On April 29, 2022, there was a virtual discussion between five disabled artists making critical work about disability: Andy Slater, Sky Cubacub, Christopher Samuel, Rebecca-Eli Long, and Gary Cannone. It was held at and through the Multicultural Center at Illinois State University, with sponsorship from the School of Art, Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Sociology, and the Office of the President, and the moderator was me, Bert Stabler. Youtube won't provide captions for a video this long, but there is a highly imperfect auto-generated transcript of the conversation, which I have pasted below with several corrections. It's a thoroughly brilliant panel, and I hope you enjoy it!
Automatically generated transcript:
12:02:46 BERT: Okay, Hi! everybody, both on zoom. And there are some some folks here in the Multicultural Center at Illinois State University.
12:02:58 My name is Bert Stabler, and I am an assistant professor of our education here, and I am beyond thrilled and honored to have 5 just fantastic artists here to talk about and present sort of the work. that They these are sort of
12:03:17 disabled their work, refers and relates back to disability and all kinds of surprising ways, and i'm gonna not talk too much, because this is a short, a very short event.
12:03:36 So 1 h a day for 5 artists that could all easily pick up more than the number with their fantastic work.
12:03:45 But i'm gonna begin really quick with the ISU school of art life labor at land acknowledgment.
12:03:54 I took it, even though i'm sorry if i'm yelling to it.
12:03:59 The Wonsook Kim School of Art acknowledges the African diaspora violently robbed of life, labor, land, safety, community, culture, and dignity during and after slavery. We also acknowledge those violently robbed of life, labor, land, safety, community, culture, and dignity through sexuality, gender, race, wealth, language, and ability hierarchies. These hierarchies are and have been sustained by a range of power formations, including the state.
The Wonsook Kim School of Art acknowledges that the Illinois State University, the Center for the Visual Arts, and all we do, takes place on the land of multiple native nations. These lands were once home to the Illini, Peoria and the Myaamia, and later due to colonial encroachment and displacement to the Fox, Potawatomi, Sauk, Shawnee, Winnebago, Ioway, Mascouten, Piankashaw, Wea, and Kickapoo Nations. We strive to honor the ongoing legacies of these and other indigenous peoples who may have been excluded in this acknowledgement due to historical inaccuracy and erasure.
12:05:21 And of course, acknowledgements are insufficient, and performative, but we do need to state them.
12:05:29 Yeah, I pretty much want to just go into the artists' presentations.
12:05:35 I have introductory bios for each of the 5 artists will be presenting today.
12:05:41 Those 5 artists are Gary Canonne, Sky Cubacub, Rebecca Eli-Long
12:05:47 Christopher Samuel, and Andy Slater. I will read their intro while before they present them.
12:05:55 I'm just gonna in that order which is the last name order I'm going to read the intro and then turn over the floor to them, and they'll make a short presentation just telling you a very little bit
12:06:09 about who they are, and what they make so i'm gonna start with with Gary.
12:06:16 Gary Cannone (Guerino Giovanni Cannone) was born in 1964 to Italian immigrants working factory jobs in Chicago. He learned english from American 70s television and was obsessed with Norm Crosby, Carol Burnett, the Three Stooges, Mad Magazine, Wacky Packages, Tom & Jerry, and the Marx Brothers. He played in the early 80s punk rock band The Leeches but his interest in performing music waned and he decided to become an artist. Cannone exhibited conceptual and often dadaistic art while headquartered from Chicago, Rome, and Los Angeles until he was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2013. As the disease took a toll on his body, he took a hiatus but began to work again digitally using social media to distribute art and jokes. Interest in his communal project of parody album covers “Albums by Conceptual Artists” led to invitations to exhibit again. He began exploring the effects of his disease on his body and brain which led him back to the comedic tropes he loved so much as a youngster; addressing his disability through the lens of slapstick rather than advocacy.
Cannone’s recent work can be described as a decidedly reductive art executed with the attitude of a prop comic. The resulting ensemble explores fragility, instability, urges, communication, humiliation, tension, torture, gravity, parody, dexterity, and death.
12:07:57 take it away, Gary.
GARY: Alright. thank you, Thank you.
12:08:05 I am about to share my screen.
12:08:20 I apologize. Oh, it's not working what is it working?
12:08:29 I do get something when I have share screen. Okay, hang on now that's my you guys Hmm and i'm not.
12:08:47 Oh, wait a minute. There we go. Okay, I apologize.
12:08:53 No worries. okay, really i'm gonna try to go really fast and go through 3 bodies of work that i've sort of set up first thing to know Well, first thing i'll talk about is
12:09:10 this piece, which is just basically a digital collage for lack of a better word.
12:09:17 I had just sort of gotten my like first came, and I was out taking photographs.
12:09:24 I was really kind of fascinated by people propping up their air conditioners, and I saw a relationship between that and Richard Serra's pieces was only until, like later, that I realize that that this sort of mirror my
12:09:44 body, cause the the the 2 by 4, or whatever piece of what was sort of simulating, like a cane and the air conditioner as my body. this is just a metaphorical reading i've
12:10:02 had since then, but I think it kind of really pans out emotionally.
12:10:09 at the time I didn't know I was dealing with disability in my work.
12:10:17 I kind of eased into it. I was invited to a show of artists with disabilities.
12:10:25 This is a New Yorker cartoon.
12:10:26 I ordered a framed enlargement of it from Conde Nast, and had it sent to the gallery.
12:10:34 Basically it's an art critic looking over at a piece of work done by a pumpkin and the critic is saying, "Do you mean good or good for a pumpkin?"
12:10:46 I wanted the yeah, the situation of seeing work by disabled people to I wanted to the the viewer to think about like, How am I judging?
12:11:04 Is that my judging does by stand? by. What sort of standards am I judging?
12:11:06 It. I hope that makes sense. Am I judging this as
12:11:14 Am I giving it like a category in terms of value, not in terms of, but inside.
12:11:26 This piece is based on shop signs where one usually has
12:11:33 something like, "Our shop has gone so and so days without an accident."
12:11:39 I right now. this this number, which auto increments every day, never really gets above 7 or 8, as my falls sort of continue.
12:11:51 I have multiple sclerosis. I have balance issues.
