Susan Sontag wrote that “illness is the night-side of life, a more onerous citizenship.” Dooming perhaps, but it is only in the dark that we can see the stars. So, what can we make out from here?
Thinking through the everyday objects and materials that make up their lived experiences, the group will challenge the erasure of disabled people from our social vistas and horizons, and think through both the potential and the limits of image-making to hold what it means for us to be.
Inspired by the work of science fiction writer Octavia E. Butler and writers on crip futurity Alison Kafer and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, participants will be thinking and making through key questions such as:
- What particular knowledge does your lived experiences of illness and/or disability reveal to you about the world?
- How can we centre these knowledges in collective future-making?
- What enables you to participate in the future?
- How to we negotiate having conflicting or contradictory access needs?
- What does it look like to construct visual systems that hold difference and multitude?
- How do we negotiate conflicting dreams and desires?
The session will begin with an introduction inviting audiences into the space. The group will then work through a series of image-making exercises, collaging outcomes into a low-fi planetarium dome. The group will be invited to gather for a grounding activity and discussion
This Grounding Practice workshop has been programmed in conjunction with Hyper Functional, Ultra Healthy, a dynamic series that considers individual and collective health and wellbeing through a programme of newly commissioned artworks, films, workshops, and conversations. The 2023 programme focuses on disability justice and artists who engage with the space of health and care.
