1 00:00:11,219 --> 00:00:15,807 Hello and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in conversation. 2 00:00:15,849 --> 00:00:17,559 My name is Diane Kolin. 3 00:00:17,559 --> 00:00:22,355 This series presents artists, academics, and project leaders 4 00:00:22,355 --> 00:00:26,443 who dedicate their time and energy to a better accessibility 5 00:00:26,443 --> 00:00:30,113 for people with disabilities in the arts. 6 00:00:30,113 --> 00:00:34,284 You can find more of these conversations on our website: 7 00:00:34,284 --> 00:00:41,791 artsably.com which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com. 8 00:00:54,429 --> 00:00:56,848 Today, ArtsAbly is in conversation 9 00:00:56,848 --> 00:01:00,060 with Dr. Eliza Chandler, associate professor 10 00:01:00,060 --> 00:01:05,648 in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. 11 00:01:05,648 --> 00:01:09,110 Dr. Chandler is deeply involved in disability arts 12 00:01:09,110 --> 00:01:13,615 and its connections to disability rights and justice. 13 00:01:13,656 --> 00:01:16,993 During the interview, Dr. Chandler mentions 14 00:01:16,993 --> 00:01:19,329 a certain number of resources 15 00:01:19,329 --> 00:01:24,542 that are listed on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section. 16 00:01:24,584 --> 00:01:26,669 Thank you for being here today. 17 00:01:26,711 --> 00:01:31,841 It's my pleasure to interview you today as part of ArtsAbly's podcast. 18 00:01:31,841 --> 00:01:35,887 I wanted to ask you a little bit about yourself to start. 19 00:01:35,929 --> 00:01:40,225 Thanks for inviting me, it's great to be here. 20 00:01:40,225 --> 00:01:44,437 My name is Elizabeth Chandler. 21 00:01:44,437 --> 00:01:49,901 And I'm a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University 22 00:01:49,943 --> 00:01:54,614 in the School of Disability Studies, where I teach and research 23 00:01:54,614 --> 00:01:58,952 in the areas of disability art and cultural accessibility 24 00:01:58,952 --> 00:02:04,707 and think about how disability art can represent disability 25 00:02:04,707 --> 00:02:11,005 in a way that resists ableist understanding. 26 00:02:11,047 --> 00:02:17,053 Okay. So how did your journey into critical disability studies 27 00:02:17,053 --> 00:02:23,309 and crip culture and disability justice, how did that start exactly for you? 28 00:02:23,309 --> 00:02:27,814 I think my undergrad in the early 2000s 29 00:02:27,814 --> 00:02:32,318 at art school at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. 30 00:02:32,360 --> 00:02:35,697 So I was making arts, I was becoming an artist 31 00:02:35,697 --> 00:02:41,035 but I wasn't identifying as disabled at all. 32 00:02:41,035 --> 00:02:47,500 To my knowledge, there wasn't anything called disability art. 33 00:02:47,542 --> 00:02:51,087 There was sort of emerging conversations in Canada, 34 00:02:51,087 --> 00:02:56,718 but where I was, I hadn't encountered any of that. 35 00:02:56,718 --> 00:03:00,597 And so I'd say in that experience, 36 00:03:00,597 --> 00:03:03,016 My... 37 00:03:03,016 --> 00:03:06,519 My artistic practice was quite limited 38 00:03:06,519 --> 00:03:09,647 by what I could do independently. 39 00:03:09,647 --> 00:03:13,693 There was no discussion about accommodation or accessibility 40 00:03:13,693 --> 00:03:17,989 and I would sort of slightly ask people to help me 41 00:03:17,989 --> 00:03:23,786 in the sculpture studio or in the dark room in the photo lab. 42 00:03:23,828 --> 00:03:26,039 But when there was no one around to help, 43 00:03:26,039 --> 00:03:32,462 I would just sort of attenuate or limit my project to fit within 44 00:03:32,462 --> 00:03:37,300 what I could do independently, which sometimes wasn't a lot. 45 00:03:37,300 --> 00:03:39,928 So reflecting back on that experience, 46 00:03:39,928 --> 00:03:43,097 I often think about how much more I could do 47 00:03:43,097 --> 00:03:46,476 if I had... 48 00:03:46,476 --> 00:03:52,190 was able to sort of advocate for myself, identify as disabled, 49 00:03:52,190 --> 00:03:59,530 and sort of receive the accommodation that I needed. 50 00:03:59,572 --> 00:04:02,825 Then after that experience, I moved to Toronto 51 00:04:02,825 --> 00:04:07,872 and I was looking to take some courses 52 00:04:07,872 --> 00:04:13,628 to upgrade my bachelor of Fine Arts to a Bachelor of Arts 53 00:04:13,670 --> 00:04:19,217 and I was able to take any course that I wanted to at the University of Toronto, 54 00:04:19,259 --> 00:04:24,847 and that would count towards sort of upgrading my degree. 55 00:04:24,889 --> 00:04:31,354 And they were starting to offer disability studies courses at that time, 56 00:04:31,354 --> 00:04:37,110 and then I'd never heard of disability studies at all. 57 00:04:37,110 --> 00:04:41,072 And my professor at the time, and this was 58 00:04:41,072 --> 00:04:45,034 almost 20 years ago, I'd say, was Rachel Gorman. 59 00:04:45,034 --> 00:04:50,498 And I think she was just sort of starting out as well. 60 00:04:50,540 --> 00:04:56,004 I think she probably had just graduated from doing her PhD. 61 00:04:56,045 --> 00:05:01,467 Anyway, she was teaching a course on disability culture, and I was 62 00:05:01,467 --> 00:05:08,224 so captivated by that, I just thought it blew my mind right up when 63 00:05:08,224 --> 00:05:11,519 when I heard about the course "disability studies" 64 00:05:11,519 --> 00:05:14,147 I really had no idea what to expect. 65 00:05:14,188 --> 00:05:18,735 I thought it might be medicalized or patronizing 66 00:05:18,735 --> 00:05:22,155 or, you know, not interesting. 67 00:05:22,155 --> 00:05:28,786 But she taught that class in such a profound way. 68 00:05:28,786 --> 00:05:32,081 And for me, the connection to arts and culture, 69 00:05:32,081 --> 00:05:37,712 which was something I was engaged in already, made all of the difference. 70 00:05:37,712 --> 00:05:42,925 It really helped me get into the topic. 71 00:05:42,967 --> 00:05:45,595 And of course, as a disabled person, 72 00:05:45,595 --> 00:05:50,016 learning about disability rights and justice 73 00:05:50,058 --> 00:05:55,104 sort of affected how I understood myself and how I moved in the world. 74 00:05:55,104 --> 00:06:02,487 At the time I was in my personal life experiencing a lot of barriers 75 00:06:02,487 --> 00:06:07,992 to accessing work and housing and money and stuff like that. 76 00:06:07,992 --> 00:06:17,502 So the course had a profound impact on me, personally and professionally. 77 00:06:17,543 --> 00:06:21,839 It led me to... to... 78 00:06:21,839 --> 00:06:25,343 move on in my careers in disability studies 79 00:06:25,343 --> 00:06:28,346 at York [University] and at OISE, U of T [University of Toronto] 80 00:06:28,387 --> 00:06:36,020 and through that process of my Master's and PhD, I sort of lost the arts focus. 