12:11:56 I I have a number of other things but right now that's the most relevant dealing with insurance a lot.
12:12:08 And megacorporations like mega places like Aetna, in order to get claims filled.
12:12:21 Anybody who kind of deals with long term illness knows this sort of labyrinthine bureaucracy of it.
12:12:30 So as bert mentioned earlier.
12:12:34 I was in the the like early eighties punk movement in Chicago.
12:12:38 I used to make flyers. DIY flyers for my band, and I thought it would be great to do a diy flyer for my neurologist, and with all the information about everything kind of done in a
12:12:56 DIY fashion, as opposed to my multinational insurance agency.
12:13:08 Now i'm going into a series which I guess deals with kind of living in the world of risk of the built environment which I feel like, I do I feel like i'm always at risk whenever I leave the
12:13:22 house, or you know, sometimes within the house. these are
12:13:29 These are chairs that I made out of butcher paper.
12:13:33 And they're practically weightless, I have to kind of cut off when I've shown them, and there there was this great there is this sort of great urge by users to sit down or
12:13:49 see somebody sit down in these pieces, but to do so would would injure them greatly.
12:13:58 This piece is a stairway made where the X, Y and Z.
12:14:04 Coordinates of every corner via each step is different.
12:14:10 So that, each step is wobbly, and would be sort of very difficult to to go up.
12:14:19 I feel I mean, basically, as I walk down steps they always feel wobbly and out of place.
12:14:28 And this piece was an attempt to make my experience relatable.
12:14:37 Not necessarily telling the viewer that I was trying to do that, or the user.
12:14:44 This is another piece of furniture made with.
12:14:49 the upholstery that's usually inside furniture.
12:14:53 But as the furniture itself again, this is just foam, it can't hold up a body of a human being, or really any animal, maybe yeah, insects, of course.
12:15:11 Then I got into like a series of items.
12:15:18 where, once the term "brick on the ceiling" came into my head, and so I made this piece, which is brick on the ceiling.
12:15:29 And I was interested in a lot of kind of plays with art history as well as the notion of something falling on you.
12:15:43 I was really interested in a lot of the kind of like key precepts that people like Richard Serra and Carl Andre, and as well as like
12:15:59 I live in Los Angeles or Tongva nation and it's the land of earthquakes, and so I made this series and this is a 25 pound barbell weight, the stack of
12:16:23 dishes. this is, you know what a frying pan is.
12:16:33 paint can, Pabst blue ribbon, which I admit really kind of doesn't have any kind of conceptual integrity with the rest of the series.
12:16:46 But the can graphic. I liked it.
12:16:50 It was weird, because, like last last time I spoke was at Art Center in California, and I was asked about the
12:17:01 You know the notion of the ready made and and it's sort of strange, because I had actually never thought about that with these works.
12:17:12 The main difference is, I'm interested in the properties.
12:17:17 The weight, the physics of these objects and and the sort of phenomenological relationship between the viewer and these objects.
12:17:31 And they're not indifferent, they are very sort of specifically chosen, and each of them has some relationship to our history, but also what I haven't mentioned is that later I found out almost all these objects
12:17:50 were in Tom and Jerry cartoons. So speaking of mice, this this this piece, but if taking the taking sort of risk element- this is 15 triggered mouse traps. It's
12:18:14 just a panel with 15 mouse traps, that kind of plastic.
12:18:21 Victor mouse traps, and they're they're all set, and I was just sort of really interested in getting the viewer into a space where where they know how close or how far they can get from a piece or sort of
12:18:39 to be conscious of their proximity to a piece that's on the wall.
12:18:49 Mice traps were that were the sort of good thing that seemed best for the idea.
12:18:54 Now i'm kind of going into the last series of pieces that i'm gonna show you, Bert will tell you it's really hard for me to be brief.
12:19:05 So. this is the the word plop in ASL. my dad has Parkinson's, and he's deaf, and but you know he does not know English. so
12:19:18 So the the prospect of teaching him ASL was really difficult. But I was really interested in ASL words, and how they're meant to simulate the sound of
12:19:32 What they represent, a sort of like merging of the signifier and signified.
12:19:39 But I noticed that this sort of was exclusive to the deaf community, to some extent.
12:19:45 Of course I think it's problematic maybe that I am talking about a community of which I am not part.
12:19:51 I will take that criticism. So this says Plop, plop is a sound
12:20:01 Those of us who are hearing knows kind of what plop means.
12:20:11 Something kind of falling in the water and you know Maybe that's communicated to the deaf community.
12:20:17 Of course they know that, they'll probably know the meaning of the word plop. but
12:20:24 The provenance of it. It's kind of curious about this next series, which I think is the last series I'm gonna show you in order to stay in my 8 min window, is I suffer from nominal aphasia
12:20:40 where you and and everybody does to to some extent, some worse than others.
12:20:47 I am sort of getting worse. according to my latest neuropsych.
12:20:53 Evaluation. for about a 4 or 5 month period, and I still do this regularly.
12:21:02 I write down the words that I can't speak at the moment, like if, like for example, in this one, I was trying to tell my wife to turn right into the alley.
12:21:19 But none of the words came, that phrase did not come to me.
12:21:23 I couldn't say it if I am later able to remember what I had meant to say.
12:21:31 I'll take notes of it, and a number it gets made with all those words.
12:21:38 They are sort of kind of almost an unintended poetry of of the forgotten for me.
12:21:51 So if you see some, some have just incredibly uninteresting words.
12:21:58 But combined, it might be good. this one has flesh eating
12:22:06 And, can you charge my iphone?
12:22:13 This one. Yeah, I don't know this one I may have shown before.
12:22:18 And this is the last series here on the last ones.
12:22:24 I'm gonna show you these are a little bit different. these are bloopers.
12:22:26 One thing that I was really interested in, I grew up with America's funniest home videos and shit like that, and you know there's always that line between something funny and something being harmful and you know as was mentioned
12:22:43 earlier my interest in slapstick. so I give you 2 examples this one.
12:22:49 There's a lot of nominal things, and it dropped a book, dropped the jar of peanut butter, spilt coffee, dropped the quarter, kicked the glass off a table, dropped remote control a couple of times spilled
12:23:01 coffee, but you know Then, falling out of bed two straight nights, falling while chasing my cat.
