Watch My Body | An Unusual Watching Exercise

Original link: https://tyingknots.net/2023/06/shift/

In May 2023, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago, USA launched an immersive experience called “SHIFT”. Participants followed black disabled actors to explore various spaces of the art museum. These actors carried their own canes, manual wheelchairs, electric wheelchairs up and down the stairs, or connected to the scene through Zoom, or moved forward with sign language interpreters and each other’s arms to use them. The way and sense of time disturb, disrupt, and reorganize the order of the museum…

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As an audience of the performance, Daguangzi, the author of this article, recorded the three and a half hours in his own eyes. For Daguangzi, the exploration of space by black disabled people in the art museum is “an important viewing exercise” for him. Daguangzi became curious about the state of disability because of his experience of sports injuries. As a short-term resident in Chicago, he also has a personal concern for the city’s ethnic politics. Due to the proliferation of guns, drugs, and unequal distribution of educational and public health resources, disabled black people in Chicago are often prone to fall into the abyss, suffering from structural violence and stigma. In this context, what does art mean to them? Is it a space that you long for but cannot enter? Is it a weapon that can be transformed into power? Is it a tool for building connections? And what does watching these different life experiences mean to audiences outside the community?

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Long story spoiler:

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– sick? normal?

-whose space?

whose time?

-Group portrait: a creation of collective presence

– Re-imagining of public building space

– Art as Invitation and Resistance

– aftermath swing

Text / Edited by Daguangn / Lin Zihao

01. Sick? normal?

In the summer of 2020, due to a sports accident, the three ligaments on the inner and outer sides of the left ankle were severely torn. It took one month on crutches and three months to recover to be able to run. It sounds depressing, but in fact, the whole person was very excited during those days, and wrote the following text in a serious manner like a joke:

Occasionally, it is a very interesting experience to have a disease with a good prognosis and a moderate degree of pain. Bruises fall into this category, and sprains are especially recommended. The epidemic period is another excellent time for injury: if there is no need for commuting, you will not be reminded of the “inconvenience” of being sick; if you have no relatives and friends to take care of you at all times, you will not be reminded of your “sickness” all the time. As a result, you have a precious opportunity to immerse your body and mind, 24 hours a day, and make “sickness” a “normal” experience.

At that time, I hadn’t been able to realize all kinds of experiences into the broader narrative of disability, but through repeated body sketches, after establishing an unprecedented close connection with the body, a question was also planted in my heart: whether to survive or not? The normality of being the body? How does a body that is different from the standard definition perceive the world?

In the spring of 22, I had the opportunity to watch “WIRED” by the “Kinetic Light” dance troupe in the theater of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (hereinafter referred to as “MCA”). That was the first time It was also the first time I saw a dance on wheels and a flying sky with a wheelchair when I came into contact with a disabled theater troupe. I have never seen such body rhythms and movement methods before, and my usual aesthetic imagination has been challenged, such as being hung by an elastic rope, like fishing for a moon in water, touching and touching the ground with my palms, walking, bouncing, happily like Undulating in the waves is a movement that non-disabled people who do not use upper body strength cannot invent. In addition, the theme of “Gu” is also novel to me. It explores the barrier, oppression, imprisonment and other violence caused by barbed wire as a physical material and symbol in history; at the same time, by digging the barbed wire The aesthetic feeling of art, and the basic functions of its rope and netting, complete the capture, taming and transformation of power, making it possible to create connections. This intricate relationship is poetically woven by the Dynamic Light Dance Troupe.

In the scene stills of “Gu”, three dancers of different races are entangled in the barbed wire. They are looking at each other. The wheelchair is suspended in the air, and the wheels are shining, as if they will fly in the next second. Source: MCA official website, photographed by Robbie Sweeney

“SHIFT” is the finale of this year’s MCA Theater’s spring series “Friction,” and only one performance is scheduled. The venue alone grabbed me immediately! It walks out of the theater and meets the audience in public spaces such as museum squares, corridors, and stairs. In the imagination, it will be an immersive experience between installation, performance, and drama. In addition, the main creator Barak adé Soleil (Barak adé Soleil) continues to discuss disability, blackness, queerness, and neurodiversity in his works, which is in line with the theme of last year’s “Gu” and holds With the expectation of expanding imagination again, I decided to buy a ticket to participate in the performance on May 6th.

