gaze

Last night, Frank Warren--the founder of Post Secret--spoke at Bryn Mawr. The Post Secret campaign was started in 2005 when Frank had the idea to ask people to write down their secrets on a blank card.  He had two rules: (1) that the secret be truthful and (2) that the secret had never been told to anyone before.  Now Frank receives over 1,000 postcards each week from people all across the country and around the world.  I found his presentation incredibly moving and it reminded me a lot of what was discussed at Haverford's In/Visible Disability conference in relation to visual art and its ability to both empower and disempower.

I recently attended "in/visible: Disability & The Arts”, a symposium that took place at Haverford College on Friday that explored the role of art in relation to disability studies. The event featured five speakers: Tobin Siebers (author of Disability Aesthetics (2010)), Georgina Kleege (author of Sight Unseen (1999)), Katherine Sherwood (artist and co-curator), and Ann Fox and Jessica Cooley (co-curators of Re/Formations: Disability, Women, Sculpture and Staring at Davidson College (2009)).