Stimming is the practice of physical repetition as a way of taking sensory pleasure in recurrence, or of expressing and alleviating anxiety, and is a common trait of autistic experience.

Co-created by The Neurocultures Collective – Sam Chown Ahern, Georgia Bradburn, Benjamin Brown, Robin Elliott-Knowles, Lucy Walker – and artist-filmmaker Steven Eastwood, STIM CINEMA takes the action of stimming as its starting point, connecting delight in repetition to the birth of cinema and to contemporary fascination with GIFS.

Including zoetropes (early moving image / precinematic devices), an 18 minute looped video, and props and ephemera from the production process – STIM CINEMA invites the audience to take pleasure in discovering hidden repetitive movements, and the ever-stimming details of the everyday world. STIM CINEMA encourages us all to remember the joy we share in seeing actions rock and loop, and revealing that such stimulation is not only common to autistic experience but it is in the DNA of the moving image.

STIM CINEMA has been co-created by members of The Neurocultures Collective through years of co-development with artist filmmaker Steven Eastwood and curator Gilly Fox. The Neurocultures Collective was formed through participation in the Autism Through Cinema research project, funded by Wellcome Trust, and led by Steven Eastwood and Janet Harbord.