12:23:08 That escape etc., January of this year, though I had I fell down on concrete and cracked my ribs and collapsed.
12:23:22 My left lung. When I got out of the hospital I fell down again, and had to go back to the hospital.
12:23:34 I spilled a bottle of painkillers, and I hit my head trying to pick up the painkillers.
12:23:40 So This one kind of is a little bit like darker, but a kind of accurate.
12:23:50 I guess portrayal of my January of this year.
12:23:56 And finally, this is the last image I have and I don't know necessarily know.
12:23:59 I do more work than this and some of it doesn't overtly relate to my disability.
12:24:07 It might on some level that I am not aware of.
12:24:11 This piece is called Clown Shoes, and it is just based on the pieces of wood people put out to lean paintings against the wall.
12:24:29 I did not have the the shoelaces but I did paint it red.
12:24:38 And I actually didn't even call it clown shoes originally, but like 3 or 4 people told me they were clown shoes. so I just accepted that
12:24:57 that's what I brought to show.
BERT: Thank you gary that was fabulous.
12:25:17 And
12:25:18 And you know, or or the 5, and you know maybe somebody find that.
12:25:23 But currently 4 of the 5 people in this symposium are part of a blog that i'm doing called institutional model, and Gary's in there with with some of these embroidered pieces Thank you so much Gary
12:25:41 next in our succession is Sky Cubacub. I'm really thrilled
12:25:52 I'm gonna read very intro, your bio, Sky
12:25:57 Sky Cubacub (They/Them/Xey/Xem/Xyr) is a non-binary xenogender and disabled Filipinx queer from Chicago, IL. They are the creator of Rebirth Garments, a line of wearables for trans, queer and disabled people of all sizes and ages, which started in summer 2014. Sky is the editor of the Radical Visibility Zine, a full color cut and paste style zine that celebrates disabled queer life, with an emphasis on joy. As a multidisciplinary artist, Sky is interested in fulfilling the needs for disabled queer life, with an emphasis on joy. Additionally they are the Access Brat and the editor of a section on ethics and inclusion called “Cancel & Gretel” at literary fashion magazine “Just Femme and Dandy”. Sky has also created a queer fashion program series with Chicago Public Library Called Radical Fit.
12:27:04 Thank you, Sky, take it away.
SKY: i'm Sky Cubacub, and I use them, and xem pronounce I had surgery yesterday to remove my right ovary cyst and the intubation tube scraped
12:27:17 my vocal cords so my throat is very sore and painful, and i'm having Bryce
12:27:23 Speak for me off camera, i'll slow down for the rest. i'll do an audio description of myself.
12:27:33 I am small and Filipinx. neurodivergent, and have no apparent disabilities.
12:27:40 I have makeup that looks like spiky triangles under one eye and dark blue lipstick I'm.
12:27:50 Wearing a scale mail
12:27:55 Head piece in pink purple circuits. And yeah, laser neon cut pink, queer crip symbol earrings which are a symbol.
12:28:08 I created using the newer accessibility icon and the trans symbol smashed together.
12:28:13 I have a neon and dual tone crop top on that features fabric with my late father's paintings, and a pink and lavender chain mail necklace with a they them
12:28:25 button. I'm sitting in front of a black and white geometric pillow.
12:28:30 I started my clothing line in college after I gained a new disability, where my stomach stopped working properly, and I could no longer wear all the skinny jeans I used to wear.
12:28:41 I also have also always had sensory problems, my whole life.
12:28:47 So I used to wear all my socks and underwear inside out because of my problems with seams.
12:28:54 When I was in high school I couldn't find a place where I could acquire gender affirming under garments, specifically a chest binder, as a person who was under 18, and didn't have access to a credit
12:29:06 card to buy one online. I was also unsatisfied with the boring, very medicalized looking options available that were largely white black orange.
12:29:22 It was marketed as quote unquote "nude," but is really only for some white people.
12:29:31 So I wanted to create something that was celebratory of all my identities, and made me feel cute and sexy at the same time. When I was doing all the research for my clothing line, I interviewed many of my friends and
12:29:47 disabled friends, so I could find out what people were interested in having made.
12:29:53 From then on I always interviewed all my models and clients who wanted to be interviewed, because some clients just want to put in their measurements in there in order to get in inspiration and make them their dream outfits
12:30:08 interviewing not knowing what they need. has always been fun. Here is a video of me interviewing my model.
12:30:16 There's a bit of footage of them doing a drag performance at the beginning that has some camera flashes in it.
12:30:22 If you need to be careful of that. And now the video.
VIDEO DIALOGUE:
12:30:36 What are your favorite colors and patterns? Oh, I love bright, bright neon colors with my like drag persona.
12:30:48 I always say that I am Chicago's premier fat trans crippled gutter slut. So I mean anything that you would think of that goes along those lines is kind of like trash Queen, are you ready for this
12:31:04 to this: Are you ready for this visual description? Are you ready for this vocal transcription?
12:31:14 Bright patterns, textures things that you'd usually find on some kind of weird avant garde runway that's usually limited to the thin people.
12:31:25 do you feel vulnerable about, but want to show off?
12:31:29 In this context I have just for you, from this alien feeling where, like there's 2 boobies there.
12:31:36 But I feel like there should be 3. Yeah. And we talked about the possibility of making something that would give me a third one.
12:31:41 Yeah, I would definitely have that. What would show off your gender expression best?
12:31:47 Well, I really like your clothing in this ways that you are able to add to people's bodies with the way that you sew things.
12:31:54 I like things that are gonna give me more of this alien aesthetic.
12:32:01 What would make clothing more accessible to your body.
12:32:03 I really love high- wasted things. But one problem I have is they have to be big enough to get over my butt. Yeah.
12:32:12 But then the waist part has to be tight enough where it's not going to be baggy in the back and stay at the right place, and so that I've just kind of conceded to the fashion norm because I
12:32:24 don't think I don't know of a way to actually do that.
12:32:50 I'll ask you some questions about how you feel. How do you feel in these couples?
12:32:57 I feel very seen and I feel very comfortable.
12:33:03 But i'm very cute, which usually isn't a combination that I find usually, if i'm comfortable i'm wearing things that I would prefer not to leave my house in, and if i'm cute but i'm just not comfortable and I suck
12:33:18 it up.