81 00:06:36,020 --> 00:06:40,024 I moved more into the realm of phenomenology 82 00:06:40,066 --> 00:06:44,737 and storytelling and things like that. 83 00:06:44,779 --> 00:06:48,574 And then it wasn't until sort of one of my, you know, 84 00:06:48,574 --> 00:06:54,831 near the end of my PhD program that I met up with 85 00:06:54,831 --> 00:07:00,086 scholar Dr. Carla Rice, who at the time was putting together 86 00:07:00,086 --> 00:07:06,759 digital storytelling workshops for people who identified as disabled. 87 00:07:06,759 --> 00:07:10,138 And I received her contact, 88 00:07:10,138 --> 00:07:13,307 so I just, you know, 89 00:07:13,307 --> 00:07:17,395 I got in touch with her and I participated 90 00:07:17,395 --> 00:07:21,357 in a couple of these digital storytelling workshops. 91 00:07:21,357 --> 00:07:24,318 And what was incredible about these 92 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:29,532 workshops is that I noticed that there were other disabled people in there 93 00:07:29,532 --> 00:07:33,327 using the workshop as a way to access 94 00:07:33,327 --> 00:07:37,290 our art supplies, artistic training, and 95 00:07:37,290 --> 00:07:41,085 maybe even unintentionally or surprisingly, 96 00:07:41,085 --> 00:07:44,589 access peers to disabled artists. 97 00:07:44,589 --> 00:07:49,343 And again, this was sort of the late twenty... 98 00:07:49,343 --> 00:07:53,598 Maybe early 2010s at this point. 99 00:07:53,598 --> 00:07:57,476 So Tangled Art + Disability wasn't around, 100 00:07:57,476 --> 00:08:01,480 there wasn't through this hub of as there is now. 101 00:08:01,522 --> 00:08:06,194 And so what I thought would just be sort of an interesting 102 00:08:06,194 --> 00:08:10,031 research project actually turned into so much more than that. 103 00:08:10,031 --> 00:08:13,701 It introduced me to artists like Jess H 104 00:08:13,743 --> 00:08:17,330 and Lindsay Fisher and Vanessa Dion Fletcher 105 00:08:17,330 --> 00:08:20,500 and all kinds of other artists. 106 00:08:20,500 --> 00:08:23,377 And together we sort of stuck with the project 107 00:08:23,377 --> 00:08:27,798 because of our investment in what we were sort of sensing 108 00:08:27,798 --> 00:08:32,553 was sort of an emerging disability arts culture. 109 00:08:32,553 --> 00:08:37,433 And at that point, we also were connected to 110 00:08:37,433 --> 00:08:41,270 the Abilities Arts Festival in Toronto. 111 00:08:41,270 --> 00:08:46,692 They had just hired a new executive director, Rina Fraticelli. 112 00:08:46,734 --> 00:08:52,615 His mission was to sort of turn the organization from 113 00:08:52,615 --> 00:08:58,454 a parent run, one week long festival in the form of charity, 114 00:08:58,496 --> 00:09:04,460 and Rina's objective was to turn that organization into a publicly funded, 115 00:09:04,460 --> 00:09:11,133 year long, sustainable disability arts organization. 116 00:09:11,175 --> 00:09:13,552 And she was interested - 117 00:09:13,552 --> 00:09:17,181 Rina was interested in the work we were doing 118 00:09:17,181 --> 00:09:20,851 at Project Re•Vision, the research project 119 00:09:20,851 --> 00:09:23,980 that I was mentioning with Carla Rice. 120 00:09:24,021 --> 00:09:27,358 So she connected with us, and 121 00:09:27,358 --> 00:09:30,403 over time and, you know, 122 00:09:30,403 --> 00:09:33,990 relationship building, I joined the board of Abilities, 123 00:09:33,990 --> 00:09:40,871 and just when it was turning into what it is today, Tangled Arts + Disability. 124 00:09:40,871 --> 00:09:50,339 So the name change signified cerebral cultural change within the organization. 125 00:09:50,381 --> 00:09:55,136 And Rina is non disabled, and it was always her intention 126 00:09:55,136 --> 00:09:58,848 to get the organization in a good place 127 00:09:58,889 --> 00:10:04,562 and then replace herself with a disabled artistic director. 128 00:10:04,604 --> 00:10:10,651 And that was all happening when I graduated from my doctorate. 129 00:10:10,693 --> 00:10:15,531 And so I applied and I became the artistic director of Tangled, 130 00:10:15,531 --> 00:10:23,164 and I was also at that time doing a PhD at the School of Disability Studies. 131 00:10:23,164 --> 00:10:30,212 So, naturally, it became... My research agenda, my research program 132 00:10:30,254 --> 00:10:35,968 became about thinking about the cultural impact of disability art 133 00:10:35,968 --> 00:10:39,764 as I was sort of working in that realm 134 00:10:39,764 --> 00:10:42,183 in this other position. 135 00:10:42,224 --> 00:10:48,356 And from there, I have just maintained that research interest. 136 00:10:48,356 --> 00:10:55,154 And now I sort of have a suite of research projects that are all dedicated to 137 00:10:55,154 --> 00:11:00,785 supporting disability art through funding and training and 138 00:11:00,826 --> 00:11:04,789 mentorship, artists in residencies, things like that, 139 00:11:04,789 --> 00:11:07,291 as well as researching 140 00:11:07,291 --> 00:11:11,754 the cultural impact of that artistic production. 141 00:11:11,754 --> 00:11:17,093 And right now I'm interested in really sort of 142 00:11:17,134 --> 00:11:21,847 the emergence of cultural accessibility access practices 143 00:11:21,847 --> 00:11:26,644 that are created by disabled people for the cultural sphere, 144 00:11:26,644 --> 00:11:31,607 and thinking about how the integration of cultural accessibility 145 00:11:31,607 --> 00:11:37,988 across the sector, across different art organizations, 146 00:11:37,988 --> 00:11:43,160 can create or contribute to a real cultural shift 147 00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:47,873 that is about transformation rather than inclusion. 148 00:11:47,873 --> 00:11:54,630 So rather than including disabled people into organizations such as they are, 149 00:11:54,630 --> 00:11:59,802 this sort of realization that because ableism is sort of baked into 150 00:11:59,802 --> 00:12:03,472 our hegemony, our worldviews, everything that we do, 151 00:12:03,472 --> 00:12:06,434 that when we simply include people in 152 00:12:06,434 --> 00:12:09,395 as an artist or whatever, 153 00:12:09,395 --> 00:12:13,607 we're - we're still creating barriers 154 00:12:13,607 --> 00:12:18,028 because of how arts and culture typically work, right? 155 00:12:18,028 --> 00:12:22,450 So if we're including - if we're inviting a disabled artist to have 156 00:12:22,450 --> 00:12:24,994 an exhibition in our gallery, 157 00:12:24,994 --> 00:12:28,956 but only giving them a weekend to install the show, 158 00:12:28,956 --> 00:12:33,502 potentially that can create barriers 159 00:12:33,502 --> 00:12:40,217 if the person is not able, for any number of reasons, to work that quickly. 160 00:12:40,259 --> 00:12:44,597 And so thinking about the impact of introducing disability - 161 00:12:44,597 --> 00:12:48,768 sorry, cultural accessibility practices 162 00:12:48,768 --> 00:12:51,353 to sort of shifting 163 00:12:51,353 --> 00:12:57,401 the arts culture, talking to galleries about the possibilities of extending 164 00:12:57,443 --> 00:13:04,200 install windows and how even if that means that you have to have fewer shows in a year, 165 00:13:04,200 --> 00:13:09,038 it's worth it to be able to work with disabled artists. 