As the artwork will be produced over the duration of the exhibition, will be site-specific and will respond to ideas and issues which are raised as the work is being produced, and in particular since it will be produced in collaboration, I see it as a piece which will ultimately arise from the process of production. I am therefore just putting down what would be my starting points in this statement rather than a vision of a finished piece; only when the collaboration began could we discover common responses, concepts and ideas. This is also important because, although I identify mainly as a disabled visual and performance artist and writer who uses digital technology and forms to a large extent - although I also like working with sound - the fact that I would be working virtually means that the media with which the other artist works would be crucial in determining the actual form of the work.

One of my suggested starting points, though, in terms of themes, would be change/lack of change over time, given that this is the end of the Millennium and that Mount Grace Priory has in some ways survived unchanged over more than half of it, but in the process has been transmuted into something very different. This does suggest to me in turn that it would be interesting to look at time-lapse photography and digital manipulation of imagery as something which might be incorporated. (I am also thinking of digital manipulation because of the imaginative meanings which the site has gained over time, and the fact that the image which I would have of the site would be different to that of the on-site artist who is physically experiencing it.)

I am applying for the residency - to which I would be able to give three-plus days a week - for the following reasons. First, I like the idea of producing work in a natural, beautiful setting while actually being in the city, and the resonance which this has in terms of metaphors and oppositions around the city/countryside. I find it particularly appealing because I spent 1996-7 living and working in Cornwall, while returning regularly to London. At this time I was very struck by the different energies of these settings, which were both very powerful: the one largely natural and empty of people, with a single culture; the other largely artificial and teeming with people, with lots of different cultures. I am also attracted to it because much of my photographic work involves landscapes which have become depopulated over the past few centuries, in particular that of West Wales. (I am attaching a proposal which I produced last year for a digital installation involving landscape and the body.)

Second, I like the resonance between the site's history as a monastery and the process of producing the artwork from the point of view of the off-site artist. It seems to me that there are many parallels between the monk's cell and the artist's studio, and also the monk's focus on a spiritual, virtual world and my focus during the residency on a world which is only virtually real to me, but which appears as a more natural, enjoyable one. The isolation of disability, including the silence which this imposes, also seems to me to resonate with the monks' self-imposed isolation and silence, particularly since both silences are active and meditatory.

Third, I like the idea of working in collaboration with another artist, but via a virtual presence. Although I generally work on my own, I do enjoy collaborative work, and am currently engaged in an ongoing choreographic project, 'Fight', with a non-disabled performer (brief details attached). In this instance, I find the idea of working in collaboration without being physically present particularly interesting. It also resonates with my 'Cyborg' work (see My Not-So-Secret Life as a Cyborg on my website), given that in some ways the process could be viewed as two minds occupying a single physical body.

Lastly, I like the idea of being able to record this collaborative process through the use of our emails etc - I would actually like to keep telephone contact to a minimum, if it was used at all. As part of this record, and also to provide opportunities for the public to engage with the developing artwork, I would want to produce a website at the beginning of the residency where our correspondence could be recorded as the residency progressed, along with images of the developing artwork. This would also provide the opportunity for visitors to both the website and Mount Grace Priory (if we have a computer link on-site) to input their own thoughts, and to ask both artists questions which can be answered and recorded via email and the website. Visitors to Mount Grace Priory, particularly school students etc, could later produce their own electronic artwork and writing - or digital images of conventional artwork - in response to both the Priory and the artwork which could be linked to the website and thus become part of the work itself. After the residency is over, the website would then provide a permanent record of both the process and the art work, which I think would be of wide and continuing interest.

Relevant skills and experience:

I first became interested in working with digital media in 1993. After working as a writer, photographer, filmmaker and cartoonist since the 1980s, I felt under increasing pressure to 'specialise' - digital media allowed me to have my cake and eat it. I also liked the three-dimensional structure of hypermedia, and the way in which it emphasises connectivity.

Equally, as with many disabled artists, computer-based work was more physically accessible. The problem, as always, was financial access, along with physical access to public facilities and their often unsuitable equipment. I believe we need a dedicated digital arts facility in order to develop access expertise, including a recognition that many disabled artists need to work from home and so borrow equipment, and the provision of online support, training and mentoring.

Anyway, using credit, since 1993 I've created three major digital projects. (I still work in individual media too, although increasingly using digital technology, and incorporate classic design principles within my hypermedia work.) First I explored identity on the Net, problematising the belief that you can leave social identities behind. I use the name ju90 to disguise my gender, sexuality, disability and ethnicity, but by following my sig file back to my Home Page, you find that all of these identities are inscribed in the name of my virtual body.

Then I presented my (unfunded) PhD in Communication and Image Studies, Virtual Worlds of Girls - on girl power, girls' school stories and the future of reading in an electronic age - as a website cluster, together with a one-hour video which I edited digitally using Avid. (One of the websites, My Experiences as a Disabled Researcher, records and analyses the research and production process from a disability perspective.)

Cyberia Cafe put the site on 'virtual exhibition' at the end of 1997, leading to reviews in The Times and The Guardian and a number of international hotlinks. Since then it's been distributed by Cinenova, which led to a screening of the film at the Lux last November and coverage on Sky's Download programme. Now I'm seeking funding to combine the two elements of the project on DVD, as originally designed.

The third project arose by accident in 1997, when I was prescribed a spinal brace to be worn continually for the first six months. Being both a fashion victim and latent exhibitionist - and finding that I got too hot if I wore clothing over the brace - I decided to collaborate with a costume designer, Jo Lang, to decorate it and thus to explore disability as performance art. This was not well-received at Falmouth College of Arts, where I was lecturing, ending a brief and controversial academic career!

However, elsewhere the work and its accompanying website, My Not-So-Secret Life as a Cyborg, has been unexpectedly successful. Since January I've been interviewed on a Sky arts programme, The Lounge, and given presentations at the Performance Studies International Conference, the Women's Studies Network Conference and the International Interdisciplinary Conference on Women and Health. Now I'm developing it to explore movement and the extension of my body by technology, and in September I'm going to Helsinki to give a talk at the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art.

One really interesting aspect of working on the web is the range of audiences it attracts, all of whom have different perceptions of the work. The Cyborg site generates email from disabled people who think it's about disability, artists who think it's about body art, medical professionals . . . and orthopaedic fetishists. What's important to me is that it raises awareness of disability politics and spreads Pride - I only have Pride and an identity as a disabled artist because of other people's work, and it's a gift to be shared.

That raises the perennial question of whether I'm an 'artist' or a 'disabled artist'. For me, 'artist' is not a culturally neutral term; it already presupposes a white, non-disabled man. Also, while much of my work is not about disability, my relationship with the world is always mediated by disability. Even when my work is concerned with disability, I don't see why it can't be both disability art and 'mainstream' - disability art already has a very rich tradition, and work arising from the body is prominent in mainstream art at the moment, with disability as a construct having an important and much-neglected role to play there. So I'm very proud to identify and be identified as a disabled artist.

Photo: Bob Jones/Gaze International