SKY:
i'll put my all my links in the chat that has my different website shop.
12:33:37 And social media links. i'll also put a link to the abridged version of my manifesto, radical visibility.
12:33:45 A queer crip dress reform movement, manifesto.
12:33:50 I was showing them visually at the beginning, and lastly here's a link to the DIY fashion curriculum.
12:34:00 I have designed for the Chicago Public Library team program called Radical Fit.
12:34:09 We have 85 videos so far. and one of the most recent videos features a video tutorial by Andy Slater.
12:34:18 From this very panel, called describing your image, so be sure to check that out.
BERT:
12:34:24 And thank you so much
12:34:33 It was so fabulous. Okay, And I like that soundtrack, it was really interesting.
12:34:39 Next artist is Rebecca-Eli Long
12:34:47 I owe them a lot, and I gotta say that this panel
12:34:53 They have a lot to do with this coming together, and i'm really happy.
12:34:57 They're here, and I learned a ton from Rebecca Eli.
12:35:04 Rebecca-Eli Long (they, them, theirs) works to disrupt ableist structural violence across geographic and disciplinary contexts, using creative research methods to advance social change. Currently a dual-title Ph.D. student in Anthropology and Gerontology at Purdue University, they use ethnographic knitting to find ways of authoring autism that exceed the limits of diagnostic knowledge.
REBECCA-ELI: Yeah. Great thanks, Bert and hi everyone.
12:35:39 So as a visual description, i'm a white person with short brown hair. I'm.
12:35:46 Wearing dark rimmed glasses and a knitted top.
12:35:51 That's peach pink and purple and i'm sitting in an office setting, and so I use fiber art to change attitudes about autism, because I think it's wrong that a lot of the language we hear used
12:36:07 to describe autism, things such as an epidemic, as a fate worse than death, comparisons to a kidnapped, or that somehow stealing children, I think these are pretty wrong and terrible descriptions, and I also think they keep
12:36:21 us from having a society that includes all types of people.
12:36:27 So I think part of this is because we really don't listen to autistic adults about their experiences, and we don't even think that autistic people can accurately describe our experiences.
12:36:40 So my art and research works to center autistic meaning making by focusing on what matters to autistic people.
12:36:48 So i'm going to talk a little bit about my research as well as the piece.
12:36:52 I made for institutional model. So my research, I will go ahead and share my screen.
12:37:05 And so I focus on what autistic people sometimes call special interests as a way of getting at ideas of autistic joy.
12:37:16 And I think this is great because it challenges ideas of autism as tragedy, and for me, so i'm a knitter.
12:37:25 I find this really rich, beautiful joy, and shout out to Jen White Johnson, who has really written a lot about this, and designed the sticker on this screen for me.
12:37:40 I find autistic joy in stimming, or repetitive motions as well as special interests.
12:37:47 So I take these special interests as passions, preferred interests.
12:37:53 Other autistic people like other terms. as a chance to really challenge diagnostic language that says autistic people don't have interests, don't have emotions- mysterious inscrutable autistic
12:38:07 People. So what i've been doing recently is a series of interviews with autistic self-advocates about their special interests, and at the end of each interview we talk about how we can represent their special interest in knitting and we
12:38:23 co-design a knitting pattern together, and then I send them the final item after I make it for them.
12:38:31 I'm going to show a few of the pieces coming out of this project in the past couple of months, if my computer will advance slides.
12:38:41 This was actually the first piece I made, it's a piece I made with Nicole, and she really spoke a lot about special interest as being a core part of her identity, saying that they sort of create a picture for other
12:38:58 people to know who she is. So she spoke about bringing her kick scooter around campus. and how everyone sort of knew her as the Scooter girl, and she also showed me her collection of banana and other like
12:39:15 fruit stickers that she very neatly had lined up in a notebook, which I really enjoyed making and recreating with this bobble stitch around the edges of this pillow, and just to sort of kind of quickly
12:39:31 move through these here. So this is something I made with Gentris, and Gentris is a historical researcher, and this is the logo of the Atlantis center for independent living which is the focus of Gentris's.
12:39:50 Current research, and Gentris spoke to me a lot about special interests and engaging in them really deeply, as a chance really to practice.
12:39:59 Well-being that was rooted in their autistic identity.
12:40:04 And here is a hat that I made for Ira, who is an autistic cultural creator and archivist.
12:40:14 And so ira's special interests are autism and pokemon.
12:40:20 So we sort of had to get Pikachu and the Pokeball onto this hat.
12:40:25 But Ira was also interested in the neurodivergent infinity symbol as well as the narwhal which comes from.
12:40:34 If you're familiar with the ed wiley autism acceptance Linden Library.
12:40:40 There's a cartoon series of neurodivergent narwhals. so sort of being able to bring all of these special interests together through knitting was really fun.
12:40:51 And it was a chance for me to connect with Ira, but also to sort of hear Ira talk about how special interests were, how he connected with other people.
12:41:01 So saying that a lot of autistic people use special interests as a metaphor for their lives.
12:41:08 So i'm thinking about special interests as a way to make autistic joy material.
12:41:15 I'm, also interested in collaborating with other autistic people who knit in the future, as well as bringing knitting into my own art practice, sort of a way to reflect on the conditions of doing this type of work in academia which
12:41:32 as we know, is very hostile to disabled people, though i'm actually really fortunate that I've had a relatively supportive department.
12:41:43 But this leads me to the piece I made for institutional model, which I titled The role of Spite in keeping you warm.
12:41:53 So this piece is, for scale it's about 4 feet by 5 feet.
12:41:58 It's actually kind of so large I didn't measure it super accurately.
12:42:02 And so I really wanted to point to things that happened to me.
12:42:09 I was actually told by a professor who I should not name on a recording.
12:42:14 That theory was not meant to be accessible, feminist theory in this case.
12:42:19 Oh, the irony! But these were sort of things that just sort of were going like unmentioned and unremarked on, which is sort of part of the you know.
12:42:31 Normal course of affairs of academia. So I wanted to make something really big, really disruptive, to actually give form to these experiences and really have something material.
12:42:45 I could point out to say, like, Hey, this actually happened, this is something I've experienced, and yes, I had to also bring in my university's logo, and colors, just to sort of poke fun at them.