166 00:13:09,038 --> 00:13:10,956 And, yeah, 167 00:13:10,956 --> 00:13:13,876 so that's the end of the story. 168 00:13:13,876 --> 00:13:16,170 That's where I am now. 169 00:13:16,212 --> 00:13:20,007 And so you were telling about storytelling. 170 00:13:20,049 --> 00:13:26,472 How does these storytelling things impact exhibitions that you have in Tangled Arts? 171 00:13:26,472 --> 00:13:35,564 And can you talk a little bit more about how Tangled Arts is featuring artists? 172 00:13:35,606 --> 00:13:37,107 Yeah, absolutely. 173 00:13:37,149 --> 00:13:43,656 I will say that since 2016, I haven't been at Tangled, 174 00:13:43,656 --> 00:13:48,702 I've been at TMU, but I certainly work with Tangled quite a bit, 175 00:13:48,702 --> 00:13:54,041 so I can speak to that, maybe from a personal experience. 176 00:13:54,041 --> 00:13:57,753 So, for example, 177 00:13:58,420 --> 00:14:00,422 Maybe... 178 00:14:00,422 --> 00:14:03,467 Maybe... Where should I start with this story? 179 00:14:03,509 --> 00:14:09,348 So one of the shows that I co-created - co-curated before I left Tangled 180 00:14:09,348 --> 00:14:15,104 was with indigenous artist Vanessa Dion Fletcher, 181 00:14:15,104 --> 00:14:20,901 Lenape and Potawatomi artist from Tkaronto 182 00:14:20,901 --> 00:14:24,613 who identifies as neurodiverse - 183 00:14:24,613 --> 00:14:27,241 No, sorry, neurodivergent. 184 00:14:27,241 --> 00:14:30,953 And in this show, 185 00:14:32,496 --> 00:14:34,498 Vanessa... 186 00:14:36,000 --> 00:14:40,754 Sorry, this show was called "Own Your Cervix." 187 00:14:40,754 --> 00:14:44,967 And the show was about 188 00:14:45,009 --> 00:14:50,055 sort of the intersections of disability, identity, 189 00:14:50,055 --> 00:14:55,311 medical ableism, and reproductive health and rights for disabled people, 190 00:14:55,311 --> 00:15:00,274 with cervixes in particular, 191 00:15:00,274 --> 00:15:04,403 but also about sort of reclaiming 192 00:15:04,445 --> 00:15:10,367 indigenous identity and discovering indigenous language. 193 00:15:10,409 --> 00:15:14,955 So in this show, she combined a bunch of different elements 194 00:15:14,955 --> 00:15:20,544 to create sort of an immersive installation. 195 00:15:20,586 --> 00:15:26,300 So she painted cervixes with paint 196 00:15:26,300 --> 00:15:29,970 that resembled her own menstrual blood, 197 00:15:29,970 --> 00:15:32,389 and turned - and painted 198 00:15:32,389 --> 00:15:37,269 the cervixes onto wallpaper, which she papered around the gallery. 199 00:15:37,269 --> 00:15:43,192 She built an accessible medical examining table 200 00:15:43,192 --> 00:15:49,406 in which people with all abilities could engage 201 00:15:49,406 --> 00:15:55,454 in sort of the act of self examination of their own cervix, 202 00:15:55,496 --> 00:15:57,748 privately, of course. 203 00:15:57,748 --> 00:16:01,835 She created - she brought in a shave lounge 204 00:16:01,835 --> 00:16:04,088 which was a piece of furniture which 205 00:16:04,088 --> 00:16:09,551 sort of replicated, or referenced, I should say, 206 00:16:10,469 --> 00:16:18,143 the era of sort of intense colonization in North America, 207 00:16:18,185 --> 00:16:23,649 and painted that as well with menstrual blood, as well as embellished the fabric 208 00:16:23,691 --> 00:16:30,990 with porcupine quill, which is a sacred object to her and her culture, 209 00:16:30,990 --> 00:16:39,540 which are used to tattoo and to create cultural objects. 210 00:16:39,540 --> 00:16:45,838 So she was sort of bringing in lots of different elements into the space 211 00:16:45,838 --> 00:16:51,719 to tell a story about how colonization has... 212 00:16:51,719 --> 00:16:55,055 has stripped her of so many things, 213 00:16:55,055 --> 00:16:59,226 including her language, her aboriginal language, 214 00:16:59,226 --> 00:17:01,854 access to 215 00:17:01,854 --> 00:17:09,319 cultural traditions, although she still is very connected with her culture. 216 00:17:09,361 --> 00:17:15,451 But interestingly, to think about the way that colonization 217 00:17:15,492 --> 00:17:23,876 remove indigenous people from sacred objects as well as world views, 218 00:17:23,876 --> 00:17:29,631 to have this show at Tangled Art gallery and to be thinking about disability, 219 00:17:29,631 --> 00:17:35,804 she was also able to think about how colonization, in particular medical care, 220 00:17:35,846 --> 00:17:41,351 has removed her from indigenous ways of knowing her own body. 221 00:17:41,351 --> 00:17:47,483 And in so doing, it has introduced an experience of ableism 222 00:17:47,483 --> 00:17:54,198 that perhaps you wouldn't have encountered had it not been for colonization 223 00:17:54,239 --> 00:17:58,619 and the way that colonization shapes what we now understand 224 00:17:58,619 --> 00:18:01,830 as the medical, industrial complex, 225 00:18:01,830 --> 00:18:05,959 which, any disabled person will tell you, 226 00:18:05,959 --> 00:18:10,589 sort of creates this space where doctors 227 00:18:10,589 --> 00:18:16,762 often don't believe disabled people when, as experts of our own experience and 228 00:18:16,804 --> 00:18:21,391 create barriers towards self understanding, 229 00:18:21,391 --> 00:18:27,105 whether it's physical barriers like medical examination tables, that we can't 230 00:18:27,147 --> 00:18:35,155 access, or more ideological barriers, where you only are introduced to your body 231 00:18:35,155 --> 00:18:40,369 in this very sterile, removed way in which the doctor holds 232 00:18:40,369 --> 00:18:47,918 the majority of the information about your own body and you're only given sort of snippets. 233 00:18:47,918 --> 00:18:50,838 And of course, the information that you're given 234 00:18:50,838 --> 00:18:55,134 is framed by colonial ways of knowing your body. 235 00:18:55,175 --> 00:18:59,513 So again, because Vanessa was... 236 00:18:59,721 --> 00:19:03,767 Vanessa has talked about this too, 237 00:19:03,767 --> 00:19:06,353 the context of Tangled, 238 00:19:06,353 --> 00:19:13,944 it sort of provoked her to think about bodies and disability in the context of 239 00:19:13,986 --> 00:19:21,577 colonization and decolonization and indigenous ways of knowing. 240 00:19:21,618 --> 00:19:25,747 So through the elements of that show, as 241 00:19:25,747 --> 00:19:30,711 well as the artist statement, artist talk, et cetera, Vanessa sort of rolled 242 00:19:30,711 --> 00:19:40,220 this narrative and introduced audiences to sort of this perhaps 243 00:19:41,054 --> 00:19:46,935 often overlooked impact of medical ableism, which is 244 00:19:46,935 --> 00:19:52,608 sort of the separation out between the person and embodied knowledge, 245 00:19:52,608 --> 00:19:57,779 and through her process of self examinations, allowed us to 246 00:19:57,779 --> 00:19:59,781 to sort of get to now re... 247 00:20:00,532 --> 00:20:07,748 become reacquainted with ourselves in sort of the sentiment way. 248 00:20:07,748 --> 00:20:10,959 Another exhibition I'll just talk about quickly 249 00:20:10,959 --> 00:20:15,005 is one that I'm working on right now with Tangled. 