During a trip with the Trans-Siberian railroad in the summer of 2016, me and my closest family recorded film and sound to a documentary about differences between people. In the conversation during the trip, we went from the criteria that define Asperger’s syndrome. The film is a collaborative project between Monica Larsson, artist, Jakob Persson, who has diagnosed Asperger’s syndrome and is Asperger’s informant and Hanna Persson, a filmstudent at Fridhems Folkhögskola.
As an artist, Jakob’s mother and teacher at an art school with pupils with intellectual functional variations, I have often reflected on what it’s like to think in another way and to have a varied function when receiving and organizing their perceptions of mind. Having abilities that vary from day to day and sometimes even between daytime hours.
I thought, what could be a better setting for a conversation going on for a long time than staying on the Trans-Sibirian railroad, where you’re together for the whole trip and have time to develop your conversation. No one has to go to different things like meetings, jobs or friends. While talking, landscapes and cities slide slowly past. Knowing that it could be difficult sometimes and that crashes and conflicts could arise during the trip could be embodied in the film and hopefully it will lead to increased understanding of how different thinking situations and behaviors can sometimes go on a collision course.
A movie to understand and hopefully share the understanding about how it works when you have a kind of high-performance autism like Asperger’s syndrome. ” Trans-Siberian Conversation” is that film, that project.