Suo Lei, a dark-skinned, fat, bald black man with glasses, leaned sideways, grabbed the railing with one hand, and held the wheelchair with the other, as if floating on the steps. Source: MCA official website, photographed by Marcus Polk

02. Whose space? whose time?

To sum it up in one sentence, “Shift” is like a 3-hour live version of Tsai Ming-liang’s movie: for the actors, it is a long, slow walk in space, and for the audience, it is a close and close gaze. There is no story line setting in the whole play, only a moving space main line, the focus is on “passing”: In the process of passing through the entrance, through the corridor, through the lobby, through the steps and the elevator, it shows how the body is different from that of the non-disabled person, how it moves in real life, and how it has a relationship with assistive devices, the environment, and others .

The opening is very shocking, and it is the most ceremonial scene in the whole story.

The audience first assembled and waited in the square outside the MCA. After the performers entered the center of the square one after another, they all stood facing the iconic big steps at the entrance of the MCA. It was noticed that the participants were 8 black performers with different disabilities, different degrees of disabilities, and different genders. Only two of them were theater actors, and the others were temporarily recruited from the local black disabled community in Chicago. They chose different accessibility methods, including canes, push carts, manual wheelchairs, electric wheelchairs, and two of them used Zoom to access the scene, and the assistants held the computers online to ensure their “presence”.

Against the backdrop of tragic music, the actors got off their wheelchairs and began to climb the steps. Some borrowed handrails, some used canes, some were supported by assistants, some crawled and climbed with their whole bodies, some pulled the wheelchair backwards and went up step by step with their buttocks. Move up, and if you get tired halfway, just lie down and rest for a while. Barak Ad Sorey mentioned in the brochure [1]:

“For me, navigating my own way in a world deeply influenced by sound centrism and capitalism means I’m constantly battling against circumstances that don’t suit me. Ultimately, whether I aspire to it or not, I Moving around different maneuvers: trying to go up and down stairs that I can’t cope with, trying to cope with elevators that work or don’t work.”

For the non-disabled people, the ordinary steps can perfectly melt into the background and turn a blind eye, but for the disabled, they may be as dazzling as barbed wire, which almost constitutes a provocation. It turns out that whether or not to pay attention to the environment and whether to interact with the environment is not just a question of whether an individual is highly sensitive or insensitive to the surrounding environment, and it may not be an individual’s choice. It may be that the environment invades you and does not allow you to be safe, so that you have to be vigilant to distinguish these resistances from time to time, like the big steps in front of the 8 actors.

At the “Shift” performance scene, on the steps at the entrance of the MCA, some people borrowed handrails, some used canes, some were supported by assistants, some crawled with their whole bodies to climb, and some pulled the wheelchair backwards and moved up step by step with their buttocks. Source: author

This is also a very symbolic scene. Usually such large steps are associated with ancient powers, such as palaces, temples, great courts, museums, etc. The painstaking process for visitors to climb up the stairs is actually a process of surrender and worship. Therefore, when black disabled people rub their bodies against the steps, in my understanding, they are asking the authority: Why are contemporary art and theater still shelved? Why, museums that promise to serve the public are not serving the disabled? Climbing the Stairs is not an inspiration porn that touches non-disabled people, nor is it a pilgrimage to art, but a conflict with sound centrism, racism, and the class attributes of contemporary art. Crash , like the disability activists who climbed the steps of Capitol Hill in 1990 to get the Americans with Disabilities Act passed.

On March 12, 1990, eight-year-old Jennifer Keelan led a group of physically disabled protesters up Capitol Hill. Source: AP Images

After entering the venue, there was a fierce chair dance scene.

