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WELCOME TO BIT'S SUMMER 2021 NEWSLETTER
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Bodies in Translation is about partnerships, activism, art, technology, and access to life. Our newsletter, Found in Translation, published twice a year, provides a springboard for BIT collaborations and highlights some of the amazing work that we have underway. Subscribe here.
The past year has been a challenging, isolating time for all of us, but particularly for artists, D/deaf, Mad, and disabled people, aging and e/Elder people, Indigenous and Black people and People of Colour around the world. COVID has forced new realities and ways of being upon us that necessitate creative, vital responses to systemic injustice and barriers to inclusion. BIT's collaborations in artistic creation, interdisciplinary research, technological innovation, and critical inquiry open dialogues that have the potential to and do affect new understandings of disability arts and culture. Our work together to cultivate activist art remains integral, and we are excited to share some of that work in this season’s newsletter.
We look forward to when we can reunite in person with you – our friends, colleagues, and communities. Love and strength to and from everyone at Bodies in Translation.
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KNOW ACCESS - 2021 DIGITAL COLLAGE
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The 2021 edition of the Bodies in Translation kNow Access collage has launched! For this year's collage, as we begin to transition out of a global pandemic, we asked our partners, collaborators, and friends to reflect on and share how their thoughts and practices of access have changed over the past year.
Image description: A screen shot image from the kNow Access collage. Large, blue sans serif font reads, "Laura Schworer."
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Below that, small black font reads, "There is a feeling of reflection to send us wings. It feels like a meadow of faith, that wants to spring. Its home is the heaven of goodness, to make us strong. We climb up to the hill of experience, to where we belong." Below this verse is a multi-colour drawing of several animal, human and plant figures that gesture in movement and vitality.
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Deaf Interiors is a multidisciplinary online exhibition presenting six Deaf Canadian artists whose featured work is the culmination of a three-month online incubator. Artists Ebony R. Gooden, Shannon Rusnak, Syra Hassan, Hodan Ismael, Thurga Kanagasekarampillai, and Melissa Brunner met with facilitators Peter Owusu-Ansah and Sage Lovell to share stories, generate ideas and create work that demonstrates the interior world of Deaf culture, activism and human connection.
Deaf Interiors is produced by Creative Users Projects in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability, and is a Signature Project of the Cultural Hotspot, produced in partnership with the City of Toronto, Bodies in Translation, Ontario Arts Council, and Canada Council for the Arts. Stay tuned for a video documentary!
Image description: This still image is from Hodan Ismael's video, Joy. The image shows many hands of various sizes held in front of Hodan Ismael’s face. The wall behind is a blur of many bright colours.
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El Alto is here! El Alto Vol 2, ‘d/Deaf and disability arts in the Americas' is the British Council’s review of arts and culture in the Americas. Volume 2 was co-created by our friends and partners at British Council and Tangled Arts + Disability along with 17, Instituto de Estudios Críticos, and issue editors Saada El-Akhrass, Sean Lee, Beatriz Miranda. Bodies in Translation is a proud collaborator and contributor. Congratulations everyone!
Image description: Cover of El Alto vol. 2. Image of two dancers on stage. Dancer Fabiola Zérega is sitting on a chair, their arm raised above their head, touching the second dancer. Fabric is draped over the chair flows down to cover the bottom section of the image. The second dancer is standing, bent over and looking towards the camera. The photo is saturated with a blue overlay. At top of page El Alto is typed in large black font, with the text Vol 2 and June 2021 underneath in small white font.
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SPECIAL PODCAST EPISODE OF DISABILITY SAVES THE WORLD WITH DR. FADY SHANOUDA
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This special podcast episode of Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda is a conference-presentation-style submission to the 2021 Arts in Society conference in Perth, Australia by Carla Rice, Eliza Chandler, Chelsea Temple Jones, Rana El Kadi, Kimberlee Collins, and Fady Shanouda in collaboration with Bodies In Translation.
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This presentation addresses both the real-world and online barriers to arts and artistry in Canada for disabled artists and examines creative, pedagogical, and technological interventions that expand access both structurally and epistemologically.
Find this episode and show notes on the Disability Saves the World with Dr. Fady Shanouda website or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Image Description: A digital poster with a blue background. The podcast title, "disability saves the world with Dr. Fady Shanouda" is in light orange text in a darker orange banner. In the upper right corner of the poster is an illustrated graphic of the world.
