I was speaking to a group of about 300 kids, ages six to eight, at a children's museum, and I brought with me a bag full of legs, similar to the kinds of things you see up here, and had them laid out on a table for the kids. And, from my experience, you know, kids are naturally curious about what they don't know, or don't understand, or is foreign to them. They only learn to be frightened of those differences when an adult influences them to behave that way, and maybe censors that natural curiosity, or you know, reins in the question-asking in the hopes of them being polite little kids. So I just pictured a first grade teacher out in the lobby with these unruly kids, saying, "Now, whatever you do, don't stare at her legs."
Prednášala som skupine asi 300 detí, od šesť do osem rokov v múzeu pre deti a priniesla so sebou tašku plnú nôh podobných tým, čo práve vidíte, rozložila som ich na stole, pre tie deti. Zo skúsenosti vieme, že deti sú prirodzene zvedavé, ak niečo nevedia, nechápu alebo je im to cudzie. Naučia sa obávať odlišného len pod vplyvom dospelích, ktorí cenzúrujú ich prirodzenú zvedavosť alebo potláčajú ich otázky, aby boli slušnými malými deťmi. Tak si predstavujem učiteľa prvákov na chodbe ako hovorí neposlušným deťom, "Robte čo chcete, len jej nečumte na nohy."
But, of course, that's the point. That's why I was there, I wanted to invite them to look and explore. So I made a deal with the adults that the kids could come in without any adults for two minutes on their own. The doors open, the kids descend on this table of legs, and they are poking and prodding, and they're wiggling toes, and they're trying to put their full weight on the sprinting leg to see what happens with that. And I said, "Kids, really quickly -- I woke up this morning, I decided I wanted to be able to jump over a house -- nothing too big, two or three stories -- but, if you could think of any animal, any superhero, any cartoon character, anything you can dream up right now, what kind of legs would you build me?"
No práve to je tou podstatou. Dôvodom mojej návštevy bolo, aby sa pozerali a skúmali. Dohodla som sa teda s dospelými, aby pustili deti dnu na prvé dve minúty samé. Dvere sa otvoria, deti sa znesú na stôl plný nôh, šťuchajú a naťahujú ich, krútia palcami a snažia sa celou váhou zaťažit nohu na šprintovanie, aby videli, ako reaguje. Hovorím im "Deti, veľmi rýchlo -- ráno som sa zobudila s rozhodnutím, že chcem preskočiť ponad dom -- nie moc vysoký, dve-tri poschodia -- mysliac na hociaké zviera, superhrdinu, kreslenú postavičku, čo sa vám len v sne napadne, aký druh nôh by ste mi spravili?"
And immediately a voice shouted, "Kangaroo!" "No, no, no! Should be a frog!" "No. It should be Go Go Gadget!" "No, no, no! It should be the Incredibles." And other things that I don't -- aren't familiar with. And then, one eight-year-old said, "Hey, why wouldn't you want to fly too?" And the whole room, including me, was like, "Yeah." (Laughter) And just like that, I went from being a woman that these kids would have been trained to see as "disabled" to somebody that had potential that their bodies didn't have yet. Somebody that might even be super-abled. Interesting.
A okamžite sa ozve hlas "Klokan!" "Nie, nie, nie, žaba!" "Nie. Inšpektor Gadget!" "Nie, nie, nie! Ako z Rodinky Úžasných." A kopec iných vecí, čo nepoznám. Potom jedna osemročná povie, "A nechcela by si tiež vedieť lietať?" A celá miestnosť vrátane mňa len zavzdychala "Hej". (Smiech) Takto jednoducho som sa zmenila zo ženy, ktorú boli tieto deti naučené vnímať ako "postihnutú", na niekoho s potenciálom väčším ako ich vlastné telá. Niekoho s takmer nadľudskými schopnosťami. Zaujímavé.
