Microsoft lecture

here I’m going to talk about the microsoft lecture

INDEXING DISABILITY PERFORMANCE

Short summary: This post summarizes how to document performances that relate to disability in the Emergency Index during the year 2015.

In Emergency Index Vol. 3 (2013) there are five performances indexed under Disability. The index is an ongoing project dedicated to documenting performances annually with both a photographic image and visual description as composed by the artists themselves. This is an index, as Yelena Gluzman (editor) writes where: “each performances receives equal space, and, as editors, we do not distinguish between them.”  The non-curatorial approach as taken by the Index team reveals the importance of how performers describe their own work. The performance is thus contextualized by the maker of the piece, who determines the outcome of how a descriptive text is written. This is useful for artists and makers who prioritize visual description as a means of access for their readers.

The five performances indexed under the subheading of disability:

  1. Nevada (k. m. mustatea)

  2. A Fierce Kind of Love (Suli Holum and David Bradley)

  3. Salamander (The Olimpas, Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus)

  4. Consulado Movil/Mobile Consulate (Omar Pimienta)

  5. Long Departed (Irene Loughlin)

 

Emergency Index is a compendium of performances that is published once a year. The next volume will index performances made in 2015. If you made a performance in 2015 that you would like to document in this way, see this year’s call here (Deadline January 30th):

Once again the Index team is opening up their call for performances that took place during the year 2015.  The non-curatorial approach as taken by the Index team reveals the importance of how performers describe their own work. I invite people to work alongside this team to increase the presence of work produced by disabled artists, and works that are generated around the theme of disability. Please share this opportunity widely to ensure that the Index represents a diverse range of work. The deadline for submissions of performance work is January 15th, 2016.

Further information is stated below:

Emergency INDEX is an annual 500+page volume documenting hundreds of performance works from all over the world and from genres as diverse as dance, game studies, visual art, music, poetry, activism, advertising, medical and scientific research, philosophy, theater, translation, therapy, data visualization, disability studies, community art and many more.  Every year, Emergency INDEX invites authors (artists, researchers, advertisers, activists, etc.) to document performances they made in the previous year, and asks them to document the work in their own words. By including performances regardless of their country of origin, their genre, aims, or popularity, INDEX is the only print publication of its kind, revealing a breathtaking variety of practices used in performance as it actually exists today. Submissions are now open for the third volume, documenting works made in 2013. Look at the website for examples from previous volumes and for information on how to submit:

www.emergencyindex.com.

SUBMISSION OPPORTUNITY: INDEXING PERFORMANCE WORKS

I have been kindly invited by the Emergency INDEX team, a group of collaborators working to index performances on an annual basis, to expand the presence of disability and related themes into the Index’s repertoire of documented performances. As a contributing editor for this upcoming edition, I am working towards increasing the visibility of artworks produced both by disabled artists and works that are generated around themes of disability within this particular anthology.

I own both the 2011 and 2012 editions of the Emergency Index anthologies – it is an impressive compendium of works. I greatly encourage all members to submit works for their upcoming edition. Please share this opportunity widely to ensure that the Index represents a diverse range of work. Please feel free to contact me for further information for this exciting opportunity.

Please note that the deadline for submissions of performance work closes on January 15th, 2014. Share widely and apply today! Further information is stated below:

Emergency Index is an annual 500+ page volume documenting hundreds of performance works from all over the world and from genres as diverse as dance, game studies, visual art, music, poetry, activism, advertising, medical and scientific research, philosophy, theater, translation, therapy, data visualization, disability studies, community art and many more.  Every year, Emergency INDEX invites authors (artists, researchers, advertisers, activists, etc.) to document performances they made in the previous year, and asks them to document the work in their own words. By including performances regardless of their country of origin, their genre, aims, or popularity, INDEX is the only print publication of its kind, revealing a breathtaking variety of practices used in performance as it actually exists today. Submissions are now open for the third volume, documenting works made in 2013. Look at the website for examples from previous volumes and for information on how to submit: www.emergencyindex.com. The deadline is January 15th, 2014. We especially welcome submissions from genres outside performance art and theater/dance.

