Crip News v.186
New works, other news, calls, events, and UK benefits cuts.
NEWS
New Works
Design and Disability opens this Saturday, June 7, at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington (London). The survey exhibition features 170 objects “spanning design, art, architecture, fashion, and photography” from the 1940s to today to showcase “the radical contributions of Disabled, Deaf, and neurodivergent people to contemporary design and culture.” This Thursday, June 5, curators Natalie Kane and Reuben Liebeskind will give a talk (Museum members only) to kick off the early program of the show’s events. The exhibition will be up until February 15, 2026.
Violet Afflek, daughter of Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner, recently penned a moving essay called “A Chronically Ill Earth: COVID Organizing as a Model Climate Response in Los Angeles” in The Yale Global Health Review. “In the same way that COVID-conscious and disabled people celebrate each chain of transmission broken,” she writes, “climate scientists recognize that each degree of warming we avoid will be a victory.”
Heather Schulte with Stitching the Situation (2020-). Photo by The Sick Times reporter Kelsey Simpkins. And Still It Remains: A Long Covid Exhibition is on view at the Artworks Center for Contemporary Art (Loveland, Colorado) through June 28. The show features work by Angela Bandurka, Rachel Ivy Clarke, Karin Dove, Rose Friedman, Sally Hartshorn, Kelly Meiners, Nyx Mir, Kodandi Nithyananda, Leeann Rose, Tanja Schlosser, Heather Schulte, Lisa Sheets, AnaKacia Shifflet, Margo Spellman, and Hanah Yendler. The artists will give talks during a remote event next week on June 14.
For the CBC, disabled composer, performer and comedian James Hamilton traces a “cripped sound” through the music of Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Toni Iommi of Black Sabbath, Sean Forbes, Carmen Papalia, Stephanie Orlando, How the Light Gets In, and Ellie Griffith.
Weaning by Olivia Dreisinger is up at MAINFRAME, The New Gallery’s online platform for web-based works. The works use “a photogrammetric technique to produce a three-dimensional, distorted, painterly quality” to images that document scenes of disabled breastfeeding.
For South China Morning Post’s PostMag, Ysabelle Cheung interviews painter and performance artist Doris Ng Toi-yee about her participatory crip art practices.
For Channel News Asia, Annie Tan profiles Audrey Perera and her work on the True Colours Festival that has led a strong representation of disabled artists in the cast of the recently concluded Singapore International Festival of Arts.
For Tech Policy Press, Ariana Aboulafia and Nina DiSalvo explain how surveillance pricing, “a method of setting prices based not on market forces, but on private personal data that companies collect and purchase,” may radically change the cost of essential medical supplies for disabled people.
How to Care, a short film directed by Brennan Vance, recently premiered at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival. The documentary follows disabled artist Dan Stallsworth and the fight for living wages for his care workers including Dolphine Momanyi (above) and Sam Subah.
Canadian disability broadcaster Accessible Media Inc. (AMI) recently premiered Crip Trip, a TV series that follows Daniel Ennett and his “best friend turned caregiver” Frederick Kroetsch on a road trip from Edmonton to NYC.
Prizewinning disabled author Saou Ichikawa was recently profiled in The New York Times.
Disability Culture Lab has launched its Pride and Fashion Against Fascism collections, featuring merch by Jen D. Rafanan, Bob Bland, and Jen White-Johnson.
In Other News…
Last week, the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) sued the White House for abruptly halting ASL interpretation of press briefings in January 2025.
Harvard University did not host or fund graduation celebrations for student affinity groups this year amid its battle with the Trump administration, but it did pay for the services of an ASL interpreter for a disability affinity group’s commencement ceremony, stipulating that graduating students could not cross a stage, and organizers couldn’t read out the names of the students during the event.
The Lexington School for the Deaf (Queens, NYC) recently established an endowment fund for young Deaf filmmakers named after alumnus Nyle DiMarco.
Ireland recently awarded €2.4 million to 14 projects under the Disability and Participation Awareness Fund.
CALLS
HEARD is calling on organizations and community members to sign a statement of solidarity about police department ASL initiatives and Deaf “sensitivity” trainings.