So some of you actually saw me at TED, 11 years ago. And there's been a lot of talk about how life-changing this conference is for both speakers and attendees, and I am no exception. TED literally was the launch pad to the next decade of my life's exploration. At the time, the legs I presented were groundbreaking in prosthetics. I had woven carbon fiber sprinting legs modeled after the hind leg of a cheetah, which you may have seen on stage yesterday. And also these very life-like, intrinsically painted silicone legs.
Niektorí z Vás ma videli na TED pre 11 rokmi, často sa hovorí, že táto konferencia dokáže zmeniť život prednášajúcich aj účastníkov a ja nie som výnimkou. TED bol doslovne štartovacou dráhou do ďaľšieho desaťročia môjho života. Nohy, ktoré som prezentovala, boli vtedy prelomom v protézach. Spriadala som karbónové šprintérske nohy modelované podľa zadných nôh geparda, ktoré ste mohli vidieť na pódiu včera. Tiež tieto veľmi skutočné, prirodzene nafarbené silikónové nohy.
So at the time, it was my opportunity to put a call out to innovators outside the traditional medical prosthetic community to come bring their talent to the science and to the art of building legs. So that we can stop compartmentalizing form, function and aesthetic, and assigning them different values. Well, lucky for me, a lot of people answered that call. And the journey started, funny enough, with a TED conference attendee -- Chee Pearlman, who hopefully is in the audience somewhere today. She was the editor then of a magazine called ID, and she gave me a cover story.
Takže bolo mojou príležitosťou vyzvať inovátorov mimo tradičnej protézovej komunity, aby zapojili svoj talent do vedy a umenia výroby nôh. Aby prestali deliť formu, funkciu a estetiku a dávať im rôzne hodnoty. Našťastie pre mňa na túto výzvu odpovedalo mnoho ľudí. Srandou je, že táto cesta začala vďaka účastníčke TED konferencie -- Chee Pearlman, ktorá tu dúfam sedí dnes v hľadisku. Bola vtedy editorkou časopisu ID a venovala mi titulnú stránku.
This started an incredible journey. Curious encounters were happening to me at the time; I'd been accepting numerous invitations to speak on the design of the cheetah legs around the world. And people would come up to me after the conference, after my talk, men and women. And the conversation would go something like this, "You know Aimee, you're very attractive. You don't look disabled." (Laughter) I thought, "Well, that's amazing, because I don't feel disabled." And it really opened my eyes to this conversation that could be explored, about beauty. What does a beautiful woman have to look like? What is a sexy body? And interestingly, from an identity standpoint, what does it mean to have a disability? I mean, people -- Pamela Anderson has more prosthetic in her body than I do. Nobody calls her disabled. (Laughter)
Začala sa tým neuveriteľná cesta. Prihodili sa mi vtedy neuveriteľné stretnutia, prijala som mnohé pozvania hovoriť po celom svete na tému design nôh geparda. Po konferencii, po mojom príspevku, za mnou prišli ľudia, muži a ženy, náš rozhovor vyzeral asi takto: "Vieš Aimee, si veľmi atraktívna. Nevyzeráš ako postihnutá." (Smiech) Myslela som si "To je úžasné, pretože ja sa necítim byť postihnutá." To mi skutočne otvorilo oči diskusii o tom, čo je krása. Ako musí vyzerať krásna žena? Čo je sexy telo? A zaujimavé z hľadiska identity, čo znamená byť postihnutým? Veď ľudia -- Pamela Anderson má v sebe viac protéz ako ja. Nikto ju nenazýva postihnutou. (Smiech)
So this magazine, through the hands of graphic designer Peter Saville, went to fashion designer Alexander McQueen, and photographer Nick Knight, who were also interested in exploring that conversation. So, three months after TED I found myself on a plane to London, doing my first fashion shoot, which resulted in this cover -- "Fashion-able"? Three months after that, I did my first runway show for Alexander McQueen on a pair of hand-carved wooden legs made from solid ash. Nobody knew -- everyone thought they were wooden boots. Actually, I have them on stage with me: grapevines, magnolias -- truly stunning. Poetry matters. Poetry is what elevates the banal and neglected object to a realm of art. It can transform the thing that might have made people fearful into something that invites them to look, and look a little longer, and maybe even understand.