250 00:20:15,047 --> 00:20:20,469 About a year ago, I received a SSHRC [Social Sciences] grant 251 00:20:20,469 --> 00:20:24,640 to do work with an artist organization in Ottawa 252 00:20:24,640 --> 00:20:30,854 called BEING Studio, and BEING Studio works... 253 00:20:30,896 --> 00:20:35,359 BEING Studio is populated by artists with - 254 00:20:35,359 --> 00:20:41,740 who identify as having developmental disabilities or neurodivergent, 255 00:20:41,740 --> 00:20:46,328 and they've been working together since 2002. 256 00:20:46,370 --> 00:20:48,997 Initially, they were operating under 257 00:20:48,997 --> 00:20:56,880 the name Heart of Ottawa, and then sort of later in 2017, became BEING Studio. 258 00:20:56,922 --> 00:21:03,220 So here's a group of artists who've been working together for over 20 years at this point, 259 00:21:03,220 --> 00:21:10,185 and they've been collecting their artwork as well as their journals and other sort of ephemera 260 00:21:10,185 --> 00:21:14,940 in this huge overflowing archive. 261 00:21:14,982 --> 00:21:20,988 So the work that we did through this research grant was we held what we called 262 00:21:21,029 --> 00:21:23,323 archive sessions 263 00:21:23,323 --> 00:21:27,369 with a select group of artists in which we explored 264 00:21:27,369 --> 00:21:33,291 the artists, the art in the archive, and talked about the history of BEING Studio 265 00:21:33,291 --> 00:21:40,465 as a way of thinking about the role of developmental disabled people, 266 00:21:40,507 --> 00:21:47,139 including institutional survivors, in the development of disability art. 267 00:21:47,180 --> 00:21:54,855 Because again, disability art is a relatively newly established sector. 268 00:21:54,896 --> 00:21:58,900 But this group of artists had been making art, 269 00:21:58,900 --> 00:22:04,156 and I would argue, making an impact for well before 270 00:22:04,156 --> 00:22:12,998 we started talking about disability art in the way that we do presently. 271 00:22:12,998 --> 00:22:16,752 And I also feel like 272 00:22:16,752 --> 00:22:23,008 some of these early contributions get overlooked when we tell stories of, you know, 273 00:22:23,008 --> 00:22:27,721 who was the one to contact the Canada Council to urge them 274 00:22:27,721 --> 00:22:30,599 to create a funding stream, right? 275 00:22:30,599 --> 00:22:36,355 It's these sort of grand gestures that often get remarked upon and credited 276 00:22:36,355 --> 00:22:43,570 with sort of propelling disability arts to where it is today. 277 00:22:43,612 --> 00:22:49,993 When, you know, whole groups of artists have been working quietly for so long 278 00:22:49,993 --> 00:22:52,913 and, you know, making an impact. 279 00:22:54,289 --> 00:23:01,338 So we created I think what's going to be a really compelling podcast 280 00:23:01,338 --> 00:23:04,091 about the history of BEING Studio 281 00:23:04,091 --> 00:23:09,721 and its impact on the development of disability arts in Canada 282 00:23:09,763 --> 00:23:16,645 and its connection with institutional vision and outsider art and therapy and 283 00:23:16,686 --> 00:23:24,027 all of these things that sort of thinking that in disability art currently, we 284 00:23:24,027 --> 00:23:30,784 spend a lot of time distancing ourselves from this historic idea that art created 285 00:23:30,784 --> 00:23:37,666 by disabled people is outsider art or art root or products of art therapy. 286 00:23:37,707 --> 00:23:43,672 So we distance ourselves from those narratives as a way of 287 00:23:44,881 --> 00:23:51,012 making a convincing case that our work is professional and it's political. 288 00:23:51,054 --> 00:23:53,598 But there are artists, 289 00:23:53,598 --> 00:24:00,439 disabled artists, who talk a lot about how their work is therapeutic, 290 00:24:00,814 --> 00:24:06,987 and the artists are being work in, you know, in 291 00:24:07,154 --> 00:24:13,535 a setting that might not be recognized as a professional setting by some. 292 00:24:13,577 --> 00:24:19,499 And their work is very political, and they themselves talk about how their work can 293 00:24:19,541 --> 00:24:22,752 be political and therapeutic at the same time. 294 00:24:22,752 --> 00:24:25,338 And so I think it's really important to 295 00:24:25,380 --> 00:24:31,678 sort of surface these narratives of perhaps non dormant of ways of creating 296 00:24:31,678 --> 00:24:37,809 disability art, which tend to fall outside of sort of the dormant of narrative, of 297 00:24:37,851 --> 00:24:43,857 what a disability art practice is and can contribute. 298 00:24:43,899 --> 00:24:49,154 So I say all this to say, so this is what the podcast explores. 299 00:24:49,154 --> 00:24:54,534 And coming up next year, we'll have an exhibition at Tangled art 300 00:24:54,534 --> 00:24:58,079 that features art from the archive, 301 00:24:58,079 --> 00:25:04,836 as well as this podcast to sort of tell this hidden history, which 302 00:25:04,836 --> 00:25:10,091 I think is important to the development of disability art. 303 00:25:10,133 --> 00:25:17,140 So again, with the art, the artist talks, the educational panels, the tours, et cetera, 304 00:25:17,140 --> 00:25:23,355 all of those things will come together to offer a counter-narrative. 305 00:25:23,355 --> 00:25:27,192 And we already know where it will be published? or... 306 00:25:27,192 --> 00:25:33,531 Is that something you can already... already disclose? 307 00:25:33,573 --> 00:25:36,409 Is it on a website? 308 00:25:36,451 --> 00:25:39,329 Yeah, the podcast, when it's completed, 309 00:25:39,371 --> 00:25:45,752 will be published on BEING studio's website, which is BEING studio dot org. 310 00:25:45,752 --> 00:25:49,589 It will also be featured on the podcast 311 00:25:49,589 --> 00:25:53,426 "Disability Saves the World" Which is a podcast by 312 00:25:53,426 --> 00:25:59,975 Dr. Fady Shanouda, which you can find that quite easily. 313 00:26:00,016 --> 00:26:01,476 Thank you. 314 00:26:01,518 --> 00:26:05,647 So you mentioned now you are at TMU, 315 00:26:05,647 --> 00:26:14,823 at Toronto Metropolitan University, and you did a postdoc there. 316 00:26:14,864 --> 00:26:18,243 And now you are an assistant [associate] professor. 317 00:26:18,285 --> 00:26:20,495 What are you doing exactly there? 318 00:26:20,537 --> 00:26:25,625 Yeah, now I'm an associate professor at TMU. 319 00:26:25,959 --> 00:26:31,339 And, yeah, like I said, I'm teaching courses on disability art. 320 00:26:31,381 --> 00:26:33,383 I teach a course 321 00:26:33,425 --> 00:26:39,347 called "Cripping the Arts in Canada," which I think is the first of its kind, probably 322 00:26:39,389 --> 00:26:47,355 one of the only courses on disability arts in Canada and their cultural impact. 