The leading actor, Barak Ad Soleil, first threw the plastic chair that was placed aside into the corridor, and the team stopped because of the obstacle. Then he slammed the chair down the corridor with a loud crash. Another wheelchair partner put the plastic chair on his lap and moved away one by one; another partner slowly left his wheelchair and carefully moved to a smaller plastic chair. After finally cleaning up the plastic chairs, they began to happily “walk” up and down the corridor. The walking sticks became lighter and the wheelchairs became more at ease. After a period of entertainment, the team left one after another, and Suo Lei pushed the last chair to the ground to complete the transition.

At first, I didn’t quite understand the performers’ outrage over the usual plastic chairs, especially if a venue already has wide enough aisles and wheelchair-accessible areas, what is there to be angry about? Then, I tried a thought situation experiment. Imagine a non-disabled person walking into a movie theater, and you can choose all the fixed seats in a large area in front of you. You have a strong sense of control and possession of the entire space. But when people with disabilities enter the same space, they find that this large seating area does not belong to me. Even if there is a reserved wheelchair area, I can only watch movies at a fixed distance and a fixed angle. Whether it belongs to this space or not” is very different . What if a place doesn’t have a reserved area yet? I may have to move out of the wheelchair and sit on an ordinary seat that I am not used to. This forced separation itself is much harder than non-disabled people imagine. I heard a podcast “Crip Crap” [2] talk about the relationship between wheelchairs and daily life. The anchor said that they not only need to use wheelchairs when going out, but also rely on wheelchairs for all activities at home, so wheelchairs are basic survival needs. An intimate partner who accompanies you day and night can also be seen as an extension of your body. In addition, wheelchairs are basically tailor-made, even if they are only replaced with temporary wheelchairs when they are sent for repairs, they will have bruises on their bodies, and there will be a lot of friction between them and their lives, and the rhythm will be disrupted. Can you imagine a home without basic furniture like sofas and chairs? Yes, the furniture is simply unnecessary, uncomfortable, or even unsafe for them.

So, whose space is it? This is not a false question.

After that, it is the core link that repeats up and down three times between the first floor and the second floor inside the building.

The performers use constantly changing body postures to go down the steps and then go up the steps, as if trying to find a favorite way to interact with the steps. From sweating profusely at the beginning and not getting used to it, to being a little proficient, to playing with the steps, I felt like I was slapped on the forehead: Oh, who said that the steps should be “walked”? Who stipulates that the steps are for non-disabled people, and it is better for disabled people to take straight stairs? If one day, a disabled person suddenly thinks that such a beautiful staircase, the staircase that everyone has to take pictures and share when they visit MCA, I also want to feel it, then can you satisfy me, wait a minute, and make room for it?

The main staircase of MCA Steven Hall has complex vertical layers, geometric shapes and light and shadow relationships. It is often the focus of official publicity and a popular check-in point for visitors. Source: Hedrich Blessing

In the scene of “Shift”, the wheelchair user interacts with the steps and railings. Source: author

There is also a magical feeling: such a reciprocating cycle, combined with the spiral extension of the MCA ladder, will gradually give the viewer a sense of infinity and purposelessness, as if this is a stage at all, rather than a functional one. ladder. If, at the beginning, you still had the urge to applaud when watching the actors climb to the top of the big steps, now, you will just watch calmly and with peace of mind, without any judgment. For the audience, this is an important viewing exercise. I think of a video [3] in which the famous violinist Itzhak Perlman (Itzhak Perlman), whose legs are inconvenient due to polio, once went to the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles as a guest conductor. At the beginning, under the quiet and nervous gaze of the audience, he slowly climbed onto the special podium hand in hand with his stick. Just before he sat down, the audience began to applaud sporadically, as if he had accomplished some great feat. Yitzhak immediately waved his hands helplessly to stop, saying “it’s unnecessary”. It makes me sad to see a world-class violinist being treated as a disabled/super-capable person and given encouragement or praise just because he climbed the three most daily steps. When I saw Yitzhak recital at the Ravinia Festival last year, he had already switched to an electric moped, and as soon as he came out, he sprinted down the ramp to the top of the bandstand without giving anyone a chance to applaud.

