Echolilia: A Father’s Photographic Conversation with His Autistic Son. Timothy Archibald uses his camera to find an emotional bridge to his son Photographs and text from the book Echolilia: Sometimes I Wonder
My eldest son was born in 2001. He was always a kid who went to the beat of his own drummer. When he was 5, we began making photographs collaboratively as a way to find some common ground and attempt to understand each other. Soon after we began the project, Elijah was diagnosed on the autistic spectrum. Though the diagnosis gave me the words and history to understand my son better, it didn’t take away the mystery and the need to try to find an emotional bridge to him.”Echolilia” is an alternate spelling of a more common term, “echolalia,” used in the autistic community to refer to the habit of verbal repetition and copying that is commonly found in autistic kids’ behavior. I liked the idea of it: photography is a form of copying. Kids are a form of repetition. And looking at my kid with photography allowed me to see myself a new
Numen / For Use - Tape Vienna / Odeon (2010)
Artist’s statement:
“The tape concept developed further towards a more sculptural architectonic form. It was practically “found” through the act of chaotic wrapping, where a one-dimensional line (“tape”), slowly turned into two-dimensional plane, which then finally curved into volume. The installation was envisaged as a site specific, parasitical structure invading an arbitrary location. The straight lines of main trajectories are stretched across a given area and these tendons are then wrapped diagonally with layers of elastic tape, giving shape to a complex organic form through a process similar to the emergence of such structures in nature. With the further layering of the tape, the figure becomes more and more corporeal as it picks up on the slow increase of the curvature. The interior of the structure is supple, elastic, and pliable while the form itself is statically perfect, as it ideally follows the trajectories of forces, being literally defined by them. In the moment when the audience enters the installation, what started off as a sculpture seamlessly morphs into architecture.”
All words: Rachel Pafe
At the tender age of three, I decided that my newborn brother was just not a good fit for the family. The solution? I covered him in various stamps and stickers, stuck him in the closet and waited for him to be mailed away. My plan was speedily foiled, but in Wilmer…