323 00:26:47,355 --> 00:26:55,864 I supervise graduate students working in and around the area of disability arts and culture, 324 00:26:55,864 --> 00:27:01,911 and my own research sort of thinks about the cultural impact of disability art, 325 00:27:01,911 --> 00:27:04,497 as well as sort of 326 00:27:04,497 --> 00:27:10,295 what we might call the necropolitical conditions in which we make disability art. 327 00:27:10,295 --> 00:27:14,424 So by necropolitical conditions, I mean 328 00:27:14,466 --> 00:27:19,054 all of the ways that disabled people's lives are threatened, 329 00:27:19,763 --> 00:27:22,932 either materially or 330 00:27:22,932 --> 00:27:27,479 ideologically or some combination of the two. 331 00:27:27,520 --> 00:27:29,147 So 332 00:27:29,564 --> 00:27:34,903 one of the conditions, there's a context that I think a lot about is 333 00:27:34,944 --> 00:27:40,575 Canada's medical assistance in dying [MAID] legislation, which makes it, 334 00:27:40,617 --> 00:27:46,998 you know, as some activists will tell you, which makes it easier for disabled people 335 00:27:46,998 --> 00:27:53,588 sometimes to access death than it is to access life or a fulfilled life. 336 00:27:53,588 --> 00:27:59,094 So to think about, you know, the ramifications of living in a culture 337 00:27:59,135 --> 00:28:03,765 where there's these sort of dominant narratives that 338 00:28:03,807 --> 00:28:07,685 to become disabled is a life not worth living. 339 00:28:07,727 --> 00:28:15,360 When people age into disability, as we often do, and they use that 340 00:28:15,360 --> 00:28:21,074 new embodiment, or shifting embodiment as justification, threatening a life 341 00:28:21,074 --> 00:28:25,954 that sends a loud cultural narrative of the value 342 00:28:25,954 --> 00:28:32,711 or lack of value of a disabled life. 343 00:28:32,711 --> 00:28:35,755 And that translates into 344 00:28:38,174 --> 00:28:44,764 updates amendments to the legislation in which people with physical disabilities, 345 00:28:44,806 --> 00:28:51,396 people with mental health disabilities who are not experiencing terminal conditions, 346 00:28:51,396 --> 00:28:56,526 are able now to access medical assistance in dying. 347 00:28:56,568 --> 00:29:02,991 And the way that that's permissible is, again, through disabled understanding that 348 00:29:03,032 --> 00:29:06,494 a life with disability is not worth living. 349 00:29:06,536 --> 00:29:14,627 And so, you know, some of the saddest cases we hear reported is people who 350 00:29:14,627 --> 00:29:23,595 just for years and years and years, haven't been able to find adequate, accessible housing. 351 00:29:23,595 --> 00:29:27,182 Perhaps they're living unnecessarily 352 00:29:27,223 --> 00:29:33,980 in long term care homes simply because it's the only place where they can access 353 00:29:34,022 --> 00:29:40,278 accessible housing, for example, and then being there and being, you know, 354 00:29:40,320 --> 00:29:51,039 treated, perhaps negligently or in ways that just don't mark a fulfilled life, 355 00:29:51,080 --> 00:30:00,256 and then being sort of invited to consider by physicians whether one might want to 356 00:30:00,256 --> 00:30:07,347 to go down the road of MAID, to elect to have medical assistance in dying, 357 00:30:07,388 --> 00:30:10,975 And then we see people opting for this option 358 00:30:10,975 --> 00:30:14,270 because of the conditions of their lives, right? 359 00:30:14,312 --> 00:30:17,398 So we see this sense of strong message 360 00:30:17,440 --> 00:30:23,696 that Canada's response to ableism and the unbearable toll 361 00:30:23,696 --> 00:30:31,287 that it plays on disabled people in their lives, is not to address ableism 362 00:30:31,329 --> 00:30:34,666 and create more accessible housing, to, you know, 363 00:30:34,707 --> 00:30:43,800 create more work options for adequate and fulfilling and well paying work. 364 00:30:43,842 --> 00:30:47,512 It's not to create a basic income program. 365 00:30:47,512 --> 00:30:51,683 You know,, it's not to create more accessibility 366 00:30:51,724 --> 00:30:59,232 within public life so that people can navigate all aspects of public life as is 367 00:30:59,232 --> 00:31:05,113 protected in the Canadian... with Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms. 368 00:31:05,113 --> 00:31:12,704 Instead, it is to allow disabled people to elect for death. 369 00:31:12,704 --> 00:31:16,124 I mean, this is a really striking, 370 00:31:16,124 --> 00:31:24,883 a really devastating context in which we as disabled people have to live. 371 00:31:24,924 --> 00:31:31,723 And so creating art, which in itself is a creative engagement which sort of 372 00:31:31,764 --> 00:31:37,395 confronts this idea that disabled people are not engaged. 373 00:31:37,395 --> 00:31:40,440 If we're making art, In fact, we are. 374 00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:43,610 We are all of these things. 375 00:31:43,651 --> 00:31:47,655 But many of the art that disabled people create 376 00:31:47,655 --> 00:31:52,076 present disability through a new vantage, 377 00:31:52,076 --> 00:31:57,874 not through an ableist's vantage, but through the vantage of perhaps disability pride, 378 00:31:57,874 --> 00:32:06,716 more affirmative vantages, or more vantages of disability justice, these kinds of things. 379 00:32:06,716 --> 00:32:13,890 So another show that Tangled hosted a few years ago was called "Flourishing." 380 00:32:13,932 --> 00:32:22,565 And it was curated by Dr. Catherine Frazee, who's a longtime disability rights activist 381 00:32:22,565 --> 00:32:31,699 and one of the strongest voices that challenged the impact of medical assistance in dying. 382 00:32:31,741 --> 00:32:37,955 So she curated a group exhibition featuring disabled people making artwork. 383 00:32:37,955 --> 00:32:41,376 And the artwork wasn't, not all of it was 384 00:32:41,417 --> 00:32:44,587 necessarily directly addressing MAID, 385 00:32:44,587 --> 00:32:52,345 but together, and through her characterial statement, it demonstrated how disabled people 386 00:32:52,345 --> 00:33:00,311 can flourish, as opposed to MAID, when given access to community, 387 00:33:00,311 --> 00:33:06,359 you know, accessible spaces, the time and the right to create and that kind of thing. 388 00:33:06,401 --> 00:33:15,159 So I wasn't involved with that directly, but that sort of... that is a source of inspiration. 389 00:33:15,159 --> 00:33:21,582 And so I've been working with my colleague at the School of Disability Studies, 390 00:33:21,582 --> 00:33:26,713 Dr. Esther Ignagni, to create this... 391 00:33:26,713 --> 00:33:30,091 So, initially we were creating... 