Contact me for information regarding access to the Emergency INDEX website.

Transformers: How enabling design has transformed disability

Transformers: How enabling design has transformed disability

This forthcoming show at the National Centre for Craft and Design looks fascinating – ‘Transformers: How enabling design has transformed disability’, from 14 July to 30 September.

2012 is the year that the Paralympics come home to Britain and we are celebrating this with a summer exhibition looking at how enabling design has transformed disability. In the face of adversities the human race has an uncanny ability to survive, repair, learn and improve.  Transformers will look at the brains behind some of these designs and innovations and at the people who use them. (This is museum own wording, I disagreed with face(ing) of adversities comment, there is no need to overcome disability)

JERRY’S ORPHANS: PISS ON PITY

Jerry Lewis, you’re not funny,
You’re using people to raise money!

Stop the pity, stop the lies,
Stop to think — don’t patronize!'

Chants taken from http://www.cripcommentary.com/LewisVsDisabilityRights.html

The short film The Kids are Alright is based on Jerry’s Orphans, a group of disability rights activists. The activists are protesting against the ‘pity approach’ which is used by the annual event the Jerry Lewis Muscular Dystrophy Association Labor Day Telethon.  The pity approach adopted by the Telethon proved to be the antithesis of everything that the disability civil rights movement was trying to achieve. In this circumstance it was evident that pity prevents empowerment.  Mike, a disability activist within this film is trying to break away from his image of a 1960s poster child.

jerrylewisposter.jpg

The poster child image can be seen as problematic for an adult with a disability. The “tiny Tim” evokes the idea of a pathetic and helpless individual, indeed a perfect candidate for pity.

The audience failed to grasp that there is a wider structural system such as medical healthcare that has failed these children. As Mike states in the film:

“Why is our mobility and quality of life so unimportant that we have to resort to these lengths just to get the support we need? That tells you quite a bit about how much America cares.”

Suggesting that the poster child is no more than their disability, reduced to a token figure of pity in order to appeal to the audience’s conscience and commodified in order to produce goods. The audience members of the telethon are contributing towards this disempowerment. Rather than focusing on social policy changes that would enable these children to be mobile and independent of their own accord, in this situation they can only gain independence through the receipt of pity and gifts from others.

picture-41.png

Text in the above image: “Jerry Lewis says ‘You don’t want to be pitied for being a cripple in wheelchair, stay in your house’ Fuck You Jerry!!

Mike and the ‘Jerry’s Orphans’ are depicted in the film as forming a united front, showing scenes of a barrage of wheelchairs breaking through security barriers, chanting “No more pity!”  Mike asserts that he in fact pities those who pity him, his pragmatic attitude and supports the film’s underlying themes that control over the lives of disabled people should originate with those who are affected by it, placing people with disabilities at the helm of disability organization.

Finally, the film shows Mike in an interview, discussing at length the injustice he felt was committed by Jerry Lewis; demonstrating his personal dislike of Lewis’s tactics. Mike quoted Jerry’s article regarding his attempts to empathize with people with disabilities, in order to show that Jerry was reducing people with disabilities as a ‘half a person’:

When I sit back and think a little more rationally, I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway. I just have to learn to try to be good at being half a person. I may be a full human being in my heart and soul, yet I am still half a person.

picture-21.png

People I showed this film to found this part particularly disturbing. It was considered to be problematic that someone who was the ambassador of an organization raising money for people with muscular dystrophy might hold this position that disabled people are somehow ‘half a person’. Instead of empowering disabled people, Jerry Lewis’s actions and comments debilitates the representation of disabled people’s identity.

In 2011, it was announced that Lewis will step down as national chairman of the MDA.

To find out more about Jerry’s Orphans, you can access the full film here