Of course, the process of moving up and down the building three times is not done in one go. Due to the difference in physical condition and movement method, the sense of time when 8-bits act is also different. Everyone will complete the same journey at a speed and rhythm that suits them, and then wait, gather, perform at the node, and reunite into a team to continue to the next node. The basic setting of this uneven timeline challenges the uniform rhythm of non-disabled people. There are also two special pauses designed in “Shift”, the dance party in the hall and the collective rest at the entrance of the store. MCA’s performance art curator Tara Aisha Willis (Tara Aisha Willis, Curator in Performance) pointed out in the promotion [4] that “(the disabled and the black body) are often crudely portrayed by the media as Lazy to the point of death,” and the prom is a direct counter to that stereotype. What you see is how relaxed, free, energetic, and creative they are in the community that makes them comfortable. One woman held a wheelchair and danced electric buttocks, which was the climax of the audience, like the documentary “Disability Crip Camp is a utopian scene of teenage romps— the safety of camp is their Woodstock .

The scene of “Shift”, the dance party. How relaxed, free, energetic, and creative they are in the community that makes them comfortable. One lady held a wheelchair and danced a big electric hip dance, which was the climax of the audience. Source: author

And when it comes to the rest scene, which seems to be messy and interferes with the daily spatial order of the museum, we have to change our perspective to look at the so-called “slowness and laziness”. This kind of relative stillness is a judgment made by standing in the space-time coordinate system of the non-disabled person. If you jump the coordinate system, you will find that the disabled person has been busy in their own time frame. What’s more, in order to overcome the many frictions with the disability-unfriendly environment, they have to consume more energy and time, and of course need to rest from time to time.

“Shift” site, collective rest. Actors sat cross-legged on the floor, or reclined on wheelchair seats. Source: author

I want to emphasize that not all performers can use the steps to go up and down. Two electric wheelchair users still took the elevator. This makes people worry, if the elevator broke down today, wouldn’t they be stuck here? If in an old apartment like mine, at least one elevator broke down one day out of three, wouldn’t people in wheelchairs be unable to leave the house at random? What should we do when the fire breaks out? Suddenly found that the elevator is only a non-essential replacement for non-disabled people, but it may be the only way for people with mobility disabilities. Fortunately, on the day of the performance, the elevator was running as scheduled, but because the venue was not deliberately cleared for the performance, there would always be a few passengers coming down from other floors. If it is a non-disabled person, they would have already squeezed into the elevator and left, but wheelchair users have to wait until a sufficiently empty elevator can go up. Such a daily scene unexpectedly becomes part of the performance, but once it is placed at the height of the stage, you will suddenly realize the anomaly: it may not only be the inaccessible infrastructure that shapes the sense of time for the disabled, but also the inaccessible infrastructure. Actions for people with disabilities.

People in wheelchairs “should” be given priority in the front row when watching a show, non-disabled pedestrians “should” make room for the visually impaired on the sidewalk wide enough, and public transport “should” match the speed at which disabled people get on and off even if it breaks the train timetable, slow down the progress of all passengers. These “helping the weak” measures are rooted in our childhood education as a kind of “moral consensus” standing in a high position, but after today, I seem to have found a new point of defense for these “self-evident”: if social space belongs to everyone People, non-disabled people are not “comity”, we are just coordinating each other’s time axis and space scale. The high-speed operation under the logic of capitalism does not connect the time axis of the disabled, but at the same time, the ultra-high-speed society continues to create more disabled people, so from another perspective, there are no individual disabled people , there is only a disabled society that cannot accommodate different needs.

03. Group portrait: a creation of collective presence

The tone of “Shift” is silent and contemplative throughout, there is not much verbal communication between the actors, and the audience is too quiet, only the background music that matches the scene design is played one by one. However, despite the slow pace of the performance, there are still many, many places where the eyes can rest.

