Crip News v.175
A dispatch from SXSW, calls, events, and intensities.
NEWS
A Dispatch from SXSW
Last week I traveled to Austin, Texas for South by Southwest (SXSW), an annual convergence of festivals that began with a music program in 1987.
I was there to speak on a panel called “Cash for All: Reimagining the Social Safety Net,” organized by OpenResearch. It was an honor to be able to talk about the importance of disability in the movement for unconditional cash transfers alongside leading researchers and organizers Karina Dotson, Khea Pollard, and Elizabeh Rhodes.
As more and more people come to understand the power of cash, it’s rarely recognized that Nixon-era support for a universal basic income gave rise to the disability-specific cash program Supplemental Security Income (SSI). And yet today, highly conditional and outdated restrictions on SSI eligibility are good examples of why many disabled people can’t afford to participate in today’s guaranteed income programs.
You can learn more about these issues in my recently released report “Crip Coin: Disability, Public Benefits, and Guaranteed Income.” And the audio recording of our SXSW panel is now available here.
Other Highlights
It was deeply moving to be in the audience with 175 students from the Texas School for the Deaf for a screening of Nyle DiMarco and Davis Guggenheim’s docummentary Deaf President Now!, coming to Apple TV+ in May.
Disability culture was elsewhere on the program in sessions about Kinetic Light’s “accessible VR experience” called “Territory,” Tiffany Yu’s Anti-Ableist Manifesto, UK-based advocacy on ways cultural institutions can support disabled artists, and more.
I also loved ASSEMBLY, a documentary about the making of artist Rashaad Newsome’s 2022 exhibition of the same name at the Park Avenue Armory.
Lowlights
It was a bit surreal being an anti-capitalist in the middle of something so spectacularly capitalist that I wrote in my notes, “Extinction burst?”
To see just how full-throttle evil it could get, I attended one of the sessions sponsored by Eli Lilly, a fraudster corporation that once held the title for the largest criminal fine for an individual corporation ever imposed in the U.S. The session was called “AI Big Bets in Health Care,” featuring Lilly’s Executive Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer Diogo Rau and Google’s Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo. I sat in the last row near an Austin police officer.
There were some notable moments, like when…
Rau described how Lilly is using AI to design new proteins and manage the massive numbers of photos that are necessary in manufacturing sites to ensure safety of its production of injectables like GLP-1s. And later when he expressed optimism that “we can cure chronic disease” with “regenerative medicine.”
DeSalvo, a former regulator, mentioned the FDA is eager to understand how AI can help manage the paperwork in its review processes, after Rau described Lilly’s “semi send-off parties” where employees would celebrate the departure of semi trucks delivering enormous amounts of review-related paper to the FDA.
…but mostly the session was extremely boring. When DeSalvo said she wants people to know that “AI models are not perfect,” it sunk in how the pharmaceutical industry induces its protective depoliticization through nonspeak. The boringness was a close-up on how passivity produces the consolidation of power over life.
If there were more time, I would have asked Rau if all his excitement for AI to optimize Lilly’s business would mean they could save enough money to make good on their broken promise to cap the cost of insulin so that 1 in 6 Americans don’t have to ration their life-saving medicine. Probably not.
CALLS
Project LETS is seeking Peer Support Advocates and Frontline Crisis Responders.
The Autistic Self-Advocacy Network’s new Proxy Caller Project is open for requests and volunteers for its system to let U.S. constituents who can’t call their political representatives due to disability request that a volunteer call on their behalf.
Vanessa Hernández Cruz and Selwa Sweidan are seeking 2 - 4 Los Angeles based Disabled collaborators interested in Crip aesthetics and Crip Joy for their Movement + Crip Haptics Mini-Lab starting next week. Apply by March 20.
Italian disabled artist Chiara Bersani has issued an open call for performers with physical and motor disabilities for a tour of a new performance work, Michel: The Animals I Am.