12:42:59 So this was sort of my first foray into what I would call large scale knitting.
12:43:04 I've also just knitted for fun ever since I moved to Indiana.
12:43:09 I've been knitting socks, I don't know why, I'm told i'm experiencing repetitive behaviors, kind of great.
12:43:17 I have a gallery wall of socks in my house, and we will see how many socks I make before I graduate.
12:43:24 I don't know, but I kind of think about socks and knitting more generally, is just a chance to really give some sort of physical form to experiences, to mark the passage of time, and also as a way to just sort of
12:43:41 poke fun at seeing autistic and other disabled people as not that creative, and not that inventive or humorous.
12:43:50 So that is what I brought to show with you today, and I will go ahead and turn it over to the room.
BERT:
12:43:59 Thank you.
12:44:05 Okay, that was fabulous, and our fourth presenter is Christopher Samuel, who's joining us in the evening in the UK.
12:44:17 Christopher Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics, often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience. Seeking to interrogate his personal understanding of identity as a disabled person impacted by inequality and marginalisation, Christopher responds with urgency, humour, and poetic subversiveness within his work. This approach makes his work accessible to a wider audience, allowing others to identify and relate to a wider spectrum of human experience.
12:45:03 Take it away, Chris.
CHRISTOPHER:
Good afternoon everyone- share my screen
12:45:28 I am working off the Wellcome Collection archives, and the Wellcome Collection is the largest medical archive in Europe
12:45:58 The question I wanted to ask the Wellcome Collection was, is my life experience reflected in the collection
12:46:08 By that I mean disabled, Black, working class, up in the seventies through the nineties. I have a condition called CMT, it's a type of muscular dystrophy
12:46:25 This didn't affect me until about 8 or 9. the point of diagnosis
12:46:36 Tremendously affected my schooling.
12:46:51 I wanted to know. was my experience represented within the collection.
12:46:59 So for Bert's institutional model I made 3 short videos which consisted of video archives I had collected. I found there was a real lack of diversity with regard to race, class, gender.
12:47:28 the materials I found were white, middle class.
12:47:38 It also was a great example of how the
12:47:43 medical model determined how people were viewed in the UK.
12:47:56 Where were the people? I mean what were the people who looked like me, spoke like me, dressed like me?
12:48:04 Why were there no representations of minoritized people?
12:48:10 These are the questions that were coming up
12:48:20 So my proposal was that my life experiences often got hidden from view.
12:48:26 So obviously there was no surprise. There was no one who looked like me who was represented within that influential institution.
12:48:48 Our experiences and history go unseen, so how many people probably got disengaged.
12:48:59 through not seeing themselves as part of history
12:49:09 How many people have been misunderstood because of not seeing themselves properly represented And what happens if we attempt to address these gaps?
12:49:23 So the work I'm making is going to be called The Archive of the Unseen
12:49:33 I've used my story. testimony from doctors, other professionals, other disabled people.
12:49:44 to give a more honest account of, what it was like to live as a disabled person growing up in the UK
12:49:53 from the seventies through to the nineties. so i'll be creating.
12:49:57 My own microfilm reader, which visitors can interact with and explore
12:50:09 Within the micro-reader itself it will contain video, audio,
12:50:14 Photos, my medical documents, school reports,
12:50:21 Doctors testimony that sort of thing, it'll be laid out chronologically and thematically in different sections.
12:50:40 so I want to create a conversation around unseen stories and lives of those lower working class people, people from other marginalized groups.
12:51:05 So the archive will be on display at the Wellcome Collection in London.
12:51:17 It will also be an online version, that if any of you are interested you could have a look
12:51:32 It's been a really extensive project which is delving deep into every aspect of.
12:51:47 My life, what it was like growing up, working with therapists to kind of understand
12:51:56 My kind of thoughts as a child. I've worked with filmmakers, my doctors
12:52:04 The doctors which actually looked after me. that's been quite interesting, because one of my doctors who is also a professor, she said.
12:52:19 She already looked at me through medical case. she said I changed her practice.
12:52:32 Even that she was trying to fix me. I don't really need fixing.
12:52:36 I just needed to be seen. to have tools and real support that could enable me to live a fulfilling life
12:52:53 And that was quite profound for me. And thanks, I think I will leave it there.
BERT:
12:53:03 Thank you, Christopher
12:53:13 And I don't know the schedules of you know my audience or my my panelists.
12:53:15 But I I can definitely stick around longer for questions. but I wanna hurry up and get to Andy, who's been waiting patiently.
12:53:23 And i'm gonna introduce Andy Slater right now.
Andy Slater is a Chicago-based media artist, sound designer, and access advocate.He is a member of the Society of Visually Impaired Sound Artists and a teaching artist with the Atlantic Center for the Arts’ Young SoundSeekers program.He is a 2022 United States Artists fellow and 2022-2023 Leonardo Crip Tech Incubator fellow.
Andy’s current work focuses on advocacy for accessible art and technology, Alt-Text for sound and image, the phonology of the blind body, spatial audio for extended reality, and sound design for film, dance, and video games.
ANDY:
12:54:14 Hey, everybody i'm andy. quick description I am a middle aged white male, with a red and gray beard, I'm.
12:54:25 Wearing red sunglasses right now, I've got a very high forehead and wizard like eyebrows, and my favorite pair of white overalls and hoodie.
12:54:34 I am dressed for success. I wanna talk about the the piece that I did for the institutional model for Professor Stabler.
12:54:44 It's part of a series called invisible ink, which is based on image description in alt text for visual art.
12:54:56 I've been blind and i've been living in the art world for I don't know almost 30 years now, and have always had trouble.
12:55:05 You know, kind of understanding visual art from a perspective as a blind person.
12:55:09 I haven't always had the access and the description of what's going on on screen, or what it is framed and put on the wall, or what's being shown in zoom and that sort of thing. So when I get
12:55:22 the kind of attention and access that accommodations that I that I require, or request, or whatever.
12:55:30 You know a lot of times it's really spot on, it's very creative and poetic. Sometimes it's really standardized and boring, and I like being a critic of this kind of access and i've done a lot
12:55:45 of work with museums and galleries on kind of like, you know, giving accessibility advice, and you know advice and consulting, and deconstruction, and that kind of shit recently, worked on the
12:55:58 Barbara Kruger exhibit at AIC. and currently working on the upcoming Sophie Calle exhibition.