392 00:33:30,091 --> 00:33:32,969 We were hosting what are called Death Cafes 393 00:33:32,969 --> 00:33:37,598 which are places where people get together and talk about death. 394 00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:40,560 And we thought, you know, wouldn't it be interesting 395 00:33:40,601 --> 00:33:46,149 to gather together disabled people to talk about death in the context of MAID? 396 00:33:46,149 --> 00:33:53,781 And what we found when we initially started was people have all kinds of 397 00:33:53,823 --> 00:33:59,120 understandings of MAID as is people's rights, of course. 398 00:33:59,162 --> 00:34:03,416 And so we were having these very disconnected conversations 399 00:34:03,416 --> 00:34:08,504 wherein people would defend their right to access MAID 400 00:34:08,546 --> 00:34:13,050 and perhaps don't think about the political consequences, right? 401 00:34:13,092 --> 00:34:16,471 Because so often, medical assistances in dying 402 00:34:16,471 --> 00:34:22,435 is represented as freedom of choice, when in fact, if you look at it 403 00:34:22,435 --> 00:34:29,275 through a disability studies perspective, we can think about, again, how sort of... 404 00:34:29,275 --> 00:34:35,698 how it is offered in place of adequate supports for living a good life. 405 00:34:35,740 --> 00:34:39,160 And so we wanted to introduce 406 00:34:39,202 --> 00:34:46,083 this context to people in our Death Cafes, not necessarily to teach them, you know, 407 00:34:46,125 --> 00:34:50,296 this is the right way to think about something, but just to introduce a 408 00:34:50,296 --> 00:34:56,761 perspective, and see if or how or if not, that changed 409 00:34:56,803 --> 00:35:01,599 their perspective on MAID, which, again, was so often informed by 410 00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:07,772 a dominant discourse, which there's good reason for that. 411 00:35:07,814 --> 00:35:10,566 The dominant discourse is more easily 412 00:35:10,608 --> 00:35:14,737 accessed than a disability studies critique. 413 00:35:14,737 --> 00:35:16,489 But we wanted to... 414 00:35:16,489 --> 00:35:22,161 We wanted to introduce critique, but not really in a didactic way, right? 415 00:35:22,161 --> 00:35:24,622 We didn't want to sit people down and say: 416 00:35:24,622 --> 00:35:28,251 here's how we think about MAID, don't you agree? Right? 417 00:35:28,251 --> 00:35:31,254 We wanted to sort of offer... 418 00:35:31,295 --> 00:35:37,593 offer different perspective in a way that people could engage with, disagree with, 419 00:35:37,593 --> 00:35:43,558 take up, not take up, you know, think about, ponder those kind of things. 420 00:35:43,558 --> 00:35:50,314 So what we did was we started to work with disabled artists to create 421 00:35:50,314 --> 00:35:56,821 what we were calling short performatives, which were very sort of loosely based on 422 00:35:56,863 --> 00:36:02,910 some of the revamp that we were doing around MAID, so that these artists would sort of 423 00:36:02,910 --> 00:36:06,914 create these ten minute performances which they would perform 424 00:36:06,914 --> 00:36:13,880 at the beginning of a Death Cafe, and it would inform the conversation. 425 00:36:13,921 --> 00:36:19,218 And we thought this worked really beautifully as just sort of a provocation 426 00:36:19,260 --> 00:36:25,141 rather than a lecture or, you know, something more didactic, as I've said. 427 00:36:25,182 --> 00:36:31,439 So we worked with artists to sort of create these performatives. 428 00:36:31,480 --> 00:36:36,485 So to give an example, there was a very famous case in Canada 429 00:36:36,485 --> 00:36:43,242 of this man named Archie Rolland, who was, you know, a white, wealthy 430 00:36:43,284 --> 00:36:47,997 man living in Quebec, had all the privilege in the world. 431 00:36:47,997 --> 00:36:50,374 So it's important to say that. 432 00:36:50,416 --> 00:36:53,753 And he was diagnosed with ALS 433 00:36:53,753 --> 00:37:00,843 and sent to live in a long term care home outside of Montreal. 434 00:37:00,885 --> 00:37:03,137 And it was fine, he was, you know, 435 00:37:03,137 --> 00:37:06,557 receiving good quality of care, you know. 436 00:37:06,557 --> 00:37:12,104 He wasn't thrilled about his position, but, you know, it was what it was. 437 00:37:12,146 --> 00:37:16,275 He could, you know, live a fulfilled life. 438 00:37:16,275 --> 00:37:21,656 And then this long term care home closed down and he was moved to another one. 439 00:37:21,697 --> 00:37:24,283 And he had the opposite experience. 440 00:37:24,325 --> 00:37:28,704 And he started writing letters to the Montreal Gazette, 441 00:37:28,704 --> 00:37:31,791 sort of explaining what he was experiencing. 442 00:37:31,791 --> 00:37:35,795 So he would explain things like, you know, 443 00:37:35,795 --> 00:37:41,634 because of short staff and because of lack of resources, which we now know 444 00:37:41,634 --> 00:37:47,515 so much more about because of COVID, but he was writing this pre COVID. 445 00:37:47,515 --> 00:37:51,811 He was saying, you know: "People aren't shutting off the lights overnight, 446 00:37:51,811 --> 00:37:55,898 so I can't sleep; I'm not getting moved in my bed enough, 447 00:37:55,898 --> 00:38:00,111 so I'm getting this huge bed sores; 448 00:38:00,111 --> 00:38:04,198 and nobody's moistening my lips." 449 00:38:04,198 --> 00:38:08,160 So it seems like something you might not think about. 450 00:38:08,202 --> 00:38:14,667 But if you're not able to speak or to lick your lips or produce saliva, you need 451 00:38:14,709 --> 00:38:19,922 somebody to moisten your lips so they don't get cracked, right? 452 00:38:19,922 --> 00:38:27,013 So he recounted all of his sort of quotidian acts that he was experiencing. 453 00:38:27,013 --> 00:38:30,766 And then, you know, ultimately he said, 454 00:38:30,766 --> 00:38:33,978 you know, I can't bear it anymore. 455 00:38:34,395 --> 00:38:37,732 And the doctors are constantly suggesting 456 00:38:37,732 --> 00:38:39,734 that I... that I... 457 00:38:40,568 --> 00:38:47,825 that I receive medical assistance in dying and I'm going to take it. 458 00:38:47,825 --> 00:38:54,040 Like, I just can't spend my days in so much pain and so much frustration. 459 00:38:54,040 --> 00:39:00,296 But I really want you to know, public, through public letters, that I'm not 460 00:39:00,338 --> 00:39:07,053 choosing MAID because I can't bear to live as someone with ALS. 461 00:39:07,094 --> 00:39:10,347 I'm choosing MAID because I'm not... 462 00:39:10,347 --> 00:39:16,312 The conditions are not such that facilitate a good life. 463 00:39:16,312 --> 00:39:21,776 And they could be. These are systemic barriers that I'm facing. 464 00:39:21,776 --> 00:39:25,780 And so we were quite taken by these letters. 465 00:39:25,821 --> 00:39:30,743 And so we worked with Sean Lee, who's a disabled artist, 466 00:39:30,743 --> 00:39:37,208 the director of Tangled Art + Disability, Carrie Perrault, who's a mad artist, 467 00:39:37,208 --> 00:39:41,212 and Vanessa Dion Fletcher, who we spoke about earlier. 