. I have spent years straddling the space between verbal and non-verbal existence—oral yet hard of hearing, fluent in silence and a servicable skill in American Sign Language but not fluent enough for most spaces. Definitely too queer for most Deaf hangouts, and too deaf to hang out in hearing, Queer spaces. Until February 2024, I had never formally engaged in non-verbal practice with explicit permission, planning, and structure. I had flirted with it, attending shows using only text, but feeling like a fraud, a poser. A problem.
But even as I measured myself against an inconsistent value proposition or identify profile, I planted seeds to encourage a place for non-verbal practice to, if not thrive, at least sprout. For two years leading up to my first structured non-verbal engagement, I prototyped a program at grunt gallery called Voice-Off and Low-Sensory Thursdays. Every week, the gallery space was adjusted to support visitors who benefited from lower stimulation: the lights were dimmed, sound was off or reduced, and visitors were asked to engage non-verbally. Silence was treated as an access practice, not an absence. After two years, the team agreed that the program was not only valueable, it had been well received and was being discussed in other arts spaces. It was formally introduced to grunt programming last year, I am extremely proud. Last year, I also prototypted a program where I hosted a non-verbal artist in what was prevously called the Non-Verbal Co-Learning Program that complimented the on-going Tactile program I had started with non-visual artists in 2022. In that prototype, I committed to being non-verbal in solidarity with the hosted artist, and did not speak in both my professional and personal life for 4 weeks.
That work laid the foundation for what would eventually become the Radical Silence Project.
From grunt to FLEET to grunt again
In February 2024, when I first engaged in the structured, month-long non-verbal engagement, I knew I was engaging in something that had deep importance for me within my caeer. What I didn’t anticipate was how it would evolve, how it would shift from an institutional engagement with artists to a deeply personal and rewarding part of my ongoing practice.
In October 2024, when I was engaged as the artist in residence at FLEET: Granville Island, I publicly named the project for the first time. For a month, I engaged with the public while maintaining a person non-verbal practice. This iteration was different—where grunt had been an internal engagement within an artist-run centre, FLEET placed my work in the middle of a tourist-heavy, public environment. It was a stark contrast to the conditions at grunt, where my colleagues already understood and supported silence as an access practice. Within the container of the gallery, it was easy to explain how non-verbal engagement was adjacent to a low-sensory experience, and placed that work well within the parametres of accessible guest services. In my artist residency, friends, colleagues, or visitors would ask questions. People wanted me to explain myself. They wanted to know why. From my previous experiences in public when I would introduce non-verbal existance into verbal and hearing spaces and it was met with discomfort, distrust, or dismissal, here I had permission to practice it. It was…cool.
Now, in 2025, I am again hosting another month-long non-verbal engagement at grunt, but this time the project has grown, and so have the conditions surrounding it. I am not just hosting a single non-verbal artist—I am co-facilitating an expanded program alongside a long time collaborator with two non-verbal artists, each bringing their own unique relationships to silence, signing, and non-verbal presence. The stakes feel higher, and my own practice has deepened in ways I am still unpacking. I still feel an everpresent internal voice that shouts: “How dare you,” with each step and while I am more practiced at debating it with strong argments against ableism and oral-centric power imbalance, I still find myself echoing the same question. If I *can* talk, why wouldn’t I? If I can hear anything, why wouldn’t I prioritize speaking and hearing culture? I hate how I can even entertain those questions when I would attack them with passion if they were issued to someone else in my community. Again, a point goes to anxiety.
At the same time as the non-verbal engagement, and my renewed committment to spend February voice-off, I will be again participating in another FLEET mobile artist residency, this time in Burnaby. This time, I will be near the BC School for the Deaf, embedded in a community where non-verbal communication is more present, more culturally understood. I am curious how this shift in setting will impact engagement—how a location with more embedded knowledge around non-verbal existence might alter the ways in which people interact with my silence. How my imposter syndrome will rear its ugly head.
New Understandings, New Challenges
A year ago, I was preoccupied with permission—the permission I sought from my colleagues, the permission I gave myself, the permission I extended to others to meet me in silence. I still think about permission, but now I am thinking more about reciprocity.
- What does it mean to ask others to engage non-verbally?
- How do I hold space for silence while ensuring it does not become another imposed expectation?
- How do I create non-verbal spaces that are truly accessible, not just conceptually but in practice?
Silence alone does not create access. Power still exists in non-verbal spaces, and dominant modes of communication still dictate whose voices—signed, written, or gestured—are “heard” first. At grunt, for example, I have seen how signed communication can dominate a non-verbal space in the same way speech dominates a hearing space. Those who sign fluently often take control of conversations, while those who rely on text, gestures, or slower modes of interaction struggle to keep up. This is a challenge I am bringing into my facilitation at grunt this year: how do we ensure that non-verbal space is equitable, that the fastest gestures do not overpower the slowest presence?
Hopes for the Future
As the project moves into its second year, I am holding onto the knowledge that silence is not a fixed state—it is dynamic, shifting, full of nuance.
I hope this year deepens my understanding of what it means to create intentional, inclusive, and thoughtful non-verbal spaces. I hope to continue refining the project so that it is not just about my own practice, but about collective learning, about making space for multiple kinds of silence, multiple ways of existing.
More than anything, I hope that this project continues to challenge me while also practicing self-love. I want it to continue forcing me to reconsider my own assumptions, and to evolve my relationship with discomfort, but I also want to be reminded that finding joy in this practice is a reward and a gift.
Silence is not static, and neither is this work.
Here’s to another year of radical silence.
Technology note:
I continue to test the use of AI within my writing and artistic practice. I narrated the entirely of this blog and then used Otter.ai to transcribe it. I edited the transcript and then fed it to chatGPT 4o to review and edit my thoughts. I used chatGPT to create a summary and reading estimate, and recommend some content warnings for this blog, and Grammarly to assist me in spelling and grammar.