Cripping Breath, based at the University of Sheffield (UK), is recruiting three disabled, chronically ill, and ventilated contemporary artists who have lived experience of chronic respiratory conditions, for a paid collaborative residency to co-produce new works for exhibition. Apply by July 10 at 5pm BST.
EVENTS
ADA at 35: Navigating Accessibility in the Hybrid Interior
TODAY, June 2, 6 - 8pm ET, in-person at the Center for Architecture (NYC) and on Zoom
This discussion and demonstration will explore the infrastructure of a successful hybrid interior, including physical and virtual components such as acoustics, furniture shapes, sound and video equipment. It will address access for multiple types of disabilities within one hybrid space, translation technologies, virtual reality meeting rooms and augmented reality interiors, as well as future implications of Immersive Interiors—the fusion of digital, virtual, and physical interior spaces. Featuring Jacob (Jake) deHahn, Mara Mills, David Serlin, Emily Lim Rogers, and moderated by Barbara Laskey Weinreich.
Cripping Kink Workshop Series
Thursdays through June 24, 7 - 9pm ET, online
The Toolbox Collective (NYC) is hosting a pride month celebration of disability and kink, featuring workshops by Noor Tariq, Carta Monir, Mae and June, and Samirah Conklin.High Concept Labs Benefit Performance
Tuesday, June 3, 6 - 9:30pm CT, in-person at Links Hall (Chicago)
Support High Concept Labs for an evening of fundraising with experimental, multi-disciplinary, and lovely genre-defying artistic projects, rounded out with delicious food and a silent auction. Artists include Christopher Knowlton, Carissa Lee, Alexander Stewart, Tirtza Even, Tom Lee, Andy Slater, Helen Lee, as well as special guest Spectralina, the audio-visual performance project of Dan Bitney and Selina Trepp.
Labs for Liberation Summer Institute Lecture Series
Mondays, June 9 - July 14, 11am - 1pm ET, on Zoom
The Labs for Liberation Summer Institute on Disability and Design offers a collaborative, generative, theoretically-rigorous, and lab-based space for integrating accessibility theory and practice. Our goal is to create new conversations between critical disability studies and Black feminist disability approaches to design and technology. The Institute will host six lectures and panel discussions throughout June and July featuring Moya Bailey and Aimi Hamraie, Ashley Shew and Damien Patrick Williams, Imani Barbarin and Sara Hendren, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Jeff Kasper and Sasha Costanza-Chock, students of the design labs, Alex Hanna and Bess Williamson. These lectures are open to the public and require registration.
The UK government is planning devastating cuts to disability benefits, including new eligibility restrictions for the Personal Independence Payment (PIP) and the health-related component of Universal Credit.
3.2 million households are estimated to lose an average of £1,720 a year and 250,000 people could be pushed into relative poverty. The changes will disproportionately affect people who deal with chronic pain, including back pain and arthritis. In an open letter as part of the #TakingThePIP campaign, over 100 disabled celebrities write: "For us, Pip is not a benefit - it is access to life.”
Meanwhile, the US-based contractor Maximus that is the largest provider of the “functional assessments” that determine benefit eligibility for the DWP recently reported a 23% rise in profits. Its CEO received $10.2 million in compensation last year.
The DWP has also secretly enacted “operational changes” to the Access to Work (ATW) scheme that provides financial support to disabled workers to offset the cost of inaccessible workplaces. After disability organizer Catherine Eadie obtained data showing how administrative delays shot up as the new Labour government assumed power, whistleblowers leaked information about how the DWP is taking even more and previously undisclosed changes to intentionally create a backlog to delay hundreds of thousands of pounds owed to disabled people. Hundreds of people have signed an open letter denouncing the harms to “the UK’s globally respected disability-led arts practice.”
The UK’s plans are part of a disturbing global trend. As Julia Doubleday has reported, governments across Europe are cutting benefits to address what they see as a “sick leave crisis.” The US is also weaponizing paperwork to cut benefit systems disabled people need to survive. The Senate will take up the reconciliation bill this week that currently includes catastrophic cuts to Medicaid and nutrition assistance.
This week, Decode, an ATW-focused project of Disability Arts Online and Cathy Waller Company, is hosting “Sector Support Meetings” to help individuals and organizations navigate the crisis. #TakingThePIP has templates for amplifying protest on social media, writing to MPs, and signing petitions.