The museum did not clear the venue, so there were mainly two groups of audiences. Those who knew the performance in advance and bought tickets for the performance, and those who came to MCA to see the exhibition and were dragged into the performance without knowing it. In the first batch, I saw two people in wheelchairs and a hearing-impaired person, but most of them were non-disabled people. This is quite different from my expectations. After all, most of the people with disabilities from the ticket inspectors to the guides to the audience in “WIRED”, and the documentary “Code of Freaks” co-created by local communities and scholars in Chicago of Freak)” at the meeting of the creators, there were also many people with disabilities. The audience basically came at their own pace, and most of them stood for ten minutes and a half an hour, and then walked away when they found it interesting; The audience is guided by the guide to follow the performance team, and they basically keep gathering to give the performers, especially those in wheelchairs, enough room to move. I deliberately paid attention to the expressions of the audience, and found that no matter the audience who bought the ticket or the audience who didn’t know beforehand, no one showed doubts on their faces, and no one asked each other, “What are you doing? Why are they lying on the steps?” Basically, everyone stopped to look at it quietly, with joyful, warm, and fun expressions. In the dance scene, the three non-disabled teenage girls beside me were very happy, shaking and recording with their mobile phones. There was a grandfather in a wheelchair who was pushed by his partner from the beginning to the end. He applauded with great excitement at the end. He probably felt a lot of things that I couldn’t empathize with. I would be very curious about how the audience would react if similar performances were held in China. After all, it is rare to see people with disabilities in public places in China, let alone shows created and performed by people with disabilities. But even if the audience feels uncomfortable or offended, it’s still a good exercise.

Also, I look carefully at the performer’s props. This guy assembled a detachable cane section by section, that guy’s electric wheelchair had a rocker handle for steering, the lightweight wheelchair raised its head like a stunt bike, and the manual wheelchair went round and round with one wheel stopped Just move the other side, and there is an electric wheelchair that rises up and turns into a reclining chair when it is tilted back. The girl on the other side of the computer Zoom said a few words to the assistant, and then danced along with the dance scene. The costume props of the performers are also interesting: a male dancer is wearing a black see-through top and shorts, deliberately contrasting his strong upper body muscles and slender lower limbs; a girl’s scarf has Mexican artist Frida, who is often quoted by the American disability community Frida Kahlo, coincidentally, MCA was also the first stop in the United States for the first large-scale retrospective exhibition of Frida in 1978【5】, this exhibition made both Frida Kahlo and MCA famous; In one scene, take off your shoes and socks, put on bare feet the ankle bells used in African celebration dances, and pass and caress pieces of African handicrafts with 8 performers around the video installation shaped like a sacrificial platform. This connects them to their distant common ancestor.

“The Broken Column,” Frida Kahlo’s self-portrait after spinal surgery. In the portrait, Frida is wrapped in white bandages and cloth, naked, the skin of the torso is split, and the skeleton is replaced by a pillar, surrounded by sharp nails. Source: Wikipedia

Finally, I have to say that there are actually not only 8 performers, but also two sign language interpreters and some assistants on the stage at the same time. The assistant is responsible for helping the actor to climb the stairs, carrying and delivering things behind him, transferring wheelchairs and props, and holding the computer to maintain Zoom connectivity throughout the process. At first, I felt that the scene was a bit chaotic and unprofessional, because in the performances I usually see, the backstage staff try their best to hide behind the scenes to highlight the performers, or at most wear black clothes, and quickly go on stage and change scenes again. Run down, but this time the assistant, has been present calmly, and the dress is also very eye-catching. After watching it for a long time, I found it more natural, and guessed that Suo Lei himself had no intention of creating a heroic image of an independent and self-improving disabled person. Mutual aid, cooperation, and social support are also important cultural components of the disabled community. In this collective creation, everyone can be present, and everyone should be present. In particular, sign language is very entertaining, and these two black girls have pushed my understanding of sign language translation to a new level. I just realized that instrumental music without lyrics also needs to be interpreted in sign language. For example, you need to use your body to perform waves, bird calls, play the violin, play the keyboard, play the flute, ring the bell, etc., and even If you want to imitate playing the pan flute, you have to play the kick drum, snare drum and cymbals in the drum kit separately! Their bodies sway with the rhythm, and their emotions match the music. It is a completely self-contained dance, which is very beautiful. Interestingly, although the two of them are hearing people (that is, non-deaf), they can also communicate with sign language when they are far away or when the scene is extremely quiet, unlike other hearing people who habitually take out their mobile phones.