EVENTS
Beyond Function: How Alt Text Becomes Art with Finnegan Shannon
Thursday, March 20, 2pm ET, on Zoom
Join us for an informative discussion in the Tilting the Lens webinar series, hosted by Sinéad Burke and featuring the innovative artist Finnegan Shannon. Known for their pioneering work in forms of access, Finnegan's projects include "Alt Text as Poetry," a collaboration with Bojana Coklyat that highlights the expressive power of image descriptions. They also created a line of exhibition-space furniture titled "Do You Want Us Here or Not," which includes benches and cushions, and the provocative exhibition "Don’t Mind If I Do," using a conveyor belt to explore themes of rest and play.
CripTech Creativity: Rethinking Access through Art and Technology
Friday, March 21, 9:30am - 7pm CET, in-person at Casa Zuccari (Florence, Italy) and on Zoom
Organized by Virginia Marano and the Lise Meitner Group "Coded Objects,” this workshop brings together different thinkers and practitioners who challenge conventional narratives of accessibility, and instead explore how disabled subjectivities generate new forms of embodied knowledge. Extending access generates friction and renegotiates spaces; it disrupts norms and resists assimilation. By examining these intersections in a context of architecture and art history—disciplines that have long been dedicated to the knowledge residing in perception but also perpetuated their visual and normative primacy—the workshop opens up new ways of thinking about access, agency, and the politics of space, all under the premise that accessibility is not simply a question of inclusion but a generative process for reimagining the material-discursive world.
Circle O Houston Met Dance Open Class
Saturday, March 22, 2 - 5pm CT, in-person at Houston Met.
This is a movement class that centers disability experience as valuable source material for creation. This class is open for all disabled people and their non-disabled accomplices, including and not limited to those that identify as blind, visually impaired, Deaf/deaf, chronically ill, crip, or Mad. We are able to accommodate up to 25 students. The workshop will be led by Kayla Hamilton, Founder/Artistic Director of Circle O.
Technoableism Scavenger Hunt
Wednesday, March 19, 12pm ET, in-person at Georgetown University (Washington, DC)
Join the Georgetown DCC and Disability Studies as we host Drs. Ashley Shew and Elizabeth McLain for a Technoableism Scavenger Hunt! Specializing in disability studies and technology ethics, Shew’s recent book Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement (2023) and forthcoming open textbook, co-edited with Hanna Herdegen, Technology and Disability, both focus on the stories disabled people tell about technologies that people do not always expect.
All Day All Night: A Conversation with Seth Kim-Cohen, Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield, Park McArthur, and Mara Mills
Friday, March 21, 4 - 5:30pm, on Zoom and in-person at the Whitney Museum (NYC)
This program brings together artists and writers Seth Kim-Cohen, Jeffrey Yasuo Mansfield, Park McArthur, and Mara Mills for a conversation on the occasion of Christine Sun Kim: All Day All Night. As contributors to the exhibition catalogue, they will share their responses to Christine Sun Kim’s work and engage in a conversation about sign language aesthetics, mediumship, competing temporalities, and Deaf methods.
Disability Justice Week at Cal State East Bay
Various times and locations, including Zoom
The Center for Disability Justice Research, Health Equity, Education, and Creativity is hosting free and open programming starting today through Thursday.
Kinetic Light LAB March Events
Come be in community with us this March! We're hosting a Hangout on Friday, March 21, 2-3:30 pm ET and an Incredibly Chill Art Share on Friday, March 28, 2-4 pm ET -- both on Zoom! You are welcome to attend one or both, an entire event or just a portion! You can also let us know on this form if you'd like to present at the Art Share.
Last week, former talk show host Wendy Williams called into The View to advocate for the end of her abusive guardianship. In Vanity Fair, Dan Adler puts Wendy’s story into the context of a “post-#FreeBritney world.”
The ACLU successfully got the National Endowment for the Arts to drop an anti-trans grant requirement, but that doesn’t mean the agency won’t effectively enforce the Trump administration’s “gender ideology” mandate.
Blessed be reporters like Julia Métraux at Mother Jones who give us high-quality journalism on the toughest and often-ignored disability issues.