12:56:07 at the Art Institute.
12:56:10 And so I often am asked how do you you know what's the best way to do an image description or an audio description, and a lot of the times I will say should be coming from the view of the artist in that
12:56:25 describing your image for blind or non-visual audience is something that you should consider in your practice while you're creating.
12:56:33 And while you're showing for critique or even when you're you know, exhibiting and that sort of thing.
12:56:38 And so I figure that what I would do is I would describe.
12:56:42 I would paint i'd make a few paintings, and then I would describe those images, and then present the images as as the art and
12:56:57 One of these pieces is called witnesses, and Sky or Bryce, if you're able to screen share that Youtube link.
12:57:07 That would be great. and it's a recording. I wrote the description, it was recorded by solon callaher, and it's maybe almost 2 min, long, so we can get into it.
RECORDING:
12:57:26 Witnesses, 6 by 4 oil on canvas, 2021 the 4 ground, and at the bottom right corner of this painting is a splintering wooden stake.
12:57:41 Under each splintered piece is a darker shade of the gray and brown wood.
12:57:49 There are numerous splinters up and down the stake, making it look like a rigid corn silk.
12:57:57 There is a metal chain with tiny links tied around the middle of the stake.
12:58:05 The chain leads behind the stake and into the center of the painting.
12:58:08 The tarnished metal chain is rolled around a painted stone.
12:58:15 The stone is in the shape of a large turtle, is colored like an Easter egg, multiple pastels with tangential color lines.
12:58:24 It holds the chain down to the cement ground.
12:58:28 The taut chain casts no shadow. The bright rock is the focal point of this painting.
12:58:37 Its presence is undeniable. It contrasts the gray sky and ground.
12:58:43 There is no definite horizon, and the gray, dusty cement blends with the overcast sky directly above the rock.
12:58:52 At the top of the painting floats a fuzzy, small, white, square-shaped object.
12:59:00 It appears to be far off in the distance, but the unconfirmed horizon makes it hard to judge.
ANDY:
12:59:11 Okay, thank you for screen sharing. That kind of request is really hard for me to navigate, so I appreciate it.
12:59:20 So that's that's one of 3 part series online.
12:59:26 It only exists as alternative text, which is basically an image description that is embedded in the the metadata of a jpeg, or an image that can be accessed only using a screen reader, which is you know adaptive
12:59:41 technology that blind people use to read content that's on a computer screen.
12:59:46 And so i'm hoping that just listening to that kind of gave you an idea of what that image is in your mind's eye.
12:59:53 What's going on, there, what might be missing you know what detail, what you know, the decisions that I had made on, what detailed to focus on, and perspective and colors and that sort of thing, while still trying to keep it
13:00:10 referential to a blind viewer who may have never had any sight, and may not necessarily have a a good idea on color and that sort of thing.
13:00:20 But you know texture and shape and that sort of thing is is, you know, kind of a big part of this project.
13:00:29 And so you know, after listening to that you know I should tell you that the painting doesn't exist, I just wrote that, thinking that you know just coming up with this in my head i'm not totally
13:00:41 blind. My vision has degraded over the 47 years I've been on this earth, so I still have some kind of reference to
13:00:50 what this stuff looks like, and clearly have some kind of fucked up imagination where I would just come up with this idea.
13:00:58 But so it's something that I'd like to share to see, you know, just to kind of be a jerk and say so.
13:01:04 If you were to describe this, if this painting was on a wall in a gallery, or a museum, or even on your phone to me, if the image, if I can't experience the image, how do I know that it was really
13:01:18 made. and so with me, just giving you the description and telling you that it's there, does it?
13:01:26 You know it's the same thing as an online gallery, or a museum for a blind person.
13:01:32 So it's like hey? is It really a painting? i'm gonna say it's a painting.
13:01:37 Does it really exist? I don't know, you can tell me and you guys can all think about it, and let me know.
13:01:43 Let that worry be yours. But that's just kind of like the dick attitude that I have sometimes when it comes to accessibility and visual art.
13:01:51 So that's kind of one of my biggest critiques is to just, you know, Flip the script, I guess.
13:01:59 And say, Okay, sighted people,
13:02:01 How do you interact and engage in, appreciate or hate this work?
13:02:06 So yeah That's that's kind of what i've been doing, and that's what i'm gonna be contributing for Professor stabler's blog and I thank you and i'm gonna yield back
13:02:19 my time,
BERT:
13:02:27 It's after one o'clock but we didn't have time for
13:02:31 82 Q and A yet. so anybody who needs to go, either on zoom or in this room, should absolutely not feel bound to be here.
13:02:42 I don't have you know the meeting on my laptop, if anybody would like to answer questions in the chat, or anybody in the room would like to voice a question I would love to have people or any of the
13:02:58 artists want to talk to each other. I would love that to happen so.
13:03:02 If people can hang out to talk about the work or the art.
13:03:06 The idea is, please do. and if you can't it's okay, but either from the chat or the room, any questions
13:03:16 And remember, I can't see the chat.
AUDIENCE:
13:03:25 Well, thanks to all of you for presenting it's. great to see all of your work.
13:03:33 , these questions that was really great. my question, though specifically, is for Andy
13:03:40 Those visual description paintings are really compelling i'm definitely gonna go look at some more of that when I get back to my office.
13:03:47 The question I have, though, is somebody who's working as an artist as well as like an art worker.
13:03:57 Or, however you want to term that. What do you think about the relationship between description and interpretation, and how that differs in the context of museum resources versus in the context of making artwork
ANDY:
I find
13:04:12 that in museums a lot of a lot of the times There's this very trying to cover best practices and standardize things and a lot of the times it's written from either from the curator.
13:04:28 Or you know a volunteer docent and that sort of thing, and the artist isn't generally involved in that sort of thing, and you know, for a general public.
13:04:40 I I guess you know it's it's it's fine it's a great approach, but when you think about how most blind people don't feel invited into a museum you know there isn't a whole lot of you know
13:04:49 sound based work, or installations. or things. that don't require some kind of guide or dictated experience, you know, like you know, everything is subjective, right?
