I've spent the past couple months planning for the visit of Travis Alabanza, a performance artist from the UK. Their work, which comes in the form of poetry, photography, and performance, engages with what it means to exist and survive as a black, trans person in the UK. Their most recent book of poems is called Before I Step Outside (You Love Me), and during their performance on Tuesday, Travis read aloud some of their poems. The one that struck me most was about their experience of looking in the mirror and loving the way they look, feeling what they describe as euphoria, before they step outside (hence the name of the collection) and endure violence and harrassment from the public. 

I was thinking a lot about the language and labels used in Good Kings Bad Kings and the relationship to pride as discussed in "The Disability Gulag". Nussbaum uses a wide variety of labels associated with the people at ILLC. Some of the characters use empowering terms like "crip" while others describe the patients or even themselves as "handicapped" and "retarded". Each character's word choice is indicative of their upbringing, relationship with ILLC, familiarity with disability as an identity, pride movement, and/or community, and at times their supposed mental capacity.

This is apropos of nothing, but relevant nonetheless since I just finished my midterm project about Autism.  This article is about a father with Autism who created a minecraft server ("AutCraft") exclusively for children with Autism (like his son), catering to their sensory/perception/entertainment needs.

How to Introduce a Child with Autism to Minecraft

I have attached three documents:

1. The art portion of my midterm (two paintings & three large-scare embroidery projects).

2. A formal proposal for tactile programming at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

3. A marketing write-up of my tactile programming proposal at PAFA.

See everyone tomorrow!

-Tess

I tried to think of a clever evocative title, but I really couldn't come up with anything that wasn't cheap or wrong.

Dr. Hawking has been a hero of mine since I was really little.  He wasn't one of those heroes you want to be, because I was clear from a young age that I wasn't brilliant enough to be a visionary theoretical physicist.  He was one of those heroes who's just there in the background of life letting you know that things are okay.  They're right there if the world ever needs a hand.

Hi - Happy Spring Break! 

There's a really amazing tour happening this Wednesday @ the Institute for Contemporary Art. I haven't gotten a chance to visit the exhbition yet (I'm hoping to see it tomorrow) - but I've copy/pasted the tour description below:

This tour will explore Cary Leibowitz's idiosyncratic style in the broader context of accessibility and outsider art. Discussion will be fueled by consideration of flashpoints in the recent history of art and popular accessibility, ranging from the Armory Show to Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Perfect Moment (a 1988 exhibition which premiered at the ICA without a hitch before becoming the center of controversy in Washington, D.C).

Here is my project. Enjoy!

Enormous Efforts