Happy face emoji with flapping hands

Happy Flappy

👏🧷🎨 Announcement: Stimpunks + PunkFlowers

Stimpunks has allied with PunkFlowers, a neurodiverse artist coalition led by neurodivergent and disabled people. We join them in collaboration and mutual support. Between Stimpunks Foundation and PunkFlowers, we can do some cool stuff that impacts community.

Flowers grow from a skeletonized human torso. Some of the flowers have teeth and mouths. One flower is biting the skull of the torso.
PunkFlowers by Heike Blakley

We are happy flappy about this.

Happy Flappy Emoji
Happy Flappy Emoji by Becky Hicks

Let’s stim dance in celebration.

I'm dancing on my own (dancing on my own)
I make the moves up as I go (moves up as I go)
And that's what they don't know, mmm-mmm
That's what they don't know, mmm-mmm

But I keep cruising
Can't stop, won't stop grooving
It's like I got this music
In my mind
Saying, "It's gonna be alright."

Baby, I'm just gonna shake, shake, shake, shake, shake
I shake it off, I shake it off

--Shake It Off

Let’s get unapologetically, autistically, kinetically wild.

Black and white photo of The Bobby Lees performing live on stage with the lead singer captured mid head swing with hair flying.
The Bobby Lees performing live on stage with the lead singer captured mid head swing with hair flying. Image Credit: Kyle Duce

This is Pure stim music
3 seconds in, I lost my shit and straight into head banging

A Neurodivergent Crip on Hearing The Bobby Lees
Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey Mind
It's just my

I take him out, and then I sit him down
I look him in the eye, and say no more
monkeying around
Now you look-y here, you gonna leave me
alone
Cause there's no room here for a little
monkey in my home

Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey Mind
It's just my

That monkey mind, he likes to eat himself alive
Think he's done, and then he takes another bite
Now see, I gotta learn to be kind
To my monkey mind, cause he'll be with me till I die

Monkey Mind
It's just my monkey mind
Monkey Mind
It's just my

Monkey Mind by The Bobby Lees
13 people posed on a sidewalk in front a green and yellow van with the word "Vancerts" on it.
The Bobby Lees, Forty Feet Tall, Vancerts, Cryptic Creative, and Stimpunks

Let’s bolster against stress and pass survival knowledge down.

…flamenco is in itself a ballistic activity with its own built-in reward system that can then bolster the brain against traumatic stress.

…not only can traumatic knowledge be passed down, so can bodily survival knowledge-knowledge about how to survive the debilitating effects and symptoms of PTSD.

If your “threat to life” responses are being re-associated on a regular basis with flamenco responses, slowly, like polishing stone, flamenco has the potential to be an asset for people who are working through PTSD.

Because We Have To: Flamenco as Survival Strategy against Detrimental Effects of Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder

sensory pleasure (which could be viewed as almost the opposite feeling to anxiety) can be one of the richest, most delightful experiences known to the autistic population – and should be encouraged at any appropriate opportunity.

Avoiding Anxiety in Autistic Children: A Guide for Autistic Wellbeing 
@torktorktork

tragically, i could not make the captions work #stimdance #somaticmovement

♬ original sound – tork
@agonyautie1

Stim Dancing; for centuries our Neurotype has been perceived as possessed by the devil, for moving & regulating in this way Our autistic ancestors were instinctively & intuitively regulating their nervous systems but with severe consequences for deviating from the norm #stimdance #stimming #nervoussystemregulation #stim #autisticancestors #autisticancestory #autismawareness #autism #autismo #autistic #autisticadult #actuallyautistic #actuallyautistictiktoks #movement #movementismedicine #movementculture #estaticdance #neurodivergent #neurodiverse #neurodiversity

♬ No Talk – River Tiber
Thrive
Crawling up the spine
Feel each vertebrae 
Trailing up the stems
Blooming when I say 
Thrive

Thrive by Scarlet Monk

There are so many unexpected movements that live inside my body. So many different shapes and motions that never get to come out during day to day life. There’s something so liberating about being able to explore all of these things I didn’t even know lived inside me.

torktorktork

Let’s bliss.

It’s important to highlight Autistic sensory euphoria, because mainstream presentations of Autism are deficit-based. Sensory bliss shows that the sensory experiences of Autistics may be challenging but also wonderful.