Tento časopis sa teda dostal rukami grafického dizajnera Petera Saville k módnemu dizajnérovi Alexandrovi McQueenovi a fotografovi Nickovi Knightovi, ktorých tiež zaujala táto téma. Tri mesiace po TEDe som teda sedela v lietadle do Londýna na moje prvé módne fotenie, ktorého výsledkom bola táto titulka -- Módy-schopná? Tri mesiace nato som spravila prvú mólovú šou pre Alexandra McQueena na páre nôh ručne vyrezávaných z jaseňa. Nikto to nevedel -- každý ich pokladal za drevené čižmy. Inak, mám ich tu so sebou na pódiu: Vinič, magnólie, vskutku úžasné. Na poézii záleží. Poézia povznáža obyčajný a zanedbaný predmet do ríše umenia. Dokáže transformovať vec, čo inak naháňa strach, na vec hodnú pohľadu a dlhšieho hľadenia a dokonca možno pochopenia.
I learned this firsthand with my next adventure. The artist Matthew Barney, in his film opus called the "The Cremaster Cycle." This is where it really hit home for me -- that my legs could be wearable sculpture. And even at this point, I started to move away from the need to replicate human-ness as the only aesthetic ideal. So we made what people lovingly referred to as glass legs even though they're actually optically clear polyurethane, a.k.a. bowling ball material. Heavy! Then we made these legs that are cast in soil with a potato root system growing in them, and beetroots out the top, and a very lovely brass toe. That's a good close-up of that one. Then another character was a half-woman, half-cheetah -- a little homage to my life as an athlete. 14 hours of prosthetic make-up to get into a creature that had articulated paws, claws and a tail that whipped around, like a gecko. (Laughter) And then another pair of legs we collaborated on were these -- look like jellyfish legs, also polyurethane. And the only purpose that these legs can serve, outside the context of the film, is to provoke the senses and ignite the imagination. So whimsy matters.
Naučilo ma to z prvej ruky moje ďaľšie dobrodružstvo. Umelec Matthew Barney vo svojom filmovom cykle "Cremaster". Úplne ma to dorazilo -- že moje nohy by mohli byť sochami na nosenie. Vtedy som sa začala vzdaľovať od potreby kopírovania ľudskosti ako jediného estetického ideálu. Spravili sme, čo ľudia láskyplne nazvali sklenými nohami, aj keď boli v podstate z priehľadného polyuretánu a.k.a. materiálu bowlingových gúľ. Tvrdé! Potom sme vyrobili nohy odliate do zeme s koreňovým systémom zemiakov, repkou hore a krásnym mosadzným palcom. Tu je bližší detail. Ďaľšia postavička bola potom napol žena, napol gepard -- malá pocta môjmu životu atlétky. 14 hodín protézového make-upu zmení ženu na tvora s ohybnými labkami, pazúrmi a chvostom, ktorý máva hore dole ako jašterica. (Smiech) Tu je ďaľší pár nôh, na ktorom sme spolupracovali... vyzerajú ako nohy medúzy. Tiež polyuretán. Tieto nohy slúžia len jedinému účelu mimo kontextu filmu, a to provokácii zmyslov a naštartovaniu predstavivosti. Veci rozmaru.
