About

San Alland Bio (they/them or just ‘San’)

A close-up of San outside wearing a white N95 mask, black t-shirt and grey jacket. San is white with long reddish-brown hair, smiling with crinkly blue eyes at someone off-camera. Green trees with sun-dappled leaves blur behind them.
Photo by Riley Skelton.

San is a writer, performer and interdisciplinary artist shielding in Glasgow. San explores a wide variety of media, from avant-garde poetry and multimedia essays, to audio experiments, film-stories and documentaries. It’s become rare for San to participate in public arts production because all institutions, and most galleries and publishers, do not meaningfully engage with disabled and ill people.

San’s work examines queer crip (or ‘qrip’, spelled with a q) audiences and languages, anti-eugenics, political mourning, and archive. For over 25 years, San has reveled in exciting cross-media collaboration and formal experimentation, working extensively in Tkaronto, Edinburgh, Glasgow, the UK, Turtle Island and Europe.

San specialises in integrated access, and is committed to remote and non-time-based participation. They strive towards disability justice, which includes clean air and a free Palestine.

Recent Work

San has an essay “A Manifesto of Manifestos” in the Winter 2024 issue of Wordgathering, and a poem on The Passion Project Mixtape. Earlier this year, San collaborated with Emilia Beatriz and Etzali Hernández on a poetic audio commission for Rhubaba Gallery, Grief Offerings: (End of) Life Wishes.

For San’s 2021-23 Locked World Commission, they created a multimedia essay with creatively-embedded access, “Writing From the Groin”. Excerpts of the project’s BSL/AD video were screened during San’s talk at Wysling Arts Centre’s online event, Temporalities of Access.

Glasgow International 2021 featured the outdoor filming of San’s poem, “Audience”, with British Sign Language performance from Bea Webster. That same year, Disability Arts Online awarded San and Etzali Hernández a commission to create Sore Loser, a paper and digital zine on queer disabled grief. The duo also produced a podcast on memorialisation.

An outdoor reading on a ramped concrete sculpture in front of grass and concrete graving docks. Left is San Alland, wearing jeans, a black shirt and jacket, red boots and a grey cap, holding a copy of the book Stairs and Whispers. San is seated on the ramp in front of a mic. To their right is Bea Webster, seated a metre away further up the ramp. Bea is using BSL and is behind a small amplifier. San and Bea look at each other. San is white and Bea is Scottish-Thai with long dark hair. A red polka dot facemask hangs from the mic stand. Captions read "I am your audience. Remember me, I am yours."
San Alland and Bea Webster, Glasgow International, 2021.

In 2020, Kenny Fries commissioned San to contribute an essay on disabled queer and trans filmmakers to Disability Futures in the Arts. San was also a guest editor at Disability Arts Online. In response to the inequalities of the pandemic response, San curated the online arts event, A Wake: on mourning, marking, and moving forward together with joy.

Proper Tales Press celebrated its 40th anniverary with the 2019 publication of San’s second chapbook of stories, Anything Not Measurable Is Not Real. Canada Council for the Arts awarded San a 2020 Digital Originals grant to create an audiobook and film-stories of the chapbook.

Writing History

A cut-up poem from websites of literary agents and publishers. Text is pasted in white strips on a black background. It reads as follows if blended together: unable to consider poetry, We are not considering poetry manuscripts at this time. We don't represent poetry, What not to submit please note that we are currently not taking on poetry We do not represent poetry Please note we do not accept self-help, poetry or What not to submit Our poetry list is also full for the foreseeable future We don't represent picture books, poetry or dramatic works Please don't send me children's books (picture books, middle grade or young adult), fantasy, poetry collections, or non-fic We will not be accepting poetry submission until further notice. WHAT WE DON'T REPRESENT We don't represent authors of plays, poetry or We are NOT at this time accepting poetry Please don't send us poetry not accepting poetry
Published in Zarf, 2020. A cut-up poem from websites of literary agents and publishers. Title: “We especially welcome submissions from underrepresented writers, including those who are POC, LGBT, have disabilities, or come from a difficult socio-economic background.”

Since 1998, San’s poems, essays and short stories have featured in international anthologies and magazines. San has published three poetry collections and two fiction chapbooks. Their poetic collaboration with dictation software, Naturally Speaking (espresso, Toronto) co-won the 2013 bpNichol award. Blissful Times (book*hug, Toronto) was widely reviewed as a groundbreaking digital hybrid.

San co-edited the multimedia UK anthology Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches, Rugby). San’s poems appear widely, including in Zarf, make/shift, Literary Review of Canada, Anything That Moves, Feral Feminisms, Why Poetry? (Verve, Birmingham), Red Light: Superheroes, Saints and Sluts (Arsenal Pulp, Vancouver), and Catechism: Poems for Pussy Riot (English PEN, London).

