Micael Lope
What if the pursuit of normality is making humanity less capable of imagining its own future? Neuroqueer artist, photographer and futurist Micael Lope challenges the myth of improvement, exposing how the correction of difference creates cognitive monocultures and impoverishes us all.
NG: Much of modern culture is built around self-improvement. Do you think there is a point at which improvement becomes a form of self-erasure?
Micael Lope: I see self-improvement as a negative concept when the dominant society imposes on us only these two forms of improvement: exponential and uniform.
It is harmful when the criterion for improvement is measured only in terms of ‘more’, of the exponential, of growth. In our Western culture of hyper-productivity, there is an obsession with growth for growth's own sake, without knowing why we are growing or why we need, year after year, to become bigger, sell more, produce more… This is poison for people. Nature, for example, shows us that growth can be organic, horizontal, in terms of nutrients, quality, knowledge, relationships… and not always about increase and accumulation.
On the other hand, self-improvement also becomes destructive when the definition of improvement comes from a single dogma: when it is subject to a partial, singular, exclusionary perspective, closed off to diversity and difference. In my case, having been diagnosed with ADHD as a child, I found that the system of self-improvement was based precisely on eliminating my unique and diverse way of seeing, feeling, and creating. In other words, I would have disappeared as a unique and different person.
My art exists to denounce the monopoly and theft of our diverse futures. When ‘improvement’ demands only exponential progress and a uniform approach, it ceases to be individual success and becomes exploitation. Instead, I believe more in a form of self-improvement focused on self-learning. And for this, art is one of the best paths I know.
NG:
ML: We are losing our capacity for the future, quite literally.
Fred Polak wrote that the vitality of a civilisation depends on its ability to generate compelling visions of the future. My research (Neuroqueer Foresight, within the framework of Neuro-Futurism developed by Kai Syng Tan) takes this as its starting point: if visions of the future depend on what we are capable of perceiving in the present, then who perceives and how is a matter of collective survival, not of aesthetic diversity. I wonder what the current visions sold to us by the system are made of, and who has the power to disseminate them.
When a society decides that neurodivergence is a problem to be corrected, it not only marginalises a group of people, but also impoverishes the perceptive apparatus of the entire civilisation and, consequently, erodes our shared capacity to keep designing life, solutions, and everyday existence.
I like to use the example of agricultural monoculture: a field planted with a single variety yields more in the short term, but is vulnerable to any pest, because it has eliminated the genetic diversity that would allow it to adapt. A world built on a single way of perceiving and thinking (the same cognitive frameworks, the same sources, the same profile of leaders…) produces exactly that: monoculture futures. Less resilient, less imaginative, less liveable for everyone. ‘Correcting’ difference today structurally impoverishes our shared future.
NG: We often hear that workplaces, schools, and institutions are becoming more inclusive. In your view, are we genuinely expanding our idea of what it means to be human, or are we simply becoming more sophisticated in asking people to fit existing norms?
ML: Mostly the latter. On the surface, we see diversity policies, empathetic adjustments, inclusive language… It looks like real change, but if we dig deeper, many institutions continue to operate, in essence, based on the same mindset: one of a linear and rigid ‘production line’, where there is only one legitimate way to learn, work or behave, and inclusion consists of helping the person who diverges from the norm to navigate that path with less friction. That is not expanding the human condition; it is a way of masking the fact that the redesign the system actually needs is not taking place. Sohail Inayatullah explores this analysis very effectively in his ‘Causal Layered Analysis’, which helps to identify the myths that keep us trapped in immovable structures, without the ability or desire to change.
We would truly be broadening our understanding of what it means to be human if we redesigned the system so that it no longer depended on a single dominant model. True inclusion does not ask, ‘How can we help this person conform to the norm?’, but rather, ‘Why is this the norm, and who has been left out once it was designed?’ Through my research and my photographs, I am not asking for a chair in the room where the world is designed; I am asking that those chairs be designed for those who do not sit in them the way their designers do.
NG: Your work challenges black-and-white ways of thinking. In what area of society (for example, education, workplaces, healthcare, relationships, or everyday social expectations) do you think humanity most needs to change its expectations of what it means to be "normal," and why?
ML: If we focus on just one area, we will not succeed. We need to view this as a ‘wicked problem’ that affects everything. Rather than specific areas, I am thinking precisely of the opposite: the invisible.
Rob Nixon’s concept of ‘slow violence’, which I explore in my research, refers to processes of degradation that occur without spectacle, and which are not recognised as violence precisely because they do not fit into recognisable binary categories. For example: the invisible mental load on women, emotional illiteracy, the existential loneliness of young people, the gradual disappearance of indigenous cultures and, of course, how neurodivergent people pretend to be ‘normal’ in our day-to-day lives, in order to appear efficient. None of these phenomena is invisible, but they all fall outside the binary concepts we usually use to judge: healthy vs sick, useful vs useless, human vs nature. A true ‘wicked problem’ that crosses all fields.
But I don't want to avoid answering your question about the specific field: for me one essential area is that of materials, matter itself. Because much of the quality of our daily lives depends on our physical relationship with matter — not what we own, but what we touch, feel, and sense. Unlike the examples above, this is something concrete: physical, visible, something everyone already recognises in their everyday life. We attach little importance to the sense of touch, yet it is the most basic and necessary of all. And now it serves as a metaphor for everything else. Hence my work with expired photographic film and old cameras. Our culture continues to measure everything by its performance, and anything that doesn't perform is discarded as 'expired'. This is exactly what happens to neurodivergent people: we are seen as 'broken'. If we can train perception to recognise value in matter that doesn't perform the way we expect, we also train the perception needed to recognise value in minds that don't work the way we expect. We need frameworks that allow us to be valid without having to fit into a binary concept (healthy vs. sick, useful vs. useless). Édouard Glissant called this 'the right to opacity': not everything needs to be categorised or defined within the dominant framework to have the right to exist.
NG: Neurodivergence Gallery imagines a future where human systems are flexible enough to accommodate difference by default, and where the word "neurodivergent" itself may no longer be necessary. What would have to change for us to get there?
ML: Stefano Mancuso’s book The Revolutionary Genius of Plants comes to mind. From it, I learnt that one of Nature’s secrets for continuously generating life and value within its ecosystem lies in decentralisation. As long as the norm in human society is a rigid centre and difference is an exception that must be named in order to be accommodated, we will continue to need the term ‘neurodivergent’ as a signal for help.
For us to move away from a system designed from and for a single perceptual pattern, that pattern would have to cease to be the default starting point. This requires three things: first, to redistribute who does the designing. Not just who is invited into the room, but who draws up the plans; we must question the very design of the chairs themselves. Secondly, treating the plurality of perception as infrastructure, not as decorative diversity: just as an ecosystem needs biodiversity to avoid collapsing in the face of a pest, the human system needs neuroqueer perception to avoid collapsing in the face of what it cannot see. And thirdly, abandoning the myth of correctness: ceasing to imagine a ‘cured’ future and accepting that what is labelled as defective has a right to exist and has its own futures.
When the default system no longer treats difference as an anomaly that needs explaining, the word will become redundant. Not because we have ‘included’ neurodivergence within the norm, but because we will no longer need a single norm against which to measure what deviates from it.
NG: Thank you so much, Micael!