Today, I have over a dozen pair of prosthetic legs that various people have made for me, and with them I have different negotiations of the terrain under my feet, and I can change my height -- I have a variable of five different heights. (Laughter) Today, I'm 6'1". And I had these legs made a little over a year ago at Dorset Orthopedic in England and when I brought them home to Manhattan, my first night out on the town, I went to a very fancy party. And a girl was there who has known me for years at my normal 5'8". Her mouth dropped open when she saw me, and she went, "But you're so tall!" And I said, "I know. Isn't it fun?" I mean, it's a little bit like wearing stilts on stilts, but I have an entirely new relationship to door jams that I never expected I would ever have. And I was having fun with it. And she looked at me, and she said, "But, Aimee, that's not fair." (Laughter) (Applause) And the incredible thing was she really meant it. It's not fair that you can change your height, as you want it.
Vlastním dnes vyše tucta párov protéz, ktoré mi vyrobili rôzni ľudia, a ktoré umožňujú rozdielne zdolávanie terénu. Môžem zmeniť svoju výšku -- Mám na výber päť rôznych výšok (Smiech) Dnes meriam 185 cm. Tieto nohy boli vyrobené asi rok dozadu v Dorset Ortopédii v Anglicku a keď som ich priniesla domov na Manhattan, prvú noc vonku v meste som šla na snobskú párty. Kamoške, čo ma poznala už roky s mojimi normálnymi 170 cm, spadla sánka, keď ma videla, povedala "Ty si ale vysoká!" Ja na to "Viem, nie je to sranda?" Je to trochu ako nosenie opätkov na opätkoch, mám tým celkom nový vzťah k prahom vo dverách, čo som nikdy nečakala. A to ma bavilo. Ona sa na mňa pozrela a povedala: "Aimee, to nie je fér." (Smiech) (Potlesk) Neskutočné na tom bolo, že to myslela vážne. Je nefér môcť meniť svoju výšku ako si človek zmyslí.
And that's when I knew -- that's when I knew that the conversation with society has changed profoundly in this last decade. It is no longer a conversation about overcoming deficiency. It's a conversation about augmentation. It's a conversation about potential. A prosthetic limb doesn't represent the need to replace loss anymore. It can stand as a symbol that the wearer has the power to create whatever it is that they want to create in that space. So people that society once considered to be disabled can now become the architects of their own identities and indeed continue to change those identities by designing their bodies from a place of empowerment. And what is exciting to me so much right now is that by combining cutting-edge technology -- robotics, bionics -- with the age-old poetry, we are moving closer to understanding our collective humanity. I think that if we want to discover the full potential in our humanity, we need to celebrate those heartbreaking strengths and those glorious disabilities that we all have. I think of Shakespeare's Shylock: "If you prick us, do we not bleed, and if you tickle us, do we not laugh?" It is our humanity, and all the potential within it, that makes us beautiful. Thank you. (Applause)
Vtedy som si uvedomila -- uvedomila som si, že rozhovor so spoločnosťou sa od základov zmenil v poslednom desaťročí. Nebavíme sa už o prekonaní postihnutia. Bavíme sa o zlepšení. Bavíme sa o potenciále. Protéza už nereprezentuje potrebu nahradiť stratu. Môže byť symbolom toho, že majiteľ má moc vytvoriť to, čo chce vytvoriť namiesto straty. Takže ľudia, ktorých spoločnosť pokladala za postihnutých, sa môžu zrazu stať architektami vlastných identít a naďalej meniť svoje identity vytváraním vlastných tiel podľa vlastnej vôle. V súčasnosti pokladám za neskutočne vzrušujúce, že kombináciou špičkovej technológie -- robotiky a bioniky -- s vekmi starou poéziou, sa približujeme k porozumeniu našej kolektívnej ľudskosti. Myslím si, že ak máme objaviť plný potenciál našej ľudskosti, musíme sláviť tie srdcervúce silné stránky aj tie úžasné postihnutia, ktoré každý máme. Mám na mysli Shakespearovho Shylocka: "Keď nás bodnete, nekrvácame? A keď nás pošteklíte, nesmejeme sa?" Je to naša ľudskosť a celý jej potenciál, ktorý nás robí krásnymi. Ďakujem Vám. (Potlesk)