Story publications include Protest! and Thought X (Comma Press, Manchester), We Were Always Here (404 Ink, Edinburgh), British Council, Gutter, Extra Teeth, and The Deaf Poets Society. San’s essays have been commissioned for Disability Futures in the Arts, Wordgathering, Disability Arts Online, The Bi-ble Volume 2 (Monstrous Regiment, Edinburgh), Imaginary Safe House (Frog Hollow Press / HA&L, Victoria/Hamilton), and The State of the Arts (Coach House Books, Toronto).

Visit Books or Portfolio for more info, and San’s SoundCloud for audio recordings.

Performance History

For three decades, San performed original works at international festivals, theatres and galleries. San’s creations have been produced by Soho Theatre (London), Oxford Playhouse, Homotopia (Liverpool), The Arches (Glasgow), Waterspout Theatre (Bermuda), New York International Fringe Festival, The Scream Festival (Toronto) and MayWorks Festival of Working People & the Arts (Toronto).

As a 2016 Anatomy Arts Associate Artist, San created an onstage/onscreen performance of their short story with film, Equivalence. Edinburgh Filmhouse and Transpose (Barbican, London) also presented the story-film-play, which featured integrated audio description, captions and BSL. Equivalence follows on from San’s multimedia work on genderqueer and disabled poetics in their Toronto shows Body Geometry (The Theatre Centre, 2002) and Strange Attractors (Hysteria Festival/Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, 2004)

San is internationally known for founding poetry-music-film collectives Zorras, Stumblin’ Tongues and They They Theys. Check out San’s YouTube for performances.

Film & Photography History

A live theatre performance. On the far left, captions are projected onto the wall. The say "Shit. Can any of you do a German accent?" To the right of the captions is a large video projection of nine people holding colourful chapbooks. A Black woman is speaking. An onscreen caption reads: "You are in an elevator." Below the screen and looking up at it is a Chineses BSL interpreter. She has long hair, is dressed like a mermaid and sits on a table. To her right is San, who has their back to the camera as they talk to the screen. They have short brown hair and lean on a black cane.
San Alland in Equivalence, with Lisa Li as Mermaid/BSL Interpreter, 2016.

San directs and edits documentaries, film-poems and strange hybrids. Their shorts have featured at such places as Tate Modern (London), Bristol Museum and Art Galleries, vii Bienal de Arte Contemporáneo (Madrid), Entr’2 Marches (Cannes), Entzaubert Queer DIY Film Festival (Berlin), Queer City Cinema (Regina), TransLations (Seattle), Malmo Queer Film Festival, San Francisco Transgender Film Festival, Los Angeles Transgender Film Festival, Toronto Bi+ Arts Festival, and Macrobert Arts Centre (Stirling).

In 2016, Brighton’s Viewfinder Project commissioned San to co-create five short documentaries about disabled and Deaf UK artists. LGBT History Month Scotland awarded San a 2013 Cultural Commission, for which San mentored five artists in The Queer and Trans Deaf and Disabled Film Project, and produced the I’m Not Your Inspiration film series.

San has shown photography and video at Glasgow Gallery of Modern Art, Midlands Arts Centre (Birmingham), Gallery 44 (Toronto), Gallery 1313 (Toronto), Contact Festival / Pteros Gallery (Toronto) and Schwules Museum (Berlin). With Ajamu X, San was an inaugural artist-in-residence at Glasgow’s Trongate 103.

Visit Films for samples of San’s work.

Curation History

A photograph of multi-disciplinary artist Sandra Alland from above their bare chest. They are white with short brown hair. San is tying a polka dot green and black tie while wearing wrist supports. San sits or stands against a backdrop of handwritten words that are somewhat cut off. Some of the words include: Strange how there's no pain when I'm inside her. I would fill in every ridiculous questionnaire, I'd type a million emails, open 300 bottles of wine, tear into a... condom wrappers, zip up the dresses of... army of models, roll enough cigarettes... life, click all pop-ups, use tripods and... fasten all the buttons of all the chidren... world, hold the Bilbe until I'd turn... pop all my pain pill sfrom their...
Self-portrait, ShOUT!, GoMA, 2009.

San curates film, visual art and multimedia performance. They are a consultant, lecturer and workshop leader on interdisciplinary art and meaningful disabled access. Over the past 10 years, San has worked collaboratively with artists to make their work more accessible, particularly through audio description and captioning. 

In 2009, San co-founded Scotland’s accessible queer and trans art project, Cachín Cachán Cachunga! San has curated LGBTQIA+ Disabled and Deaf Pride, the SEEP series of visual art exhibitions, and the film-performance sensation Who’s Your Dandy? They also organised a zine fair and multimedia event, Faceplant, for Edinburgh’s Forest Café in 2010 and 2011.

San’s Toronto multimedia curation includes The Queen West Art Crawl, The Theatre Centre, The Salvador Allende Arts Festival, The League of Canadian Poets, and Toronto Women’s Bookstore. San has presented at Stirling University, Wysling Arts Centre, This Way Up, and John Hansard Gallery. They have created accessible film programmes for BFI Flare (London), Glasgow Short Film Festival / Oska Bright (Brighton), SICK! Festival (Manchester) and Edinburgh Filmhouse / Film Hub Scotland.