13:05:00 So the way that something is described if it's based on.
13:05:05 art history or a concept, and that sort of thing, sometimes it's very stale.
13:05:10 Especially when it's written from somebody that doesn't have a whole lot of experience in the practice of description.
13:05:17 And so, when the artist creates this, and the artist provides image descriptions to the gallery ahead of time, then you know, they have more of a chance to control the narrative
13:05:32 and kind of make it more poetic, more interesting, like something that might even be more relatable to a blind person like not necessarily focusing on you know, the vanishing point of perspective, or that sort of thing unless
13:05:47 it's really crucial because you think about something like the Mona Lisa, like describing that iconic thing to somebody who can't see it or is never seen.
13:05:58 It can be a losing battle, or it can be like, Why is this important, sort of thing?
13:06:05 So I feel that when the artist has a connection, or or an involvement in writing these descriptions, then it's much more interesting.
13:06:17 Or if a museum hires like a poet or or somebody, or a community member to write these things as opposed to an art historian, or some highfalutin academic, then you know, I think it's
13:06:31 it's much more interesting and successful yeah it's it's compelling, because, the description will never be the work.
13:06:40 It will always be kind of a new work. and when you're facing the fact that it's a new subjectivity being created in the description, then you're totally forgetting what the description can do apart from the work itself, which
13:06:53 is what's so cool about what you're making so yeah thank you, and in a description can be a totally, you know, not only just an accessibility accommodation, but a whole other piece within itself, which is something that I
13:07:06 think if practicing artists considered that they might really have a whole lot of fun, and it's art so standards fucking suck.
13:07:14 So don't even worry about it. you know just come up and do do your your thing and see how it works out.
BERT:
13:07:19 Thanks,
13:07:24 Other questions in the room.
13:07:29 Someone has told me I I have a thing I can look at pretty small.
13:07:38 So Okay, i'm gonna , I'm gonna read a question from the chat. Rebecca Eli sounds good.
13:07:58 Had to switch to get close up.
13:08:10 i'm wondering if Rebecca Eli and Chris have ig accounts or website, or anything
13:08:31 I was wondering. kind of spinning off of You know, Andy's discussion of accessibility technology as a you know, as a conceptual practice, like I think everyone, you know, in this group.
13:08:49 Like the reason i'm thank you the reason I mean i'm interested in, like all of your work is because that really is not in academic art, and pre twentieth century before the
13:09:04 modernists discovered disabled art and and invented modernism based on disabled artists.
13:09:10 Does anybody else want to talk about the way in which you know conceptual art, you know, art about ideas, has opened up the stuff you can you can do as an artist in a way that you think is meaningful
13:09:29 for disabled artists, for yourself as a disabled person, or disabled cultural solidarity for disabled artists.
13:09:37 Can you think about how you know conceptual art works along with accessibility
REBECCA-ELI:
13:10:08 Yeah, I can go or Chris can go Okay, So yeah, I I was going to talk a little bit about how, in terms of technology and conceptual art, i'm really interested.
13:10:26 in the relationship between knitting and technology, since it's a much older art form.
13:10:39 Than some other conceptual digital arts, but that I think knitting has existed as a conceptual practice, especially in relation to gender and queerness.
13:10:51 For some time-- i'm thinking of Rozsika Parker's art history of embroidery, called the Subversive Stitch, and in that book one of the points is that embroidery, and I think it can be
13:11:08 extended to crafting or in fiber art more broadly. it's sort of overlooked because of the gender of the people who make it.
13:11:20 And I think that opens up potentials for solidarities between marginalized gender, between queer activism, disabled people.
13:11:31 In my work. I reference sort of the idea of the neuroqueer or neurological queerness to sort of get at, how to tap into some of the like more subtle subversive meanings that I think have
13:11:43 led to craft based work, is a great vehicle for working with conceptually
13:11:55 I was just thinking what kind of living in a space now where
13:12:03 everybody's trying to be politically correct, so that's kind of allowed space to use whatever medium
13:12:19 I like to articulate and conceptualize
13:12:28 Whatever pisses me off, but in turn that makes me feel like I'm part of a family.
13:12:42 And it's still on the margins but it's a lot more visible
13:12:53 I think I'll leave it there.
BERT:
13:13:03 That's really good.
13:13:10 Nobody really got to cover very much of their output, it's such a short presentation.
13:13:14 But you can find a news for about one of Chris's pieces, Chris has a wide range of work.
13:13:22 There's a lot of text-based printmaking work and also you made this piece I've mentioned, where he redesigned a hotel room to be as inaccessible as possible based on his experience being homeless and
13:13:36 having to live in a hotel, and
13:13:43 How horrible it was in a wheelchair and so like he's done a wide range of work, and there's nothing wrong with like, you know, we have people here who do pretty specific medium-based work
13:13:56 and very specific, you know, content in terms of their project.
13:14:00 But you know, certainly Chris and Gary definitely do a wide range of things.
13:14:08 connected by you know the concerns that they have, is kind of like the impact.
13:14:14 They want to have, but everybody's doing work.
13:14:18 that hasn't been considered fine art, you know, for very long and
13:14:30 So I think it's it's cool to think about like how this kind of culture can like.
13:14:36 get disabled folks talking to each other without having to use the same language.
13:14:46 maybe you know, all the time. So yeah, you know, pop up in the chat as far as like a question.
13:14:52 People can answer-- oh, yeah, I know there's a thank you.
13:15:01 There's a there's a piece on it the Daily Mail.
13:15:04 I know that, Chris is there. Is there any any press on the hotel room piece?
CHRISTOPHER:
13:15:11 That there is some on our website, but i'll share a link to the actual hotel's website.
13:15:26 I think you should check out the Daily Mail article because was quite interesting about that was.
13:15:35 I read the comments all the way, that's the reason I made the work.
13:15:43 Some people are still, I don't know what planet they're living on. but they don't get it
13:15:54 which is interesting, it's made its impact, and its
13:16:00 Point.
BERT:
Oh, i'll share those links thank you
13:16:11 I wonder I know sky you can't really speak right now.