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CRIPISTEMOLOGIES OF DISABILITY ARTS AND CULTURE: REFLECTIONS ON CRIPPING THE ARTS SYMPOSIUM
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Have you seen the 2021 special issue of Studies in Social Justice, co-edited by Eliza Chandler, Katie Aubrecht, Esther Ignagni, and Carla Rice?
Through reflecting on the 2019 Cripping the Arts Symposium, this collection of essays and dispatches reflects on Deaf, mad, and disability arts and culture in Canada from various cripistemological perspectives. Cripistemologies seek to ‘know’ disability from the perspectives of disabled people and disability experience.
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This issue positions ‘cripping the arts’ – a project that centres disability and desires its disruptions in creating, programming, and experiencing arts and culture – as a political project, one that is connected to disability studies, rights, and justice. As a collection, these pieces demonstrate how representation through arts and culture is a matter of social justice for how it promotes cripistomologies and influence public understanding of the multiple and intersectional experiences of Deafhood, madness, and disability through first-person perspectives.
Image description: A performer from Brownton Abbey stretches out a large piece of bright pink fabric, which covers their body. The performer is positioned with right arm and left leg outstretched, in motion. The wall behind them is a vibrant blue.
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FINDING LANGUAGE - VANESSA DION FLETCHER
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In this interactive performance, Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Potawatomi and Lenape neurodiverse artist, considers how systemic colonial oppression intersects with her relationship to language as a learning-disabled person. Finding Language was performed at the Cripping the Arts symposium in Toronto.
This video was made in collaboration with Vanessa Dion Fletcher. Video footage by Kavya Yoganathan and Hannah Fowlie. Photography by Michelle Peek. Editing by Marion Gruner of Billion Ideas. Music by Ziibiwan. Produced by Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology and Access to Life.
Image description: Vanessa Dion Fletcher reads a book while the people sitting around her watch. |
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Artist Michel Dumont reflects on his tile mosaic sculptures and live performance at the Outliers on Tour exhibition at Tangled Art + Disability. Dumont’s work engages with how colonial oppression both shatters and re-creates his relationships to his past, present, and future as the son of an Indian Day School survivor and as a queer Métis two spirit artist.
This short documentary features a powerful performance in which Dumont uses a hammer to destroy a photograph printed on tile of an Indian Day School classroom as he reads out the names of each child. He later glues the pieces back together for him to form a mosaic.
This video was made in collaboration with Michel Dumont. Video by Anthroscope Media, created by Erin MacIndoe Sproule, and produced by Bodies in Translation.
Image description: A video still image of two taxidermy bear head forms covered in colourful mosaic tile.
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RELAXED PERFORMANCE: EXPLORING ACCESS VIDEO SERIES
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Relaxed Performance: Exploring Access is a series of 3 video shorts in which arts practitioners from the UK and Canada explore the principles and practices of Relaxed Performance in the arts. Each video is available in ASL, LSQ, English Closed Captions (CC), French Open Captions (OC), and with extended audio description (AD). They are excellent, accessible, teaching and learning tools for exploring Relaxed Performance. Co-produced by British Council, Tangled Art + Disability, and Bodies in Translation.
The video series includes:
What is a Relaxed Performance?
How do we incorporate Relaxed Performance in digital media?
What are the broader effects of Relaxed Performance on society?
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What is a Relaxed Performance? (With Deaf-interpreted ASL)
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Image description: This video still pictures a black background with the video title in yellow font: "Relaxed Performance: Exploring Accessibility in Theatre." Below the title are eighteen small video windows in black and white, most feature people’s faces. In the lower right hand corner is a video window in colour that features an ASL interpreter.
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Share your news! We love to highlight your BIT related projects, artwork, events and scholarship on the BIT website, social media channels, and in the Found in Translation newsletter. Email us at revision@uoguelph.ca.
Welcome Dr. Jodie Salter! Jodie has joined the team on a one-year secondment as a Research Associate to help support the development of the BIT Knowledge Platform learning modules. She also holds a position as Writing Specialist with U of G’s Learning & Curriculum Support Team. She completed her Ph.D. in 2012, and her research explored the intersectionalities of race, gender, and age, and the ethics of the listener/teller relationships in narratives of trauma and dislocation.
