Belonging: Thou shalt not worship at the altar of access
Friction occurs as the lived experience of exclusion and the intention of access making collide. Asking questions can be a way to instrumentalize friction: How are artists complicit to allowing disability access to be wielded as one of the masters’ tools? When does an access policy without a collective practice turn into access washing? Leaning into the discomfort of friction creates a rupture in the culture of the institution, where we can investigate the following topics: the ongoing-ness of access making; the temporary status of able-bodied-ness; why the end game is belonging; the value of embodied knowledge and the crip perspective on normalcy; radical slowness. This training offers a frictional and anti-assimilationist stance toward access. This may show up as humming/singing, embodied archiving, storytelling, reflective writing, or recognition reading.
The lived experience of access-making in Dutch cultural institutions is a policy-driven form of facilitation, equipped to offer solutions for individual access needs rather than actively contribute to “eliminating the need to develop universal forms of accessibility,” (Siebers, 2008). As some institutions are developing an understanding of crip cultural competence, access work is outsourced to artists, organizers, writers, and researchers that identify as disabled. Fueled by a strong desire for equity and often with a background in activism, folks are highly motivated to educate publics about intersectionality, marginalized identities, and the nature of their oppression. When attempting to make up for the lack in engagement and accountability they encounter in institutions, it is not uncommon for a temporarily embedded artist to burn out by the end of the project.
As people with disability know intimately, maneuvering normative able-bodied relations and built environments is taxing. Whether access can be provided by an institution primarily depends on the willingness of individuals—on the disabled person to disclose their disability identity and their capacity to convey to a member of the staff what being included looks like for them. Moreover, whenever it is up to the willingness of a single institutional worker to meet the needs of the disabled person, there is ample room for implicit or explicit discrimination. Without infrastructures in place to navigate access, to archive the emotional labor of knowledge sharing, or a protocol for transferring cultural competencies to new colleagues, access-making in Dutch cultural institutions is transactional and temporary.
Wednesday 17 MAY – Friday 19 MAY 2023
12:00–18:00 hrs
Program
May 17 Belonging: Thou shalt not worship at the altar of access
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Introduction, check in, and sharing access needs
13:10 Talk: Belonging: Thou shalt not worship at the altar of access
14:00 Break
14:05 Question exercise
15:00 Deep listening lived experiences
17:00 Flex time
18:00 Copy bar happy hour
18 May It takes a lot – Resistance through collective use of voice
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Introduction, check in, and sharing access needs
13:15 Valentina Vella: Guided meditation, breath work, vocal circle
14:15 Break
14:30 Intro track It takes a lot, thoughts on access making and ongoingness
14:45 Resistance through use of voice by humming, singing, repetitiveness, and collectivity
16:00 A non-performance of humming, singing, repetitiveness, and collectivity
16:15 Optional use of collective spacetime: Practicing story, story stewardship, sitting with it, resting, chatting
17:00 Flex time
18:00 Copy bar happy hour
May 19 The Archive of Embodied Knowledge – Workshop
12:00 Lunch
13:00 Introduction, check in, and sharing access needs
13:15 Recognition reading practice
13:45 Materializing a personal archive of embodied knowledge with natural clay
14:45 Break
15:00 Reflective writing
16:00 Optional use of collective spacetime: Practicing story, story stewardship, sitting with it, resting, chatting
17:00 Flex time
18:00 Copy bar happy hour
Hospitality
Collective vegan lunch from 12:00–13:00 hrs.
The meal is included in the enrollment fee. The abundance and variety of the menu depend on the luck of the b.ASIC a.CTIVIST k.ITCHEN’s dumpster dive.
Notes
Registration is required. You can rsvp attendance here.