MCA main staircase and “Shifting” video installation. Source: author

04. Reimagining public building space

The previous understanding of “barrier-free space” refers to automatic door opening devices, barrier-free passages, reserved wheelchair areas, barrier-free toilets, etc., all of which are mechanical regulations in barrier-free design specifications. After this performance, I will revisit this concept with a question, that is, who is the main body of this space?

I like the architectural element of stairs very much. It can combine complex vertical layers, geometric shapes and light and shadow relationships. In addition to its functionality, it is also an aesthetic device, but looking at it now will have a new dimension. Thinking about it carefully, the appearance and use of steps are based on the principle of efficiency: compared with ramps, when rising to the same height, the distance is saved due to the greater slope, and the space utilization rate is higher; compared with straight stairs, it has a greater instantaneous flow of people capacity and long-term stability. However, whose efficiency and stability are considered? With this vision, when I returned to downtown Chicago that day and saw the steampunk fire escapes climbing the outer walls of early skyscrapers, I was already a little shuddering.

A fire escape over the exterior wall of the Warwick Allerton Hotel in Chicago. Source: author

I didn’t notice before that the big steps at the entrance of the MCA really take up a lot of space without leaving a ramp; in contrast, the wheelchair entrance is at the theater on the corner of the street and the store on the other corner, so small and inconspicuous . If I hadn’t followed the actors through the store after the performance, I would have never realized that the store is also a wheelchair entrance, and there is a hidden elevator buried deep inside. If we dig further, we can also ask, must the square be matched with the prominent and open steps? Who is greeted by this sacred space constructed at the cost of accessibility, and to whom is it an obstacle? Are landscapes similar to historical evolution still necessary in contemporary urban spaces? Is it possible to create a new imagination of public square?

The main entrance of the MCA, the wheelchair entrance marked in red in the picture is located at the corners on both sides of the building. Source: author

As for the interior of the building, many modern venues like to create a dazzling staircase or a large stepped sunken area in a conspicuous position with the best light, like MCA. If this is an important part of the main building, it is equivalent to excluding many people with disabilities (including elderly people with handicapped legs) who are not able to enjoy this area. So, where is the elevator located? The straight staircase behind the middle lobby on the second floor of the MCA is in a dark corner at the end of a narrow corridor next to the broad bright steps. This reminds me of when I visited the Henan Museum, I was taken away from the main exhibition area by the narrator, and walked a long way to the back alley with a very different temperament to take the straight elevator. A similar design will inevitably cause a break in the experience when visiting.

Above: Elevator entrance and stair entrance behind the central hall. Bottom picture: The aisle, which is not spacious, is half occupied by the bulletin board vs. the spacious and beautiful steps. Source: author

The Guggenheim Museum in New York, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is a classic attempt to break the fragmented spatial layout. It is a circular building in the shape of a large conch, and the passage between floors is a large ramp that spirals up against the wall, and the ramp and the wall itself are the main exhibition area. This design achieves several operations from discrete to continuous in one fell swoop: the most microscopic level is the continuation of steps to ramps, which in turn makes layers continuous, and then on a large scale, makes The entire vertical space is transparent and continuous, and one of the final effects is that disabled and non-disabled people can continuously blend in the same space.

Inside the Guggenheim Museum. Source: author

05. Art as invitation and resistance

I always had this concern before: Although I also want to know about unusual bodies, how can I watch the bodies and behaviors of disabled people in real life, so as not to constitute offense and avoid the suspicion of spectacle viewing? In the end, it’s basically a choice, don’t read it. Art just provides such a space. On the one hand, it makes the performers safe (the focus of the disabled dance company in Yuwazhi’s last article), and on the other hand, it also makes the audience feel safe. This time, for example, I felt invited to gaze at their bodies, movements, and props, and felt that I was allowed to be close enough and given enough time to practice my gaze. So, can it be said that the combination of art and disability is almost inevitable? It creates a safe enclave for disabled performers and disabled/non-disabled viewers.

