AFIELD Studies are online co-learning programs led by members of the network on different topics. Comprising closed sessions and public workshops, they seek to nurture synergies between like-minded practitioners, allowing for exchange of skills and knowledge.

2022 Ableism

This is an untitled painting by Cuban artist Esperanza Conde Rodriguez that has been used as the cover of this years Afield Study Program. It is an image of a surreal and abstract painting with over 20 faces with brown and reddish skin tones. The faces and bodies emerge out of one another in a surreal way and are mostly looking towards the right side of the painting. The characters in the painting are wearing mostly bright yellow, sky blue and aqua green. The general tone of the painting is dark brown and red.

Untitled, Esperanza Conde Rodriguez, 2011. This painting has been used as the cover of this years Afield Study Program. Courtesy of the artist and Art Brut Project Cuba.

The second AFIELD Study Program titled “The Construction of Ableism” led by Chantal Wong took place online over four sessions from 30th May to 9th June 2022.

Provoked by Dolores Hayden’s prompt “What would a non-sexist city look like?”, this inquiry explores a rhetoric beyond one of lack and insufficiency to trace a network of technologies and practices that create disability and reimagine new sites and communities.

What would a place be like, where each person showed up as able and a contributor to the space, where everyone was part of the creative process and upholding of the space, for each other?

What would a non-ableist site look like?

 

Ableism is defined as a network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species-typical and therefore essential and fully human. Disability then is cast as a diminished state of being human

Fiona Kumari Campbell in “Ableism: A Theory of Everything?”

While Ableism is primarily connected to disability justice, it is also what sets the stage for ostracization, control and oppression based on trans and queer identities, race and skin colour, age and body shape. (Mia Mingus) These, through the conditions of our environment make bodies ‘lesser than an idealized standard’ and justifies placing them in a subordinate and precarious position. The argument here is that disability is not inherent, but ableism creates disability and insufficiency.

This Study Program and discussion looks at the mechanisms and structures that open and close off access, and conditions that perpetuate mechanisms of ableism. It can be as straightforward as the assumed universality of a staircase, to a complex system of cosmological beliefs that empower certain bodies to control the place, role and activities of others, setting a physical, social and spiritual hierarchy of bodies.

Disability justice and ableism work has primarily come out of North America and Europe, with a particular concentration from the USA. This program, therefore, sought to expand from this limited view to highlight initiatives from India, Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and Hong Kong, in order to allow for common understandings and points of relations to emerge, and to bring greater awareness to the inherent ableist habits in our own practices.

 

AFIELD Study 2022, ‘The Construction of Ableism’ is dressed in a series of untitled paintings by Cuban artist Esperanza Conde Rodriguez. Images courtesy of the artist and Riera Studio.

 

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The Construction of Ableism
by Chantal Wong

PROGRAM

Day 1
Monday 30 May  – 11-12:30pm ET

HISTORY, INSTITUTIONS, LANGUAGE

Amanda de Sá Paschoal – Brasília
Leroy F Moore Junior – Los Angeles
Sophie Cheung – Hong Kong/London

Day 2
Thursday 02 June – 11-12:15pm ET

PHYSICAL TO DIGITAL SPACE

Smita Chakraburtty – Rajasthan
Lluvia Nisaye – Oaxaca/Toronto

Day 3
Monday 06 June – 11-12:15pm ET

CREATIVE PRACTICE

Samuel Riera – Havana
Renata Carvalho – São Paulo

Day 4
Thursday 09 June – 11-1pm ET

WORKSHOP ON ACCESS & ABLEISM

Taraneh Fazeli