Lauren Melissa Ellzey

Sensory euphoria/bliss occurs when one or more of the body’s eight senses* experiences positive hyperstimulation. Instead of going through overwhelm, meltdowns, & shutdowns of overload, the result of sensory bliss might be exhilaration, full-body tingling, & happy stimming.

Lauren Melissa Ellzey

Stimming is beautiful.

Playlist: Stimming with Aurora

I’m a very emotional person. I have to use everything I’ve got to sing those songs.

Aurora Aksnes
Hork: Shark + horse Randimal
Hork
Eagert: Eagle + Leopard Randimal
Eagard

We call ourselves Warriors and Weirdos.

Seadog Sea Lion + Dog Randimal
Sea Dog

“What makes us different, makes all the difference in the world.”

Ellarilla Elephant + Gorilla Randimal
Ellarilla

These artists are warriors, weirdos, and very different from each other in style and background. Difference is a teacher, and we Stimpunks learn from and with each other.

Seadog

Diversity is strength. Difference is a teacher. Fear difference, you learn nothing.

Hannah Gadsby: Nanette

🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Heike Blakley

Heike Blakley is a self-taught, emerging artist working with a wide array of mediums such as acrylic, oil, watercolor, pencil, charcoal, pastel, mixed media, pen & ink.

Also specializing in resin art, jewelry making, woodwork, clay sculptures, fabric art and poetry.

Using her creativity as a form of learning and for meditative purposes, she is determined to, “absorb as much “collective knowledge,” as she is able to grasp in one lifetime and effectively communicate understanding through art.”

Home | Heike Blakley, Heike Vogt (@hblkly) • Instagram
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🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Adriel Jeremiah Wool

Abstract, algorithmic art
Pseudo Proxima by Adriel Jeremiah Art

The artist hopes to convey this: that the universe is given forth folded and unfolded. Although explicit understanding helps, it is too cumbersome, and should only provide refinement to something already greater that exists.

That greater thing is what was given to the artist first by the practice of origami. An enlivening of the intuitive mind, experience with a universe of many dimensions, and the promise of creation revealed when one folds a flat square into the likeness of a higher dimensional thing. That inspiration reaches a young mind in a powerful way.

The artist wants the viewer to see proof of what their intuitive mind already knows is true, the universe is a multidimensional phenomenon and the ability to understand its nature already exists within us each.

The artist hopes the viewer will be inspired to seek the understanding of freedoms available to the individual inspired by the exposure to artistic expressions, and of a nature of dimensionality unimaginably greater than the object presented here.

Adriel Jeremiah Wool
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🎨 PunkFlowers Artist: Kyle Duce

Raised between the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and a small farming community in Wisconsin, Kyle gained an appreciation of the land, wildlife and the beauty of nature.  Kyle grew up as a 3rd generation artist, his grandfather was an oil painter and his mother ran a stained glass business out of their home in Wisconsin.  There was no shortage of art projects, outdoor activities, hunting, fishing, camping and gardening.  Post college, Kyle traveled and moved back to Colorado, Seattle and now Austin.  He has been living in downtown cities since college.  The clash of these two timelines reflects the duality expression in most of his work. This duality can also be seen through his passion for the skate, snow, music, tattoo and architecture world.

Custom Artwork | Cryptic Creative | Austin
Kyle Duce (@cryptic_creative) • Instagram photos
A Chimpanzee in a space suit gazes stoically at the camera with pine trees in the background
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Stim It, to the Limit, One More Time

Oh come and ride with me
A little drive with me
Come and ride with me
A little Ohhheee

La, la, la, la la la la

Drive by The Bobby Lees

A power wheelchair using Stimpunk rocks out to The Bobby Lees at an outdoor gig
Video credit: David Castro of Vancerts
Concert poster for Free Fest ATX Day 3, Presented by Vancerts and Stimpunks, Featuring The Bobby Lees and Forty Feet Tall
Stimpunks and Vancerts Present The Bobby Lees and Forty Feet Tall

Our Pillars

Thanks for checking out our art and shaking it off with us.

Continue the journey of reframing disability and difference with an introduction to our Four Pillars: Mutual Aid, Human-Centered Learning, Open Research, and Public Services

Index