Updated as noted on November 9, 2018, at 9:30ishpm EST.
I wanted to have something written to promote the Sick Theories conference before the conference actually started, but as I’m finally writing this the first day has already finished. (I feel that’s fairly indicative of my own personal experience with crip time: I am a slave and pain slut to the cruel master of capitalism with its death toll-ringing, tick-tocking clock of nondisabled time. But I digress.) I’m not going to go into the multiple health reasons that have delayed me; in summary, crip time delayed a promotion post, so here are some reflections. Sorry, Sick Theories!
Videos from today’s live stream of the conference
Welcome address; Part 1 of Panel 1: Sick Representations (only Adam Barbu’s presentation is in this video; this link starts the video at the beginning of the welcome address itself but prior to the address is 29 minutes of background noise)
Part 2 of Panel 1: Sick Representations (this video contains the rest of Adam’s presentation and the other panelists)
Chair: Katie Lawson
- Adam Barbu: “Curating the Other AIDS”
- Clementine Morrigan: “Fucking Crazy: On Complex Trauma, Surviving Sexual Violence, and Living My Best Slut Life”
- Eileen Mary Holowka: “‘The Devil is in the Fractions’: Life Writing and Chronic Pain on Social Media”
Panel 2: Performance & Embodied Art Practices (this video contains all of this panel but the link the video begins 13 minutes into the stream; the prior 13 minutes is background noise)
Chair: Jessica Thorpe
- lo bil: “Moving Weirdly: “Performance Methods for Researching Trauma”
- Eliza Chandler, Kim Collins, Esther Ignagni, Deirdre Logue, and Allyson Mitchell: “Deathnastics: Feminist Crip World Making”
- Megan Johnson: “The performative temporalities of sickness”
- Jacqueline Mabey: “Precariat Jet Set”
MVS Sick Theories Artist Roundtable (note: I don’t know how much of the below is in the video as I haven’t been able to watch all of it yet)
Moderated and curated by Lauren Fournier
Artist Roundtable: “Sick” Practices
- Carly Mandel: Wellness Prototypes
- amber williams-king: 3 o’clock
- Megan Moore: Mnemonic Specimens
- Heather Huston: Waiting Room and other works
- Frances Maranger: Bearded Ladies
- Gloria Swain: Madness & Black Lives Matter
Artists’ Screenings
- Alexis Bulman: Jump and Slap and Up-Stack, Down-Stack
- Angela Glanzmann: What am I supposed to get out of this?
- Elif Isikozlu: 4 Etudes in the Key of Uncertainty: Etudes I & IV
- Lynx Sainte-Marie, way home
- Gloria C. Swain, Black Mental Health
- Thirza Cuthand, Love & Numbers
Performances
- lo bil, Moving Weirdly
- Kristel Jax, Drone Therapy
My observations from today
Sadly, these are fragmented thoughts as I’m still without one of my much-needed narcolepsy medication.
(Full disclosure: Some folks may recall that I have had no trouble speaking my mind about inaccessibility and lack of inclusion; that’s where the Disability and Sexuality Access Network has its roots, after all. I want to be clear that my fragments here are not reiterations of those feelings. I’m fatigued from lack of medication, not exhausted from a shitty experience. I’m not angry at the little things I’m pointing out below — if anything, I’m just curious about why things happened one way and not another. I don’t know the organizers of Sick Theories; we have no ties. I asked to write an interview/promotional post about the conference and it’s turned into this review; they didn’t approach me. I did donate to their Go Fund Me today after I’d been enjoying the conference for some time. That’s it. On with the show.)
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Accessibility. The conference organizers are trying really hard to make the conference accessible in multiple ways and for various access needs. I appreciate this and I know that many others do, too. It makes me feel seen on many levels! I wish I’d been able to attend in person.
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Hashtags. There was some confusion on the various social media platforms as to which hashtag would be used to follow the conference. It seems that #SickTheories was decided upon, but that wasn’t mentioned online or at the conference (at least not during the livestreams that I was able to view). Given that there was a good amount of online excitement for the conference, a publicized hashtag would have been good to have and use to keep conversations going. Hopefully, there will be an effort toward this next year, if there is a next year…
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2019? From my brief Q&A with Sick Theories organizer, Margeaux:
Caz: Are there plans to have another event in 2019?
