Crip News v.82
#DisabilityTooWhite, Newhouse awards, new works, calls, events. Thanks for being here.
NEWS
7 Years of #DisabilityTooWhite
On May 18, 2016, Vilissa Thompson created the #DisabilityTooWhite hashtag to name the persistent lack of BIPOC in media representations of disability. Soon after, it was trending. It remains an important container for cataloguing the dominant mode of representing disability in terms of whiteness.
A lot has been written about the hashtag, including a significant amount of disability scholarship. You might check out Denarii Grace’s interview with Thompson on the 1-year anniversary of the hashtag and Thompson’s recent reflection on Twitter’s meltdown, including the ongoing racist abuse that activists receive when they identify the interconnections of ableism and white supremacy.
Wynn Newhouse Awards
The awards, established in 2006, offer “grants to artists of excellence who happen to have disabilities.” The 2022 cohort is: Alex Dolores Salerno, Dorian Reid, JJJJJerome Ellis, Sharona Franklin, Stephen Proski, and Timothy Bair. You can find more about each artist here.
New Works
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha convened a roundtable of Disability Justice organizers “to ask where their work, heart, spirit, dreams and fears were at right now” for the Disability Visibility Project.
RA Walden’s access points // or // alternative states of matter(ing) is on view at Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY through November 13.
For Art in America, Emily Watlington writes about the relationship between Claude Monet’s blindness and his impressionist work in a review of Monet/Mitchell: Painting the French Landscape on view at the St. Louis Art Museum.
In a different piece, Watlington also looks at the works made by Georgia O’Keefe after she became blind.
Unfinished Business at Manningham Art Gallery tells the stories of 30 First Nations people with disability in Australia. From May 24 to July 29.
The full line-up is out for Crip Ecstasy, “an immersive nightlife experience that centers accessibility from the ground up” being produced by Octavia Rose Hingle as part of CounterPulse in San Francisco on June 3.
Alicia Loh recently penned a Modern Love essay in The New York Times about dating, sex, and disability.
Barbie has partnered with the National Down Syndrome Society to release a new doll who has Down Syndrome.
Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada, edited by Jessica Watkin, is “a collection of plays and interviews by, for, and about Disabled theatre artists that invites readers into the magical worlds of Disability arts culture.” Out from Playwrights Canada Press.
CALLS
Disabled and Here is seeking queer & trans BIPOC couples for a paid park date photo shoot. More here.
Submissions are open for We Fuck Too, an NSFW zine about sex and disability. More here.
EVENTS
Medical Industrial Complex 101: Organizing For Disability Justice
Thursday, May 25, 8 - 10pm ET, on Zoom
Facilitated by Rise and Mordecai Cohen Ettinger and hosted by Sins Invalid. This workshop defines the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC), reveals its embedded histories in white supremacism and eugenics, and breaks down how it historically and ongoingly generates and amplifies ableism and environmental racism. It will provide participants tools to understand how and why the US healthcare system isn’t really broken at all, it is working exactly as it designed to and how we can resist.
Radical Mental Health First Aide by Oumou Sylla
Sunday, May 28, 3-6pm ET, on Zoom
Sick in Quarters (SiQ) will host Oumou Sylla (@connectwithoumou) for their Radical Mental Health First Aide (RMHFA) workshop! This workshop will teach you some of the skills necessary to support those experiencing a crisis/stressor in a trauma informed, embodied and consent aware way. You will learn de escalation tips and strategies. You will also be offered non carceral resources, tips and tools.
The learning objectives for this workshop include :
1. learn how to use/enact RMHFA ACTION plan
2. understand how systems of oppression and lived experience can impact mental health outcomes and your body-mind
3. be able to identify which Wheel of Consent quadrant you are in and when you personally can/cannot respond to peoples' bid for care
4. define bid for care and the different barriers for intervention
Europe Beyond Access: Disability and Transforming the Cultural Ecosystem
Friday, May 26, 4 - 7pm ET, livestreamed
Europe's largest arts and disability programme Europe Beyond Access presents its final symposium on 26 May 2023. What is the current cultural landscape for European artists, arts professionals and audiences with disabilities in 2023? What recent advances have been made on a national and European basis? How can all cultural professionals, arts organisations, national institutions, and cultural policymakers play a part in transforming the cultural ecosystem in the years to come?