hope you took labor day yesterday to celebrate worker power and our “hot labor summer.” this week brings us many new times - returning to school, to screens, to applications. sending y’all good vibes for keeping things slow and steady.
-kevin
NEWS
New Works
In the Danspace Project Journal, artists Yo-Yo Lin & devynn emory discuss the ways their lives and practices are brought together through illness, healing, and artistry. Also published as audio.
Beholding Relations: An Exploration of Disability, Oppression and Liberation, curated by David Ruebain & Yates Norton, is a digital exhibition at Unit London that explores how “a commitment to ever more caring, expansive and intricate ways of relating can form the basis of nourishing relationships and, at the risk of hyperbole, ultimately of a more sustainable world.” Featuring work by Alec Finlay, Aminder Virdee, Gabriele Gervickaite, Katherine Sherwood, Leah Clements, Milda Januseviciute, Nat Decker, RA Walden, Resting Museum, Robert Andy Coombs, Sophie Hoyle, Stephen Dwoskin, & Zoe Partington. Up through Sept. 30th.
Yaa Addae, curator of the Open Heart Clinic, reflects on the project’s platforming for “envisioning alternative care infrastructures that center the systemically underloved” on the Substack of The Free Black Women’s Library.
Birth. Sparkle. Death. by Hannah Parke is “a stand up/cabaret/video installation mash-up diving down the kaleidoscopic, surrealist rabbit hole of the stages grief that come with the life altering diagnosis.” Running at the Philly Fringe Fest through Sept. 18th.
For The 19th, reporter Candice Norword writes about how contemporary abolitionists can learn from the decarceration efforts that led to the closure of psychiatric hospitals and large facilities that warehoused people with disabilities.
Psychologist Catalina Lawsin calls for sex ed for disabled people in USA Today.
Blind writer Allison Nastoff considers the intersections of Christian nationalism and ableism for Red Letter Christians.
Disabled Pakistani organizer Abia Akram explains how Disability Justice is key to achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for Common Dreams.
Spark LIVE, a multi-sensory theatre production emerging from a digital work about a disabled teenager by Glass Ceiling Arts Collective, is touring Auckland and centering audiences with “Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities.”
In Other News…
While student loan repayments begin again in the U.S., borrowers who are unable to maintain “substantial, gainful employment due to a medical condition” can qualify to have their entire federal student loan balance eliminated through the Total and Permanent Disability discharge program. Adam Minksy has more information in his article for Forbes.
In an open letter to the Board of Directors of The National Federation of the Blind, LGBTQ+ blind individuals and their allies call on the organization to break its pattern of marginalizing queer blind people, including its decision to hold conventions in states that have hostile and discriminatory legislation.
Disabled artist Jenni-Juulia Wallinheimo-Heimonen will represent Finland at the 2024 Venice Biennale. And she believes her work in “political disability arts” would not have been selected through an open call process, which many demanded after the nation’s commissioning body opted for a closed selection process.
Deaf and disabled leaders recently met in a week-long residency to discuss the future of disability arts in Australia. Also, the national arts program called Revive that has promised $5 million for disability arts, has launched the organization responsible for carrying out the plan.
CALLS
Artists Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa are raising money to save their renowned exhibition Black Power Naps. Donate here.
Dance/NYC has announced the third iteration of its Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship Program (DDA Fellowship), funded by the Ford Foundation. The program will award 40 grants of $1,500-$4,000. Deadline Oct. 10th.
Unlimited is accepting applications for its UK and International Open Awards, which will offer £600,000 in commissions. Deadline: Oct. 2nd. More here.
The Victorian Government in Australia will offer $50,000-$100,000 for “projects that enhance physical, sensory or digital access.” Deadline: Oct. 17th. More here.
CO/LAB Theater Group is hiring a part-time Program Manager and a full-time Director of Programs. Applications are due Sept. 17th. More here.
EVENTS
Understanding and Transforming the Medical Industial Complex: Part One
Thursdays beginning Sept. 28th, 8 - 10pm ET, on Zoom
The pandemic is not over. Our healthcare system is not merely broken; it is functioning as intended, to control, punish, and profit, not to heal. Rising ableism, the normalization of eugenics, and mounting attacks on bodily autonomy and reproductive rights define our times. All these are carried out by the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). The Health Justice Commons believes we need to build a movement to disrupt and transform the Medical Industrial Complex and create alternatives to the current healthcare system for our futures to be possible. To do these we need to unite disabled, sick, neurodivergent, and chronically ill people, with healthcare workers, healers, and artists and activists from all movements and backgrounds.
Now more than ever, we need just healthcare that truly cares for our bodies, communities, and the planet. This can only come to be by understanding the Medical Industrial Complex’s white supremacist, anti-Black, carceral and ableist roots, its ongoing, oppressive workings, and building our communities’ capacity to create alternatives. HJC’s Fall Political Ed Series offers the learning and the community space to incubate this understanding and capacity while nurturing new connections to build our power. Are you ready to learn, be in community, and take action together? Please join other disabled people, healers, healthcare workers, med and nursing students, climate justice warriors and others working for justice.
Fireweed Collective’s Support Groups
Various times and dates, online
Fireweed Collective Groups are virtual spaces where folks can connect, and offer mutual aid with others who share similar life experiences and struggles. Groups run for a month. They meet once a week online for 60 to 90 minutes. All support groups are sliding scale and are facilitated by members of Fireweed Collective. Your donations allow us to offer services at a low cost.
Art & Mind: I Know Who I Am! Journeys of Women of Color & Femme Expressing Creatives.
Thursday, Oct. 5th, 6:30 - 8:30m ET, on Zoom
“Art & Mind” is a FREE virtual Zoom Covid-focused disability-accessible film event supporting & compensating marginalized women and marginalized genders to share their journeys. This event also features speakers such as therapists and activists to raise awareness about social issues these creatives face. Founded by Black disabled mother-daughter duo Sista Creatives Rising, and sponsored by Brain Arts Org & Dancing Queerly Boston. This event is showcasing five BIWOC & Femme artists in a documentary of the same name. Additionally a documentary about Co-founder Claire Jones will feature her journey through cancer, titled, "A 50% Chance of Paralysis: Get Ahead of Life Before Life Gets Ahead of You!" Fundraising for the Sistas Uprising Fund, where 100% of proceeds become grants for WOC & femme-expressing creatives of color. View our trailer, get free tickets and/or donate. http://givebutter.com/IKnowWhoIAm