Queer Spiritual Drifting: Not at home in The Beguinage

This essay charts travels to Belgium and the Netherlands as part of an Olimpias disability performance exploration of queer spiritual asylum spaces. This exploratory journey was an aspect of the wider Asylum Project: a multi-year exploration of sanctuary, edge space and communal wellbeing, led by queer disabled artists using disability culture methodologies. In this travelogue, the writer engages in score-composing in the shadows of oldbeguinages, women's spiritual communities. Along the way, travelling wheels encounter environment, attitude, and emotion as well as durational aspects of pain and pleasure. The project's focus got redirected: sites took over, and the enquiry shifted under pressure. This essay charts a performance travelogue of halts, stops and unsuspected stitching.