13:16:14 But if you know, Bryce is still there, and you wanna either put this in the chat or collaborate on voicing, or just say no, thank you
13:16:22 But do you want to talk about
13:16:30 You know how you how disability is become part of queer nightlife, you know, like in Chicago or beyond Chicago, like disability as an aspect of ongoing queer.
13:16:47 cultural history. do you want to say anything about about that, for you know those of us who like only learn about queer night life, you know, secondhand
SKY:
13:16:59 Yes, we are working on finding a relevant link. Oh, cool, alright!
13:17:08 Thanks for good. Is it all right? If we screen share Yes, or we'll copy it into the chat
13:17:21 It's also fine to do a screen share because I you know I can't screen share it for you
13:18:12 Right now. I'm showing a video of a performance I did with Arts of Life, an organization here in Chicago that works with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities
13:18:26 this is a performance and party we collaborated on called rotations.
13:18:43 It's like earlier in the day so people could still get there on
13:18:53 Transit, and there was fog and rotating lights
13:19:03 But it wasn't like flashing lights, and we had a sensory friendly room
13:19:13 Just one example of queer and disabled nightlife
13:19:21 with Arts of Life.
BERT:
Yeah, that's awesome thank you Sky!
13:19:28 arts of life is a really cool organization, I know a lot of artists in Chicago who've been connected to that group
13:19:36 So boost for them if people want to look up their site. artsoflife.org, or something very similar.
13:19:50 We don't need to keep people longer than they have to
13:19:53 But I feel like not everyone's you know gotten to answer a question yet
13:19:58 Yeah I guess, Gary, do you wanna say anything?
GARY:
13:20:06 Sure I mean I can go back to your question about conceptual art, I mean, I think I sort of kind of grew up on
13:20:19 I grew up during the appropriation, Pictures generation.
13:20:25 But I was really kind of a big fan of Douglas Huebler and Robert Barry, and On Kawara to a certain extent.
13:20:39 I you know as my disease sort of hit me, and I couldn't go out and I wasn't able to absorb whatever theories.
13:21:04 They were about at the time, logical positivism and all this stuff.
13:21:08 It just always seemed forced, the work was for an objective force based on some idea of like an objective person, not an individual.
13:21:27 For this sort of abstract, objective person, who, of course, was white and male.
13:21:34 And you know in particular, I think that that a lot of my pieces as I mentioned earlier, do respond or have references to reductive and conceptual art. On Kawara is obviously famous for his date paintings
13:21:56 his reports on his condition, but he left them at this level of, I am still alive, and December Thirteenth 1975, you know.
13:22:12 things like that and I am not critiquing his decision to do that, because there's meaning to his decision to do that.
13:22:25 But i'm a different person, and I wanna say these like simple incidents that happen to me.
13:22:35 And taking on stitching. My mom was a lifelong seamstress
13:22:42 Really great seamstress. And, you know, sewing was part of my family.
13:22:49 Both of my parents were part of the amalgamated clothing union in Chicago.
13:22:57 And so my stitches are in some respects
13:23:08 Influenced by On Kawara, but also kind of taking an individualistic approach.
13:23:17 And maybe I relate hopefully, a more relatable, less opaque approach, and also Robert Barry in a sense, because Robert Barry did a number of pieces based on things we can't see, the things that are in our head the possibilities in our head can
13:23:34 we transmit a message from one brain to another?
13:23:41 A piece might be about an intention to do so.
13:23:47 I had gotten sort of more interested in minimalism, or they the the sort of the theoretical phenomenological underpinnings of minimalism in terms of like how a viewer kind of
13:24:04 goes through space. and of course this is a privileged sighted viewer.
13:24:10 As well. You know my pieces, that are visual, that are objects.
13:24:21 You know, I don't know, come with a warning label, and because you know to me the world comes with a warning label, I mean probably speaking more allegorically.
13:24:34 but yeah, actually i'm talking literally too. So the that wide swath of art history is on my mind.
13:24:49 But to me it plays as a straight man, like I'm Jerry Lewis, and art history is Dean Martin to me.
13:25:00 Dean Martin was really funny, too. but anyway,
13:25:06 I grew up with Carol Burnett and Mad magazine parodying everything that was coming out culturally.
13:25:17 And I think art history is ripe material for parody, for bad jokes, for puns for one liners.
13:25:23 Whatever the fuck we can do to like attack it and see if it's still worth what it's worth.
13:25:34 And that's kind of my point of view at this particular second, I hope that makes sense, and I you know it's like, I believe everybody is hypocritical on certain levels.
13:25:44 And I love this stuff that i'm critiquing too.
13:25:48 but you know one has to deal with their hypothetical masters.
13:26:02 And kind of pull them down a little bit, dissect them, and see where the weak links are.
13:26:11 Does that make sense to people? I don't know.
BERT:
It makes a lot of sense to me. And I was really like make you brought, you know you got a fabric you brought in touch and you brought like haptic negotiating space into it which I think
13:26:26 is it's a really huge part because that's I think everybody you know people who are doing fiber people who are, you know, you know, talking about navigating with a cane or not falling or having the wheelchair in a hotel room like that
13:26:42 stuff really connects a lot of different experiences. I'm realizing that, I should've realized earlier that our ASL interpreter has been here for extra time, too, and I really appreciate her work
13:27:04 And i'm happy to you know let people sign off now and continue the conversation online
13:27:12 if people wanna like email each other sharing all your social media in the in the chat, please?
13:27:19 If you haven't yet. Please check out bit.ly/institutional-model and I hope I hope we can.
13:27:28 I'll stay in touch and and kind of like keep the sort of you know, solidaristic weird disability communication happening.
13:27:38 So thanks everyone for coming today. Thank you, all thanks everybody pleasure to be on the panel with all all these great artists.
13:27:48 It's it's been huge for me, thanks everybody.
AUDIENCE:
will this recording be online somewhere after?
BERT:
That's my plan.
13:27:58 Yeah, so i'll work on that I don't know if i'll send, or host it, or or if all those that I might throw it on my blog, we'll we'll see what happens
GARY:
Also, yeah, if you could
13:28:10 send it to me. I mean I could get it to Sidney definitely as we are.
13:28:16 LA-ish:
BERT:
Wow. Okay, yeah. Well, I'll definitely I'll definitely share with the whole group. Thank you. everybody. Thanks.