This artwork by DePackh critiques the rigidity of perfection of this oppressive circle by literally and symbolically breaking through it with the limbs of a disabled body
It enacts as it acts.
This artwork by DePackh critiques the rigidity of perfection of this oppressive circle by literally and symbolically breaking through it with the limbs of a disabled body
It enacts as it acts.
By interrogating and creating physical models of dance,
Recently I saw a dance recital on social media that celebrated a disabled young dancer who exemplifies a push back on what dance should be and who is allowed to participate.
stronger
Wow! such insight (notice the word choice I used...a visual one, which is often how we discuss writing that is strong)
The gazer decides what the gazee becomes.
!
My lectures simply pointed out these relationships and how we might consider the artists’ works differently under new accounts than those written into the official textbooks.
I wonder if this becomes, for some students, and explanation about why something is ____ with a negative connotation rather than an embodied way of understanding difference (and that being positive).
How might we consider an alternative version of neoclassicism, postimpressionism, cubism, Dadaism and surrealism, abstract expressionism, and conceptual art through the lens of complex embodiment?
ooohhh...such a good question because it forces us to examine the lenses and biases of the time as well as reflect on our own
Audio-description is a practice of Page 164 →aurally describing images.
Soapbox alert: alt text should be required of any image before it is inserted into any word or website program. It should be a default setting that when you go to add the image in, you must first describe it, and that text is linked to the image for that particular composition.
I ask them to take responsibility for their own access in my classroom both physically and intellectually, because access is important to me. I ask them to change positions in class if they cannot hear or see me
This reminds me of M. Remi Yergeau's invitation at every presentation I have been to with them where they advocate the same autonomy but note the individualized ways in which this autonomy can bodily manifest...and that those individual ways are okay and supported as being what is good.
I was invited to fly to Boston to work with the students as they developed a unique object to fit the needs of a short-statured body.
This reminds me of Dolmage's work and his advocation that one must consult the constituents/stakeholders before one works to make something more accessible. What one person may find accessible another may not, and it is in the conversation and co-creative process access can really be created.
Furthermore, the meaning and significance of the records we collected through this initiative will be determined in part by future users of the archive, and not by us at all.
Yes...we never know how our work is taken up and circulated, but what an interesting project.
field archivist often confers with a Page 87 →prospective donor at some length about the materials to be documented, gaining important information and insight that helps contextualize the collection for future users
Maybe access is an issue but also what is "important" to contribute...maybe someone doesn't feel that what they would contribute is important. How to combat that?
appropriate to try to gather documentation from individuals and communities who are living through traumatic events.19 So for example, the racial disparities in health outcomes from COVID-19 emerged quickly as an important aspect of the pandemic, including in Detroit and southeast Michigan. Yet families going through such trauma and loss are not likely to want to, or to have the capacity to, document their pain for posterity right now, and for archivists to reach out to them at such moments is exploitative and cruel.
yes...especially when some communities are historically hit harder or experience trauma more often in embodied ways
Also, despite reaching out to specific campus constituencies with calls for contributions, we have not succeeded in documenting important perspectives and experiences, such as the voices of custodians and patients at the hospital, for example.
So how to fix this? I am sure the stories/artifacts are out there.
The following example illustrates how journalistic content creation and archival fieldwork overlap during the pandemic while also highlighting the distinct role of the university archives in ensuring institutional accountability.
An interesting connection.
The four-minute film opens to a first-person perspective of a waking student.
This brings up an interesting question of creative submissions or fictionalized accounts. How might they be coded when it comes to searching the database? Because they do represent some/all of the aspects of lived lives, but they are created like a movie or book with another purpose/audience perhaps altogether.
Neither does he mention whether Dixon’s death resulted from COVID-19, though it is certainly implied
What kinds of things are being done to contextualize the submissions for those who access this photo? His death from COVID seems like an assumption now based upon the incomplete information given in the submission, so I can't help wonder what someone 100 years from now would make of the image. How would his death be different in COVID versus not in COVID?
fifteen contributors submitted items after these messages were sent.
Yikes...what was done to mitigate this...another outreach?
This outreach effort was less successful than we had hoped
I wonder why this might be. Is it an access issue inherent in assumptions that everyone knows how to do the things that students do and digitally submit info.
70% of the contributions have come from students, and the large majority related to a class assignment
same question as above
Twenty-two students made contributions. Twenty-three members
45 of 137 seems like a significant skewing of data. How did you account for this?
137 donors
That seems small. As a current Umich student, I don't recall seeing a call for this information, but maybe I missed it in the myriad of emails sent at one point. Are there ongoing requests for contributions?
who were affiliated with the University of Michigan.
Currently? Alumni? Retired faculty/staff? That's still a big group.
important sense of perspective, making it easier to determine long-term significance (“enduring value” in archival parlance)
But whose perspective, and how does that determine significance? I am sure what we feel is important now was not necessarily what was felt to be important 30, 40, 50+ years ago. Some voices/bodies were not collected that were not though important or significant in the long term because they were not part of the narrative, but now we wish we had those voices. I am thinking about marginalized populations.
paper
We have mastered preserving these forms...at least somewhat, but digitally...what to do?
“born digital”
And with that the need to have access digitally as formats change. That floppy disk I had in college is much harder to access. Or that 8-Track tape? Chun talks about this in her book Updating to Remain the Same.
facemask from the 1918 influenza epidemic
I have thought similarly in relation to the current times. Having made over 600 masks, I wonder if those will become family artifacts in the future of a time long past. Also why I created a scrap quilt with the leftover mask fabric to have a reminder of my own material participation in this time.
accountability for our public institutions, supporting critique and memory
Similar to my work with The Swastika Counter (formerly Monitor) where one of our goals is to create accountability and introspection about swastika appearances in communities. By shedding a light and mapping this information, we hold those mentioned accountable, but there are material and embodied consequences to that light.
Power
And the centering of certain bodies/perspectives which are impacted by systems/power
add value and even meaning
I am thinking about this as it relates to genre. In selecting and categorizing data, are we not creating genres?
disseminating everyday experiences
All this data at our fingertips, but how many actually look back at all of those photos on the regular. Again this speaks to the purpose of the collection/curation.
What is “archival?” Who decides?
Good questions. When we look at archives of the past, they are always curated for a purpose. So I also wonder at the purpose and to what end?
“rapid-response collecting,”
I see what you did there. The language "rapid-response" has been used so much with COVID testing that I wonder about its use going forward in connection with things non-COVID.