Margeaux: Lauren and I haven’t discussed this seriously just yet — mostly because we just haven’t had the time to think beyond the present moment — but we’d both like to see Sick Theories continue. We’d never imagined that we’d get the response we did: over 100 submissions to our call for proposals, and 100 attending with another 100 and growing on our waitlist. Clearly this is a topic that resonates with so many and I’d love to see how it could develop.
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Bios. I would have liked to have known more about why the conference organizers decided to not share bios for the conference participants (the organizers have bios on the conference site, after all) online.
[Note added November 9, 2018 at 9:27pm EST: I feel the need to clarify the confusing structure of the above sentence as a different meaning can be inferred from it than I had intended. My interest in the lack of bios relates to the lack of bios on the conference website and social media (for reasons further discussed below). Margeaux emailed me for clarification, perhaps thinking that I had meant that I wanted to know more about why bios weren’t shared at the conference itself. She replied (provided with consent) that “the choice to forgo bios was done in part to save time for discussion and in part because we want to let go of some of the formalities of university conferences.” I’m providing this here both to clarify my wording and in case others had similar questions about the lack of bios.]
Links. Compensated Work. Bios can include two things I consider to be important: links to the participant’s purchasable work or other ways that the participant can be financially supported and the participant’s social media and/or website information. True, there are always reasons why some participants will not want this info published — which I think is fair — but for those who would like to, I feel it’s doing a disservice to not include this information on the conference website and social media.
[Note added November 9, 2018 at 9:39pm EST: I also wanted to add what Margeaux shared with me about having more bio information online, in case others were also wondering. “In my dream world, we would have had the time and support to put bios up on the website prior to the conference — thereby complimenting the bios for Lauren, myself, and Johanna. Sadly, the closest we got to this was asking presenters to submit a photo and Instagram info and we’d post their bios on Instagram — as a way for folks to get to know some of the presenters beforehand. I wish we’d had a bigger response, but what you see on our Instagram is the extent of the responses.”]
Academia. Poverty. I feel that publishing the participant’s information with their consent goes toward recognizing and supporting participants who are outside of academia as well as those who live below or near the poverty line. (And as statistically we disabled folks are more likely to be poor, I feel this is very relevant.) More on this from a little Q&A I did with Sick Theories organizer, Margeaux…
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Compensated Work.
Caz: I love that the conference seems to be open to non-academic thinkers and creators, which is unusual for these types of events. Many of us sick/mad/disabled are unable to finish or attend higher learning institutions, so I think including non-academic voices in these types of gatherings is essential. What do you think event organizers and the greater disability studies community can do to be more inclusive of disabled/sick/mad folks who have much to bring to the worlds of art, theory, etc., but cannot complete an academic degree?
Margeaux: Lauren and I both grew up in the working poor class and were the first to go to university, let alone grad school. After my second year, I flunked out of my undergrad because I was caring for my father who had ALS — so university almost didn’t happen for me. Once my dad was able to get on ODSP, which enabled him to get PSWs, that helped to alleviate some of the work of caring for him and I was able to return to school. Lauren’s experience as an undergraduate was shaped by various mental-health/intergenerational trauma related ruptures. After she finished her Masters, she worked as a frontline social worker (in mental health and harm reduction/addictions) on the unceded lands of Vancouver, and this experience continues to shape how she approaches her work as an academic and a curator.
We’re both super critical of the neoliberal university and the ways that it actively excludes and works to force out those who’re sick, mad, and disabled (I’m thinking here of U of T’s recent Mandatory Leave Policy, which Kristen Zimmer, one of our presenters, will be speaking about at Sick Theories). This issue further compounded for those who are Indigenous and Black, those who are working-class and poor, and those who are trans, 2 Spirit, and non-binary/gender non-conforming. Inviting folks from outside of academia into the conversation was kind of a no brainer for us, as was our efforts to make these spaces as intersectional as we can.
In terms of how event organizers and the greater disability community can be more inclusive of those outside of academia: I think one way we can do this is by acknowledging that conference participation is labour. One thing we’ve come up against in planning this event is how, in academia, we’ve (graduate students) gotten so used to willingly doing unpaid labour– and how, inviting folks from outside of academia into an academic space, and asking them to perform that same unpaid labour, is a real problem. This is something we’ve tried, in very small ways, to remedy by having the conference be free and by paying participating artists and workshop facilitators an honorarium, but the problem of adequate financial remuneration for the labour of conference work (participating in panel discussions and roundtables, presenting papers, and so on) remains.
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Hopefully more about today, tomorrow! And something about tomorrow, but not until next week.