Welcome Morgan Sea! Morgan has joined the BIT and Re•Vision teams for the summer to help with social media. Morgan describes herself as a jill of many trades! She's an illustrator, performance artist, and storyteller based out of Toronto.
Welcome Surface Impression! After a vigorous procurement process to find the right digital media consultancy to help us build the BIT Knowledge Platform, we are thrilled to announce our new partnership with Surface Impression! The BIT Knowledge Platform, a central output of the grant, is an accessible web platform featuring pedagogical approaches to the multi-disciplinary work of Bodies in Translation, our collaborators and partners as well as the work of Disability artists and activists across Ontario and beyond.
Save the date! Practising the Social: Entanglements of Art and Social Justice will take place online on January 21st & 22nd, 2022. This two-day gathering will bring together contributors from across Canada, the US, Europe, and New Zealand to showcase the creative possibilities of the entanglements between art and social justice and the methodological challenges, innovations, and tensions that define our social practices. Hosted by Dr. Carla Rice and Re•Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice in partnership with Tangled Art + Disability, Musagetes, Wilfrid Laurier Press, and Creative Users Projects. Stay tuned for the program.
The audio described version of the Cripping the Arts documentary is here! The short documentary was made by filmmaker Kavya Yoganathan, described by Kat Germain, and produced by Bodies in Translation in partnership with the Cripping the Arts presenting partners: Creative Users Projects, Tangled Art + Disability, Ryerson University School of Disability Studies, British Council Canada, and Harbourfront Centre.
Crip Times - An Interview Podcast Series has 10 incredible episodes for your listening pleasure. Crip Times explores intimacy and connection in relationship to disability arts and culture with stellar hosts Yousef Kadoura, Kayla Besse, and Kristina McMullin, and stellar guests Syrus Marcus Ware, Renee Dumaresque, Ben Barry, Cindy Baker, Jeff Thomas, Jess Watkin, Gloria Swain, Shannon Finnegan, Jenna Reid, and Ryan O’Connel. Crip Times is produced by Bodies in Translation and Tangled Art + Disability, and hosted on Andrew Gurza’s Wheels on the Ground podcast network.
Countering Eugenics in Education - Building upon the Into the Light exhibition, Anishinaabe Elder Mona Stonefish will guide the development of a new online course titled "Countering Eugenics in Education." Co-directed by Evadne Kelly and Carla Rice, the project is funded by eCampusOntario and the U of G Learning Enhancement Fund. This course, available to Ontario universities in early 2022, will address learning challenges in decolonization, anti-racism, and accessibility in institutions of higher education.
Relaxed Performance Curriculum Pilot - In partnership with the British Council Canada and Bodies in Translation, Dr. Chelsea Temple Jones, Dr. Carla Rice, and PhD student and Research Associate Kimberlee Collins will co-develop an illustrated pedagogical toolkit titled “Relaxed Performance Pedagogy: A Snapshot” with illustrator Sonny Bean and graphic designer Jennie Grimard. The toolkit will introduce Relaxed Performance (RP) to students, educators, and administrators in higher education.
CFP: The Review of Disability Studies Journal is seeking submissions for a Special Issue on Disability and Film and Media. Submissions (completed papers or media objects) are due by August 15th, 2021 at rdsjournal.org. Work from academics and non-academics are welcome.
CFS: Disabled POC Documentary Filmmakers and Non-Fiction New Media Creators. The AXS Film Fund will award five grants up to $10,000 each to documentary filmmakers and non-fiction new media creators of colour with disabilities. AXS Film Fund and ArtsEverywhere are committed to accessibility and inclusivity for all. See the online submission portal.
CFP: Societies Journal is seeking manuscripts for a Special Issue on Corporealities of Care Research, Policy and Knowledge, guest edited by Katie Aubrecht and Jacqueline Getfield. The editors invite original research on arts-based and informed approaches in intersectional care research, policy analysis and critical scholarship in the social sciences. Manuscript submissions are due by October 1, 2021.
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Share your publication news with us! We love to highlight your BIT related scholarship on the BIT website, social media channels, and in the Found in Translation newsletter. Email us at revision@uoguelph.ca.
