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unemployable
by Vanessa Dion Fletcher

I am unemployable because I cant spell and not like other people cant spell, English is my first and only language. I can’t explain it, it’s gotten better but its still there. Spell check and computers are helpfull but they often don’t work. And what about all thoughs times I need to fill out a form by hand. and what about all that extra time I spend using the spell check function of googleing words to compare the serch results with what I’m thinking. Hear are some words I resently could’nt soell in my working life I hope the BOSS dosent notice.

compelation
sole I meant soul
unavalible
vacume
cleen
usaly
spining
Submition
whent

There are people close to me, people who understand. People who take extra time to make corections for me. They do it for a smile, a hug, a thank you. If it was not for these people I would never make it passed the cover letter and resume. “Who can’t spell” “they must be LAZY, SLOPY, and STUPID” I know this is what people think.
acount
second
excelent
perposal
indevigual

Perhaps they are just unable? unable to afford a computer, unable to work extra hard to read there work over and over agin checking duble checking and cross checking. Unable to finde people willing to help them. For all these people simple letters on a page are the reson they are unemployable. Luckaly I’m not really one of them. I’m good at passing. Good at pretending, good at casualy looking at my phone when really I’m franticly spell checking, but there is always a chance I’ll be discoverd. who cant spell?

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Here is a spotlight on another response to our video, UNemployABLE. This submission is by Vanessa Dion Fletcher, a multi-disciplinary Indigenous artist whose work is concerned with the estrangement  from her ancestral languages because of a learning disability.



”I focus on ideas of fluency and understanding in the context of my Potawatomi and
Lenape ancestry. My interests in communication come from my lack of access to my indigenous languages (Potawatomi and Lenape) and as a person living with a learning disability caused by issues with short-term memory. Having no direct access to my ancestral Aboriginal languages has inspired me to explore the notion of communication without words. Through my artwork I am undertaking a process of recording or archiving in a way that is outside of the inescapable colonialism associated with only being able to speak English. My performance and two-dimensional works exist in a tension between action and output, where the definition of art vs. documentation are blurred.”

Vanessa uses her own body to create art that is concerned with language, but operates outside of it. Check out her vimeo page here for more links.


***This submission is a written poem; I know the scope of this particular response is a video call out, but not every response translates well to video. If you have some other kind of response, feel free to share it any way you’d like.