Crip News v.180
New works, other news, calls, and events.
Got something to share?
The next 2 issues of Crip News will be a bit shorter because I will be off the grid to celebrate the return of spring. So if there’s something happening in your disability worlds that you’d like to share, send it my way by replying directly to this email by this Wednesday, April 23rd. If you have something to send after the 23rd, still feel free to send it for when I’m back in action with issue 183 on May 12th.
-kevin
NEWS
New Works
The Remote Access Archive project led by Aimi Hamraie, Kelsie Acton, and the Critical Design Lab will host a launch party tomorrow, April 22 at 12:30pm ET hosted by the NYU Center for Disability Studies. The “crowdsourced, community-based and digital archive” features photos, documents, art, stories, including 45 oral history interviews, about the legacies of disabled connection at a distance. The open captioned and described trailer above explains the many forms of remote access, including 1980s radical crip publishing projects like Ragged Edge and Mouth Magazine that have inspired Crip News.
Against the backdrop of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s attempts to push a mask ban in the New York State budget negotiations, a one-night-only hybrid performance will take place this Thursday, April 24 in New York and online. Wake Up and Smell the C*VID: An Evening Without Eric Bogosian, produced by the transdisciplinary collective HEPA (Holy Erotic Propaganda Arson), is “a ritual, a reckoning, and a refusal” featuring anonymous performers and centering on “a fictional septuagenarian playwright who’s telling the world it’s collapsing while overlooking the collapse of his community—and his own vascular system.”
This Thursday, April 24, ISSUE Project Room (Brooklyn) presents AIR CHANGE PER HOUR by 2025 Artist-In-Residence Anna RG. The commissioned work “interrogates relationships between sound, space, and accessibility in the context of airborne safety.” RG is supported by access dramaturg Alison Kopit, composer Alexa Dexa, engineer Daniel Neumann, guest performers Dave Ruder and Slic, writer Jenna Bitar, and a group of disabled/chronically ill artists performing “Scores for Sick Music.”
The recently released “Abracadabra Fan Edit” by Lady Gaga, directed by choreographer Parris Goebel, features LA-based disabled performers Chelsie Hill, Kaylee Bays, and Joci Scott.
The National Academy of Social Insurance’s cross-sector Task Force on Artificial Intelligence, Emerging Technology & Disability Benefits recently released its Phase One report describing “how SSA is currently using AI in the disability determination process; the risks involved in using AI in the context of disability benefits, as well as the potential opportunities for program administration that AI may provide.”
Vogue’s Emma Specter recently spoke with disabled author Jessica Slice about her new book Unfit Parent: A Disabled Mother Challenges an Inaccessible World.
Joanna Wootten from the Trust for London recently reflected on the participatory grantmaking process to distribute £2.5 million to deaf and disability-led organizations through the Disability Justice Fund.
This year’s EasterSeals Disability Film Challenge ends tomorrow, April 21. You can view the submitted shorts, all thriller and suspense films, ahead of the awards ceremony scheduled for May 8.
Following disabled actress Marissa Bode’s role as Nessarose Thropp in the first Wicked film, Jenna Bainbridge is now 6 weeks into being the first wheelchair using artist to play the character on Broadway.
The Disability Arts Festival at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Center for the Arts is running for the next few weeks with exhibitions, performances, artist talks, panel discussions, including a show by Tony-award winner Ali Stroker this Sunday, April 27.
This weekend from April 24 - April 27, Theatre Passe Muraille and Théâtre Français de Toronto present Cispersonnages en quête d’auteurice from Joe Jack & John Production as part of the #BeyondTO Festival. The play-within-a-play features professional disabled performers “to investigate the ruptures and reflections of a society moving slowly towards the ideals of equity and inclusion.”
ArtMap.ca is a map-based database of “exploratory research on the accessibility of permanent public art” across Canada, now featuring 16 videos “to help create better, more age-friendly, and accessible public art spaces.”
Shellena Heber and Jamie Gibson-Barrows from the Valley Center for the Blind in Fresno, California recently penned an op-ed calling on state, local, and private employers to include disabled people in Gov. Gavin Newsom’s efforts to reimagine California’s workforce.
Oman’s Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology, recently launched a Digital Accessibility Guide that “seeks to assist mobile application and website developers in adopting practices that ensure all users can access and benefit from their applications by implementing digital accessibility principles.”
Chicago’s Cultural Access Collaborative released the recording from a recent webinar about the Arts & Culture Accessibility Self-Assessment project from Open Door Arts.