468 00:39:41,253 --> 00:39:45,966 And together we created this short performance 469 00:39:45,966 --> 00:39:52,306 in which we were talking about the importance of having our lips being moistened. 470 00:39:52,306 --> 00:39:56,268 And they were performing instructions, medical instructions, 471 00:39:56,268 --> 00:39:59,605 in which they moistened each other's lips. 472 00:39:59,647 --> 00:40:02,400 So it was sort of this 473 00:40:02,441 --> 00:40:09,323 interesting, intimate, sort of odd performance, but it provided us 474 00:40:09,323 --> 00:40:17,164 a way to talk about sort of a small act, as a way to sort of catalyze a whole other corporal 475 00:40:17,206 --> 00:40:23,671 conversation about the conditions in which people are forced to take MAID 476 00:40:23,671 --> 00:40:29,718 as an invitation to people to think about MAID perhaps more critically. 477 00:40:29,760 --> 00:40:34,974 And then in the Death Cafes that followed that performance, we were able to have 478 00:40:35,015 --> 00:40:42,314 much different conversations based on our shared experience with that performance. 479 00:40:42,356 --> 00:40:45,818 So I say all that as an example of sort of 480 00:40:45,818 --> 00:40:49,530 the way that we can integrate disability studies perspectives 481 00:40:49,530 --> 00:40:55,286 to cultural events or discourses, and use art to initiate 482 00:40:55,327 --> 00:41:00,541 different kinds of conversations around those discourses. 483 00:41:00,583 --> 00:41:03,419 And there is also another project in which you're involved, 484 00:41:03,419 --> 00:41:08,507 which is Bodies in Translation, right? Can you talk about that project? 485 00:41:08,507 --> 00:41:14,221 Yes, 'cause that's sort of the broader grant of all of this work that I'm talking about. 486 00:41:14,263 --> 00:41:17,391 So Bodies in Translation was a seven year grant. 487 00:41:17,433 --> 00:41:21,478 We're just finishing it up now. 488 00:41:21,979 --> 00:41:23,898 It's a partnership grant. 489 00:41:23,939 --> 00:41:27,985 So we had over 70, I think, partners on that grant 490 00:41:27,985 --> 00:41:33,699 who were artists, academic organizations, this kind of thing. 491 00:41:33,741 --> 00:41:36,535 And the nature of a partnership grant 492 00:41:36,535 --> 00:41:42,500 is that you can seed different projects in different places. 493 00:41:42,541 --> 00:41:48,047 So we had this whole network of people doing work like I just described. 494 00:41:48,088 --> 00:41:53,677 And in fact, the work that I just described was part of Bodies in Translation. 495 00:41:53,677 --> 00:41:57,306 It was funded through a few channels, but 496 00:41:57,348 --> 00:42:05,397 supported by Bodies in Translation, where we were sort of investing in disability art 497 00:42:05,397 --> 00:42:10,069 and thinking about how it could shift conversations about disability rights, 498 00:42:10,069 --> 00:42:15,407 justice, necropolitics, accessibility, et cetera. 499 00:42:15,449 --> 00:42:17,243 And we were also interested... 500 00:42:17,243 --> 00:42:22,498 we were interested in the power of disability art to enact social change, as 501 00:42:22,539 --> 00:42:30,965 well as fat art, aging art, art produced through a decolonial perspective. 502 00:42:31,006 --> 00:42:38,931 So we had all of these sort of work art pilot projects going on across Canada, 503 00:42:38,973 --> 00:42:45,312 across Ontario, really, and then teams of researchers who would follow these grants 504 00:42:45,354 --> 00:42:52,403 and think about, you know, writing about them in articles and things like that. 505 00:42:52,444 --> 00:42:59,493 And so we produced lots of, you know, exhibitions, performances, symposia. 506 00:42:59,535 --> 00:43:07,209 We produced the Cripping the Arts symposia, which happened at Harbourfront Centre a few years ago, 507 00:43:07,209 --> 00:43:12,506 in which lots of international disability stakeholders 508 00:43:12,506 --> 00:43:17,219 gathered together to talk about the future of disability arts. 509 00:43:17,261 --> 00:43:21,223 We had artists at residencies, you know, all of these things, 510 00:43:21,223 --> 00:43:24,268 and they were all very well documented. 511 00:43:24,310 --> 00:43:29,398 So we created podcasts and short documentaries 512 00:43:29,440 --> 00:43:37,364 and, you know, think pieces about all of this work that was happening. 513 00:43:37,448 --> 00:43:41,994 And now we're just sort of in the final stages of creating what's called 514 00:43:41,994 --> 00:43:45,831 a knowledge platform, which really is 515 00:43:45,831 --> 00:43:52,546 an accessible, free to access website where we... 516 00:43:53,464 --> 00:44:01,055 we put all this documentation, everything from articles to documentaries. 517 00:44:01,096 --> 00:44:06,935 And we've created what we call learning modules around these outputs 518 00:44:06,935 --> 00:44:15,819 so that people, teachers, community, educators, artists, et cetera, 519 00:44:15,861 --> 00:44:23,160 can integrate these outputs, integrate this research activity 520 00:44:23,202 --> 00:44:28,540 of Bodies in Translation into their teaching, and sort of 521 00:44:28,582 --> 00:44:35,422 use this work to talk about, to talk about disability studies ideas, right? 522 00:44:35,422 --> 00:44:42,096 So they could perhaps show a video of the performatives that I was just talking about 523 00:44:42,096 --> 00:44:49,103 and use that performance to talk about a disability studies critique of MAID. 524 00:44:49,144 --> 00:44:52,398 Or they could show a documentary about 525 00:44:52,398 --> 00:44:58,153 Vanessa Dion Fletcher's work and use that to talk about the connection between 526 00:44:58,153 --> 00:45:03,450 disability justice and decolonization, this kind of thing. 527 00:45:03,492 --> 00:45:06,495 So that was an incredible project because of 528 00:45:06,537 --> 00:45:12,543 sort of the range of artistic activities that we were able to cultivate. 529 00:45:12,584 --> 00:45:20,551 And I think in so doing, we really sort of raised the platform of disability art. 530 00:45:20,551 --> 00:45:24,138 One of the projects that we worked on quite a bit was 531 00:45:24,138 --> 00:45:30,060 around relaxed performance, which you probably know quite a bit about that as a musician, 532 00:45:30,060 --> 00:45:36,150 but developing training modules again and 533 00:45:36,150 --> 00:45:41,488 working with concert halls, music education programs, 534 00:45:41,530 --> 00:45:49,288 theaters, et cetera, to integrate relaxed performance into their programs, 535 00:45:49,288 --> 00:45:56,503 and then again to follow up with interviews as we go to assess the impact of 536 00:45:56,503 --> 00:46:03,594 of introducing this cultural accessibility practice into what might be mainstream 537 00:46:03,594 --> 00:46:11,268 approaches to teaching and delivering the performing arts. 538 00:46:11,310 --> 00:46:15,314 And there's a website, bodiesintranslation 539 00:46:15,314 --> 00:46:22,821 dot org - I think it's dot org - that I would encourage anyone to go to. 540 00:46:22,863 --> 00:46:31,538 Let me just get the website, but I would encourage anyone to go to. 541 00:46:31,705 --> 00:46:39,087 Right now we have most of our cultural outputs on that grant. 