Bobier, D., & Ignagni, E. (2021). Interview with David Bobier (Dispatch). Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Bunch, M. (2021). Blind Visuality in Bruce Horak's "Through a Tired Eye." Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Chandler, E., Ignagni, E., Aubrecht, K. & Rice, C. (2021). Cripistemological approaches to disability arts and culture: Reflections on Cripping the Arts Symposium. Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Chandler, E., Ignagni, E., & Collins, K. (2021). Communicating Access, Accessing Communication. (Dispatch). Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Changfoot, N., Rice, C., Chivers, S., Olsen Williams, A., Connors, A., Barrett, A., Gordon, A., & Lalonde, G. (2021, ahead of print). Re-imagining aging: Crip, queer, and Indigenous futures. Journal of Aging Studies. 15(2).
Dion Fletcher, V., & Ferguson, M. (2021). Finding Language: A Word Scavenger Hunt (Dispatch). Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Jones, C. T., Rice, C., Chandler, E. Lam, M. & Lee, K. (2021). Toward TechnoAccess: A narrative literature review of disabled and aging experiences of using technology to access the arts. Technology and Society. 65.
Jones, C. T., Chandler, E., & Johnston, K. (2021). Representing Disability, D/deaf, and Mad Artists and Art in Journalism: Identifying Ableist Fault Lines and Promising Crip Practices of Representation. Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Kelly, C., & Orsini, M. (2021). Beyond Measure? Disability Art, Affect and Reimagining Visitor Experience. Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Kelly, E., Manning, D., Boye, S., Rice, C., Owen, D., Stonefish, S., & Stonefish, M. (2021). Elements of a counter-exhibition: Excavating and countering a Canadian history and legacy of eugenics. Journal for the History of Behavioural Sciences. 57(1), 12–33.
Kelly, E., Boye, S., & Rice, C. (2021). Projecting eugenics and performing knowledges. In Blanchette, S., & Brooks, N. (Eds.). Narrative Art and the Politics of Health (pp. 37-62). Anthem Press.
LaMarre, A., Rice, C., & Besse, K. (2021). Letting bodies be bodies: Exploring Relaxed Performance on the Canadian performance landscape. Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Rice, C., Cook, K., & Bailey, K. A. (2020). Difference-attuned witnessing: Risks and potentialities of arts-based research. Feminism & Psychology.
Rice, C., Dion, S., & Chandler, E. (2021). Decolonizing disability through activist art. Disability Studies Quarterly. 41 (2).
Rice, C., Jones, C., Watkin, J., & Besse, K. (2021). Relaxed Performance: An ethnography of pedagogy in praxis. Critical Stages/Scènes critiques. 22. 1-19.
Rice, C., Riley, S., LaMarre, A., & Bailey, A. (2021). What a body can do: Rethinking body functionality through a feminist materialist disability lens. Body image: An International Journal of Research. 38, 95-105.
Rouse, J. (2021). Reflexive Sketches during Cripping the Arts Symposium (Dispatch). Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
Springgay, S. (2021). Stitching Langauge: Sounding Voice in the Art Practice of Vanessa Dion Fletcher. Studies in Social Justice. 15(2).
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Thank you to Jodie Salter and Tracy Tidgwell for writing this edition of Found in Translation.
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Found in Translation is a newsletter for, by, and about the Bodies in Translation partnership grant. Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life is a research project that creates collaborative partnerships between artists, arts organizations, activists, scholars, and educators. We cultivate activist art produced by disabled, d/Deaf, fat, Mad, and E/elder people with the goal of expanding understandings of vitality and advancing social justice. Bodies in Translation has its home at Re·Vision: The Centre for Art and Social Justice at the University of Guelph and is co-led by Dr. Carla Rice at the University of Guelph and Dr. Eliza Chandler at Ryerson University. www.bodiesintranslation.ca
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A NOTE ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY
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We recognize that accessibility is a dynamic process. If you find any part of this newsletter inaccessible to you or if you have any suggestions for how we might make Found in Translation more accessible in content, language, tone, style, etc., we would love your feedback. Email us at revision@uoguelph.ca.
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The content of this newsletter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-Sharealike license. This means that others may build on or alter content when it is re-shared. The content must be only used for non-commercial purposes and the original work must be attributed to the BIT Found in Translation newsletter. Users must also license the new work under the same license. For more information about Creative Commons licensing, please visit: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/. Content that is shared here but created by others (for example, found on external links) may be subject to different licensing.
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