BIT Projects – BODIES IN TRANSLATION

February 14, 2019February 14, 2019

Cripping as Disrupting

Performer with prosthetics doing a hand stand on wheelchair — Erin Ball performs in Crip Shorts. Photo: Michelle Peek Photography courtesy of Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology & Access to Life.

“The theme of disruption carried throughout the symposium with discussions about breaking down exclusionary environments and practices, and the silos that enclose Deaf, Disabled and Mad arts. While the contemporary art world often touts diversity and equality, the spaces in which it’s programmed and the rules by which it’s governed often operate on white, settler and patriarchal models. The mission of disabled artists and their allies is not only to increase visibility for marginalized artists but to break down, or crip, the colonial and ableist structures that have alienated them. ... Continue reading

March 30, 2018May 14, 2018

Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations

Bodies in Translation is pleased to be co-presenting Off the Cuff: Mnidoo Infinity Squeezed through Finite Modulations, a special presentation by Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (McGill University).

In this talk, Dr. Manning will discuss her dissertation on mnidoo-worlding or mnidoo-consciousnessing and its temporal bending interrelational ethics, specifically its implications for disability studies. ... Continue reading

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT), is a multidisciplinary, university-community research project that at its core, aims to cultivate and research activist art.

In this project, ‘activist art’ refers to: disability art, Deaf art, Mad art, aging and e/Elder art, fat art, and Indigenous art. We, the researchers, artists, curators, practitioners, and community members on this grant, explore the relationship between cultivating activist art and achieving social and political justice. We believe that activist art holds the power to represent these aggrieved communities who are routinely represented as non-vital, a representation that often produces violent and even deadly effects– differently; as artistic, creative, agentive, political, community-connected, and full of vitality.