542 00:46:39,129 --> 00:46:40,964 On that website. 543 00:46:41,006 --> 00:46:45,052 Sorry, the website is bodiesintranslation dot CA. 544 00:46:45,093 --> 00:46:46,470 That's the website. 545 00:46:46,470 --> 00:46:50,390 And then soon that website will take you to 546 00:46:50,390 --> 00:46:53,519 what I'm describing as the knowledge platform. 547 00:46:53,519 --> 00:47:00,943 So you'll have access to all of the projects that were supported by the grant. 548 00:47:00,984 --> 00:47:04,947 I will put links on ArtsAbly's website. 549 00:47:04,988 --> 00:47:06,698 I will put a link on that. 550 00:47:06,740 --> 00:47:09,117 Yeah, thank you. 551 00:47:09,117 --> 00:47:12,913 One other thing I'll say about 552 00:47:12,913 --> 00:47:18,252 Bodies in Translation website is we also have an artist directory, 553 00:47:18,252 --> 00:47:20,254 So it's sort of a... 554 00:47:21,088 --> 00:47:24,550 Pages, like the Yellow Pages, where you can - 555 00:47:24,550 --> 00:47:28,971 where you're introduced to artists and 556 00:47:29,012 --> 00:47:31,890 their practice and their contact information. 557 00:47:31,932 --> 00:47:37,312 So if you're looking to hire or work with a disabled creative, 558 00:47:37,312 --> 00:47:40,816 that directory is really useful. 559 00:47:40,858 --> 00:47:44,194 Another thing we have on that website right now 560 00:47:44,194 --> 00:47:50,450 is what we call our vital practices document, which is, 561 00:47:50,492 --> 00:47:57,958 I think, a hundred pages document in which we explain how to make events accessible, 562 00:47:57,958 --> 00:48:04,756 how to work with live captioners, ASL interpreters, live performances, 563 00:48:04,756 --> 00:48:10,178 hybrid events, all of these things, and we continually update that. 564 00:48:10,220 --> 00:48:14,975 So if you're interested in integrating these practices, 565 00:48:14,975 --> 00:48:18,478 that's a great resource to be used. 566 00:48:18,520 --> 00:48:20,647 Thank you. That's great. 567 00:48:20,689 --> 00:48:23,525 That's exactly why ArtsAbly is here, 568 00:48:23,525 --> 00:48:30,365 it's to try to connect all these initiatives that we can find here and there and try to have 569 00:48:30,407 --> 00:48:33,201 that and talk about it, because it should be known. 570 00:48:33,243 --> 00:48:35,037 It's really important. 571 00:48:35,037 --> 00:48:38,248 And I have a fond memory of Cripping the Arts. 572 00:48:38,290 --> 00:48:41,918 It was really transformative for me 573 00:48:41,918 --> 00:48:47,591 to be able to interact also with the artists and to bring friends with me and 574 00:48:47,591 --> 00:48:56,350 try to see their own feedback about - what did you live in that experience? 575 00:48:56,350 --> 00:48:59,311 And that was really important. 576 00:48:59,311 --> 00:49:01,980 So thank you. That's great. 577 00:49:02,022 --> 00:49:03,690 Yeah, thank you. 578 00:49:03,732 --> 00:49:09,071 So I have a last question for you. 579 00:49:09,071 --> 00:49:11,782 In your career, you've met a lot of 580 00:49:11,823 --> 00:49:14,743 different artists and a lot of different people. 581 00:49:14,785 --> 00:49:21,166 If you had one person who really inspired you to name, who would it be? 582 00:49:21,375 --> 00:49:24,336 Oh, that's a great question. 583 00:49:25,504 --> 00:49:27,673 Oh, that's a hard one. 584 00:49:27,673 --> 00:49:29,675 [Laughs.] 585 00:49:30,926 --> 00:49:35,722 I think I... I mean, I'm really fascinated by 586 00:49:35,764 --> 00:49:41,395 Carmen Papalia, who's a blind artist working in Vancouver. 587 00:49:41,436 --> 00:49:47,734 And he does lots of social experiments as performances. 588 00:49:47,776 --> 00:49:55,158 And he thinks about how he is understood in the public culture as a blind person. 589 00:49:55,158 --> 00:50:02,749 And he plays with his mobility devices in really creative ways. 590 00:50:02,749 --> 00:50:07,754 So, for example, he has a performance. 591 00:50:07,838 --> 00:50:11,299 The name won't come to me, I don't think. 592 00:50:12,050 --> 00:50:16,304 it might just be called "Mobility Device." 593 00:50:16,304 --> 00:50:19,933 But anyway, instead of walking around with 594 00:50:19,975 --> 00:50:28,150 a white cane, as he often does, he worked with a high school marching band and they 595 00:50:28,150 --> 00:50:34,114 would follow him or surround him as he walked around the city and play musical 596 00:50:34,114 --> 00:50:39,786 notations to signify when an intersection was coming up. 597 00:50:39,828 --> 00:50:46,668 If you turn right or left or walk upstairs and down a curb. 598 00:50:46,668 --> 00:50:54,760 There he is sort of zooming around the city, sort of taking his cues from the music. 599 00:50:54,760 --> 00:51:01,808 So it's such a great sort of creative exploration about world building, right? 600 00:51:01,808 --> 00:51:07,397 What would the world look like if you were able to access 601 00:51:07,439 --> 00:51:14,362 the world in a way that made sense for you, which for him is auditory cues rather 602 00:51:14,404 --> 00:51:20,494 than a white cane which, you know, serves - really to keep him disoriented, right? 603 00:51:20,494 --> 00:51:24,122 And again, this idea of like trying to access a world 604 00:51:24,122 --> 00:51:29,753 that wasn't built for him and sort of the challenges that arises 605 00:51:29,753 --> 00:51:36,051 but with this marching band, which of course, you know, likely isn't sustainable 606 00:51:36,051 --> 00:51:43,225 but in the interest of this performance really sort of joyful, exuberant 607 00:51:43,266 --> 00:51:50,148 experience that we all witness, I think it is called "Mobility Device." 608 00:51:50,774 --> 00:51:56,696 Thank you. Yeah, I will also put a link on that because I saw some of these videos. 609 00:51:56,738 --> 00:52:01,284 They are really well done and, you know, people don't realize 610 00:52:01,284 --> 00:52:07,999 at first what is happening [Laughs]. And yeah, it's really, it's a great artist. 611 00:52:07,999 --> 00:52:09,417 I really like that. 612 00:52:09,459 --> 00:52:10,919 Yeah. 613 00:52:11,503 --> 00:52:13,713 Okay.. Thank you so much. 614 00:52:13,713 --> 00:52:16,550 Yeah, thank you, this was fun, thank you. 615 00:52:16,550 --> 00:52:23,056 And all the best for All your projects and everything that is happening right now. 616 00:52:23,098 --> 00:52:28,311 Okay, you too. Good luck with ArtAbility [ArtsAbly]. That's great. 617 00:52:28,311 --> 00:52:30,397 Thank you. 618 00:52:30,438 --> 00:52:31,439 Okay, bye.