NEWS
Google Honors Stacey Park Milbern
May 19th was the 35th birthday and 1st deathday of Disability Justice activist Stacey Park Milbern. The Google Doodle created by disabled artist Art Twink, in collaboration with Andraéa LaVant and Stacey’s family, celebrates the community spaces Stacey stewarded, like the Disability Justice Culture Club. Elsewhere online, many disabled organizers remembered her work with hashtags like #StaceyTaughtUs and #BobaWithStacey. For more on her enduring impact, see the #StaceyTaughtUs Syllabus compiled by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha and Alice Wong.
Tactility & the Refusals of Ableism
In the New Yorker, Andrew Leland writes about the development of the Protactile movement. The essay reports from the centers of DeafBlind community where a linguistic revolution is happening. In one amazing line from the piece, PT artist-activist John Lee Clark revises the storied Helen Keller water sign “stunt” as a lesson about the nondisabled awe that reinforces communication norms: “If you’re thirsty, say ‘ideology’ or ‘specification’ or ‘liability.’” Instead, PT organizer Jelica Nuccio turns one of Leland’s fingers into the flame of a Bunsen burner that can be adjusted at the knuckles to describe her time working in a lab, communicating experience that is uniquely and exquisitely tactile.
New Works
Variance: Making, Unmaking, and Remaking Disability is on view at the RISD Museum through Oct. 9th.
The 2018 Pulitzer Prize-winning play Cost of Living by Martyna Majok will premiere on Broadway this fall starring disabled artists Katy Sullivan and Gregg Mozgala, who also starred in the show’s 2017 off-Broadway run.
Crippled by Paul David Power was staged at Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille last week.
Accessible Expressions Ohio, “a juried, statewide exhibition created by artists with disabilities,” will be up at Massillon Museum in Massillon, OH from May 28th to July 20th.
The Creative Users Project, in partnership with the Inside Out Film Festival, has released an interactive workbook called “The Film Festival Guide to Access.” It offers “reactive,” “checklist,” and “creative” mindset models for expanding access possibilities.
Emilie Louise Gossiaux’s exhibition Significant Otherness is up at Mother Gallery in Manhattan through June 4th.
The SAD (Sick & Disabled) Zine & Craft Fair is happening through May 28th.
Rest in Power, Maeve McCormack Nolan
Irish artist Maeve McCormack Nolan refused to live quietly as a disabled artist.
Andre’s Law to Stop the Shock in New York
New York State Sen. Jabari Brisport & Am. Harvey Epstein introduced a bill in the state legislature that would stop the state from sending disabled people to the Judge Rotenberg Center, a residential facility in Massachusetts that uses contingent electric shock and other forms of “aversive conditioning” to legally torture disabled children. The bill is named for Andre McCollins, who was hospitalized after surviving torture at the Center. See the Autistic Self Advocacy Network’s press release supporting the bill.
Apple’s New Access Tools
Apple announced that new software features on its Pro or Pro Max model of the iPhone 12 or 13 and newer versions of the iPad Pro 11-inch and 12.9-inch mode are coming later this year. They include automated live captions on any audio content across video calling and streaming content, a buddy controller feature, increased Siri pause time, a pairing tool for iPhone control of an Apple Watch, and a door detection tool.
CALLS
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network is hiring a full-time Programs Associate.
The American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) is hiring a full-time Executive Assistant and a full-time Summer Internship Program Coordinator.
3DPhotoWorks / tactileimages.com is hiring a a full-time Tactile Exhibition Developer.
Caring Across Generations is accepting applications for its Care Fellowship, “a paid, six-month leadership development opportunity for current and former family caregivers, people with disabilities, and older adults who have given and/or received care.”
Realwheels Theatre is hiring a Managing Director.
The California Arts Council is seeking up to 5 partner organizations to regrant $500,000 to individual artists (up to $3,000 awards for new work or professional development) and organizations (up to $5,000 “to include artists with disabilities in their arts programming, or to create/expand access services to increase attendance or enhance the experience of, audiences with disabilities"). See the full grant description.
Applications are open for Round 3 of the British Council Unlimited Micro Awards (up to £2500).
Disability Cultural Centers in Higher Ed
Registration is open for the Symposium on Disability Cultural Centers in Higher Education. The event comes at a key time in the growth and expansion of university-based DCCs. This conference will be hosted by the Disability Cultural Center at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) and conducted virtually via the Zoom platform from Friday, July 8th - Saturday, July 9th, 2022. More info and registration here.
EVENTS
Today, May 23rd at 12PM PT / 3PM ET, The Disability & Intersectionality Summit presents conference organizers Sandy Ho and Dr. Holly Pearson on how the conference's organizing structure, orientation to dialogue and intersectional lens has been a generative container for advancing collective knowledge, practice and networks for disability justice. Register here.
Tomorrow, May 24th, from 7-9pm ET, the Fireweed Collective presents “Food, Access Intimacy, and Community Care with Lydia X. Z. Brown.” Tickets here.
Wednesday, May 25th at 4pm PT, Figure On Diversity and the Longmore Institute on Disability will present “Pose-ability,” an hour and a half of figure drawing, held concurrently with live discussion with the models about their experiences of embodiment and representation. Register here.
Thursday, May 26th and Saturday, May 28th, visually impaired choreographer, iele paloumpis presents In place of catastrophe, a clear night sky at Danspace Project in Manhattan. Both in-person performances will begin at 3pm ET with the house opening at 2pm ET each afternoon for blind and visually impaired audiences. Incorporating vocalization, audio description, scent, and tactile elements, iele paloumpis creates an immersive, multi-sensory landscape that invites blind, visually impaired, and low vision audience members into the poetics of movement, de-centering sight as a primary mode of experiencing dance, prompting nuanced forms of perception. Click the link here for more information about the work, accessibility, and Covid protocols. Among masking and vaccination requirements, there will be a very limited audience capacity. People who are visually impaired, blind, or have low vision are the intended audience for this work and can email seta@danspaceproject.org to make a free reservation for either Thursday, May 26th or Saturday, May 28th.
Saturday, May 28th from 1-2:30pm ET, the Emergent Futures CoLab (EFC) will be hosting Dr. Eliza Chandler, Dr. Carla Rice, and Lisa East for its 6th "Talking Uncertainty" session. The speakers will speculate upon the anti-assimilationist politics of “crip cultural practices” within the disability arts sector in northern Turtle Island (Canada). More here.