Crip News v.77
Mel Baggs, new works, Mary Pinotti Kaessinger, calls, events. Thanks for being here.
NEWS
Thank You, Mel Baggs
Tomorrow, April 11th, is the 3rd anniversary of the passing of Mel Baggs. Sie helped expand what it means to be human, leaving an indelible mark on disability theory, politics, and culture.
Hir 2007 video “In My Language” remains a landmark text, influencing other video artists, such as Wu Tsang, whose "Shape of a Right Statement” was recently screened in Darrin Martin’s “(Mis)Reading the Image” series.
Baggs’s memory is a revolution: to keep searching for new kinds of communication that can radically reshape how we conceptualize disability.
New Works
Jordan Lord reviews The Tuba Thieves by Alison O’Daniel for the International Documentary Association.
Several of those in the new cohort of Guggenheim Fellows are advancing disability artistry and scholarship, including Patrick Anderson, Petra Kuppers, Heather Love, and Sasha Wortzel.
Bradford Chin’s upcoming MFA thesis choreography, The world was ending, so they danced, and they were free, includes several kinds of access artistry and a collaboration with disabled artist Vanessa Hernández Cruz. April 20 - 22 at UC Irvine.
Seventeen recently featured teen disability activist Isabel Mavrides-Calderón as a “Voice of Change.”
A team of researchers and artists at the University of Sheffield have won a £1.6 million Wellcome Trust Discovery Award for their project “Cripping Breath: Towards a new cultural politics of respiration.”
Octavia Rose Hingle’s Crip Ecstasy project is building an immersive nightlife experience that centers access from the ground up, slated for June 3rd at CounterPulse in San Francisco.
A new project called The Neu Project has released a guide with “The A-Z of Neuroinclusive Events.” They’re also looking for survey respondents for a collaboration with NOWHERE about inclusion in the metaverse.
Rest in Power, Mary Pinotti Kaessinger
The Disability Justice and Rights Caucus of Workers World Party announced the passing of a “magnificent leader” on March 14, 2023, at the age of 77.
Pinotti Kaessinger was a part of an amazing array of organizations fighting for freedom, including the Peoples Metropolitan Transportation Authority in NYC and Disability Pride NYC.
All of us — who miss so much Mary’s training on the strategy of “being nice as a weapon” to promote the struggle for justice and rights for workers and oppressed peoples — can best honor Mary’s awesome spirit and legacy by heeding the last words said 108 years ago by another great fighter and labor organizer, Joe Hill: “Don’t mourn, organize!” Excerpted from WWP’s memorial.
CALLS
Help a trans + disabled artist remain housed in Brooklyn. Donate here.
Join 40 community groups coming together this May at Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn to make a LONG COVID MEMORIAL, of a project called NAMING THE LOST. Submit a response to this form by April 15th.
Fair Housing Justice Center is seeking a 1-year Disability Justice and Accessibility Fellow (J.D. required). More here.
EVENTS
Lupus as an Operating System
[*Date correction from last issue] Monday, April 10th, 6 - 7:30pm ET, on Zoom
Poet Cyrée Jarelle Johnson explores the way anti-Blackness, trauma, and environmental degradation converge to create bodies that internalize overcorrection, resulting in disablement, debility, and disability. Viewing systemic disabilities through the lens of cyborg studies, Johnson uses their background in library and information science to consider the role overcorrection and planned obsolescence play in contemporary American culture. Correction* is structured as an open curriculum led by The New School’s Vera List Center faculty and staff.
slow emergency siren, ongoing
Thursday, April 13th at 5:30pm CST, in-person at UIC + on Zoom
Black Audio Film Collective’s 1986 Handsworth Songs is an experimental documentary about uprisings against racialized police violence in Thatcherite Britain. Crucially, it is also a critique of their media coverage and colonial pre-histories. Sarah Hayden will give a hybrid talk which will be followed screening of Handsworth Songs with augmented audio-description by Elaine Lillian Joseph and creative captions by Care-fuffle Working Group. This new version of the film came about through slow emergency siren, ongoing: a year-long project, led by LUX and Sarah Hayden, to make Handsworth Songs newly and differently accessible.
Accessing Handsworth Songs: a conversation on Audio Description
Friday April 14th at 9:30am CST, on Zoom
Elaine Lillian Joseph spent 2021 working on the audio description for Black Audio Film Collective’s seminal 1986 film Handsworth Songs. Commissioned by Dr Sarah Hayden of Voices in the Gallery, the project involved making the film more, and differently, accessible through audio description and creative captions. Elaine will walk us through the research, scripting and recording process, offering some insights into her practice. The session will also include extracts from slow emergency siren, the publication which makes the captions and audio description available as texts that can be read or heard as well as a short taster of her approaches to two of the most challenging scenes in the film.
Access Praxis: Cripistemology and the Arts
Tuesday April 18th, 6 - 8pm CT, in-person at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and online
The MCA Advisory Partner organization Bodies of Work invites you to Access Praxis, a collaborative and participatory event in The Commons. Combining theory and practice, “praxis” is ideas in action. For this iteration, we are joined by disabled artist-researchers Alana Ackerman, Stephanie Alma, Tommy Carroll, Justin Cooper, and Nic Wyatt as they explore their embodied experience of disability through a series of videos detailing their crip epistemologies. Following the video presentation, they will be joined by Dr. Carrie Sandahl, co-director of Bodies of Work, and Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Jones, co-founders of Crip*: Cripistemology and the Arts, for a moderated discussion on the disability experience and the valuable knowledges that stem from it.
Psychiatric Survivor Clinic
Mondays, Tuesdays, or Fridays, online
Project LETS is launching our first Psychiatric Survivor Clinic — open to anyone who has been harmed by psychiatry and psychiatric treatment. This space will offer opportunities for community care and peer support, strategizing and discussion, skill-sharing, and co-reflecting.
I really really really appreciate this newsletter. Thank you.