In Other News…
In his first public address since leaving office, former President Joe Biden spoke at the national conference of Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago last week. He called for disabled Americans to be treated with dignity and discussed the Trump administration’s attacks on Social Security through things like spurious claims of benefits fraud.
Krista Cormier, who was sent to the infamous Judge Rotenberg Center known for using electric shock devices on disabled children, has filed paperwork to run for office in Fall River, Massachusetts to help prevent others from being sent there.
CALLS
Dis Collective, in partnership with Chisenhale Gallery, Gaza Sunbirds, and the University of Westminster, are seeking proposals for workshops, talks, artistic works, topics of conversation, or questions for a symposium on “Reimagining Disability in Gaza.” Proposals should explore “what it means to consider the present and future conditions of disability/debility in the wake of colonial violence across Palestine.” Submit by Friday, May 2 at 17:00 GMT.
Long Covid Justice is participating in this year’s Naming the Lost Memorial by soliciting 1-2 short sentence responses to the prompt “What tethers you to hope? What is your north star, your compass?” Responses will be woven into a large weather-proof quilt that will be hung outside the gates of Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn next month. Submit by Friday, April 25.
EVENTS
Arts + Disability Webinar
Thursday, April 24, 3 - 4pm ET, on Zoom
Join Americans for the Arts for a webinar featuring Sidney Mori Garrett, Kevin Gotkin, Antoine Hunter/Purple Fire Crow, Reveca Torres, and moderated by Heather Flanagan. The event will explore the challenges and opportunities faced by Deaf and disabled artists, creatives, and culture bearers in the creative sector. This session will feature a dynamic conversation about building effective support systems for working artists, emphasizing practical strategies and innovative research. Whether you’re an artist, an arts administrator, or an advocate for inclusion, you will gain valuable insights into the current landscape and discover ways to create more accessible, equitable, and supportive environments where all artists can thrive.
Breathing for Justice: Exploring the Intersections of Long COVID and Disability Justice
Wednesday, April 23, 10am - 12:30pm CT and 1:30 - 3:30pm CT, on Zoom
Join a two-part webinar to explore the intersections of Long COVID and disability justice. Presented by Jacqueline E. Luciano and Sarah Kim-Williams, in collaboration with Dr. Jennifer Brier from the University of Illinois Chicago/History Moves and Strategies for High Impact/Long COVID Justice. This event will provide a day of thought-provoking presentations, panel discussions, and community-driven conversations.
Workshops 4 Gaza: Thinking with Disability and Archives
Thursday, April 24, 5:30 - 7pm ET, online
How are disabled people documented in history? And how do disabled people meet these documents in archives today? This workshop with Gracen Brilmyer from the Disability Archives Lab will investigate different types of archives & archival impacts through two readings: one that illustrates a history of archives created through medical incarceration in Hawaiʻi and one that shows how disabled people experience archives today through first-person accounts. Participants will be provided with an overview of archives and recordkeeping processes and practices and collectively discuss how disabled people can be and have been documented in archives.
Disabled Artist Symposium
Wednesday, April 23, 12 - 1:30pm CT, on Zoom
The fourth annual event at Illinois State University will feature artists Sonia Boué, Xixi Edelsbrunner, Carly Riegger, Ezra Benus, Megan Bent, and Alx Velozo.
Kinetic Light LAB Workshop with Pelenakeke Brown
Friday, April 25, 2 - 4pm ET, on Zoom
drawing scores and connection with Pelenakeke Brown*
A workshop of connecting with each other in the digital space and creating scores to witness. In this creative workshop you will be asked to bring an object to share in the space (an object that has a meaning for you) as a way to connect with each other. Pelenakeke will also have prompts to share that you can choose to engage with either through writing, drawing or movement. Be prepared to reflect and engage in this creative workshop.
*What's a "score?" A score provides a sequence of events to explore within.
Book Launch: All This Safety is Killing Us
Thursday, April 24, 12:30pm ET, on Zoom
Join us for a virtual book launch and discussion of All This Safety is Killing Us with Ronica Mukerjee, Onyinye Alheri, and Leroy Moore, moderated by Pato Hebert.
Leadership Cohort for Artists with Disabilities - 2025 Arts Workers Evening Webinar Series
Starting Wednesday, April 23, 6:30pm PT, on Zoom
This cohort is part of the Arts Workers Evening Webinar Series, a community learning and networking program for arts professionals organized by the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with Arts For LA.