NEWS
Some Hell Yeah
Let’s celebrate some good stuff:
The late Disability Justice icon Stacey Park Milbern will be featured on a special run of quarters to be printed by the U.S. Treasury in 2025.
The U.S. Senate confirmed civil rights litigator Karla Gilbride as the General Counsel of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Gilbride is a blind lawyer who previously worked at Disability Rights Advocates.
New proposed legislation in Massachusetts seeks to significantly reduce the time it takes to repair wheelchairs.
The recording (and hopefully soon the transcript!) is out from a panel on Club Culture & Disability that took place at the Krake Festival in Berlin in June.
New Works
An article by Michael Janofsky in The New York Times looks at the ascendance of works by artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities on the art market. As mentioned in the article, SFMOMA has purchased the entire collection of Creative Growth and will exhibit 113 works in an upcoming show.
Britney Spears’ memoir The Woman in Me is out. It tells the stories of the disabled pop icon’s life that were concealed by her unjust conservatorship.
“Bingo for Doing Something You Dread” by Finnegan Shannon was published in the Knottings series by the Syllabus Project.
Sundance published a watchlist of 7 documentaries by disabled artists.
Mari Katayama: Mine and Yours is on view at Foto Arsenal Wien through Nov. 19th.
Falling on Deaf Ears by Julio Sims has been installed as part of the City of West Hollywood’s Art on the Outside series. The project is a free-standing mural depicting individuals using American Sign Language to express: “What if a tree falls and no one hears?” An establishing shot of 4 different Deaf people signing.
A Picture of Health: Jo Spence, a Politics of Disability and Illness is a digital “multi-pronged project” curated by Kenny Fries and Elisabeth Frost.
Aster of Ceremonies by JJJJJerome Ellis is out from Milkweed Editions. The project asks “How can the voices of those who came before—and the stutters that leaven those voices—carry into our present moment, mingling with our own?” An excerpt was published by BOMB.
In What Way Wham? (White Noise and Other Works, 1996-2023) by Joseph Grigely is up at MASS MoCA through March 2024. The show “asks us to think deeply about human communication, about the formal and informal qualities of language, and about what happens when language is rendered inaudible.”
Lachi and Jim LeBrecht released a remix of “Lift Me Up” that debuted earlier this year.
CALLS
Disability Justice organizer Lilac Vylette Maldonado needs a wheelchair-accessible van. Donate here.
Trans and disabled artist Robin Steel needs funds to remain housed. Donate here.
The family of performer and scholar Yesenia Fernandez-Selier needs help with the cost of her funeral services. Donate here.
Voices Embodied has announced an open call for the 5th iteration of the Voices Embodied Project taking place at The Design Museum of Chicago. More here.
The Blue Description Project is an audio description and captioning project —produced by Crip* in collaboration with Voices in the Gallery — that engages Derek Jarman's Blue (1993) via expanded and critical accessibility. You can help in creating visual descriptions of Blue that attempt to convey, express, engage, respond, evoke, articulate, replicate, translate, transmogrify, channel, or transcend what Blue is/was/could be... Submit your descriptions here.
Arts Access Aotearoa is accepting applications for its $10,000 2023 Fellowships. Apply here.
Activating Change, an organization that works “to end victimization, criminalization, incarceration, and institutionalization of people with disabilities and Deaf people,” is hiring an Access Coordinator, Senior Development Associate, and Senior Program Associate. Apply here.
The Holding Space Archive is starting a Crip Book Club. More info here.
The Kennedy Center’s VSA Playwright Discovery Program is accepting ten-minute scripts from young writers with disabilities (generally, ages 14-19). More here.
EVENTS
Perspectives on Care Work - with Anne Waak and Marah Rikli
Thursday, Nov. 2, 6:30 - 8:30pm CET, in-person at Migros Museum (Zurich)
In this reading with conversation between the author Anne Waak and the journalist Marah Rikli, questions around care work and inclusion will be put into the room and discussed and debated based on Anne Waak's book Kümmern und Kämpfen as well as texts by Marah Rikli. The conversation will be moderated by Fabienne Schellenberg (Director Debate House Charlemagne).
Accessibility Affirmation Workshop
Sunday, Nov. 5, 11am - 1pm PT, on Zoom and in-person at Dogpatch Hub (San Francisco)
Access Desires + Affirmations = ACCESSIBILITY. Affirm your access desires! Please join moira williams and juliet johnson for a disability centered 2 hour virtual and in person workshop of writing, drawing, chatting, collaging and sharing your accessibility needs around “access intimacies”* and ecological intimacies that support us as ecological beings. We will use whiteboard and collage to make risograph printed access desire affirmation posters! While holding space and conversations around access intimacies and ecological intimacies we will also move towards breaking up binaries of natural/ unnatural and between built environment/environment to expand, support and ferment accessibility needs, words, and ways into our accessible eco crip futures! For in person participants, materials are provided and you and your devices are welcome to join in on the Zoom whiteboard too!
* “access intimacies” coined by Mia Mingus