Subdividing it further, although the two performances of “Shift” and “Gu” both completed the “safety” process by relying on the abstraction of art, the former pulls people back to the most essential sense of reality because of its daily nature. The reimagining of the state of existence makes the audience feel clearly that what you see in front of you is an ordinary person who lives like you. However, “Gu” or sports for the disabled (such as adaptive rock climbing ) are more likely to highly demonstrate the creativity of the disabled state. If the viewer has not undergone deliberate training, it will be difficult for the viewer to associate it with the disability/superpower in the mind. Stereotype romanticizes image separation.

Although I made complaints about the space of MCA in all aspects this time, before the end, I still want to express my love for the concept of this museum. If you compare the Guggenheim Museum in New York with the Modern Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago in the same city, the area of ​​the MCA is not large, and the collection of more than 2,000 pieces is not too rich. However, this limitation also prompted it to choose an alternative path. Only a small proportion of the permanent collection is selected for rotation. After the permanent area is reduced, the main space can be relinquished to the rookie’s touring exhibition. The space is carefully displayed, maintained, and enshrined one by one like sacrificial offerings, and a large number of security guards are hired to guard the temple site, so that visitors can look up at the high-end art (fine art) like a religious ceremony. This very suspicious and inaccessible experience is precisely the contemporary The shackles that art first wants to break. In addition, MCA is keen to contact local scholars, cooperate with local artists, and strive to create a warm community that can interact offline by organizing small seminars and public education projects. In addition to planning the most experimental and interactive exhibitions with the times, the MCA Theater, as another major feature of the museum, also collaborates to explore and respond to urgent social issues. In particular, the accessibility technical support provided by the theater for live performances is more comprehensive than any other venue I have seen, including English and Spanish subtitles, sign language, live broadcasts, audio descriptions, unsubtitled shows, and this year added vibration Feedback devices (haptic elements), these themselves can also be considered part of public education.

Presence is the most powerful voice. Barack Ad Soley, a native Chicago artist, could make an all-black, all-black, all-black, The performance of the handicapped and an all-local lineup is already breaking many restrictions, and it is the best action and resistance. As the event planner, MCA is also making a frank and brave invitation to invite everyone to examine, reflect, and criticize this space. This is a very respectable public responsibility.

06. Aftermath swings

When watching the subtle daily movements of the actors, I will always be fascinated from time to time, recalling the pieces of body memory left by the injury. The text at that time recorded this physical dialogue:

You will perceive the existence, function and interaction of muscles, ligaments and joints, be amazed by such a precise mechanical structure, and learn anatomy and human mechanics 101;

You will become more and more suspicious of which leg is normal and which leg is abnormal, and ask the rehabilitation therapist silly, “Am I really lame?”

You find it really hard to squat in Asia (long live the toilet!), and you also know why so many people can’t learn to jump with their feet, so you kind of understand why motor nerve control is more difficult to achieve than pure intelligence AI;

Just like a child aged 1-3, you will learn to stand, walk, run, and jump again. The difference is that you have perception and memory, which accidentally “fills in” the gap in growth memory before the age of 3. The baby madman has a strange resonance;

You’ll be amazed how decades of muscle memory can be lost in just a few weeks, and how quickly the motor nervous system can adapt to a new posture. When learning to go down the stairs, you mobilize all your consciousness and you can’t control your body, so you use the term “relearn” instead of “recovery”.

The above-mentioned pathological feelings will help you jump out of the philosophical tradition of “soul and body duality”, and let you, who only do brain production and stay away from physical creativity for too long, realize more and more the identity of body and mind. I used to have a tense relationship with the body in which the subject dominates the object. I felt that it was too troublesome. I always had problems with “I” when I was fed and served. If I can put my brain in a chip in the future, I will naturally lie flat. . Now I think, the more powerful the pure intelligence AI is, the more interesting this body is, at least it is an equal material medium for interacting with everything in the world.

At that time, I thought that I would be able to relieve some of my body anxiety and develop fine-grained emotions with it, mostly through self-awareness, but the aftermath of “Shifting” enabled me to face up to the environment and social feedback. role in construction. If I had lived in the early 1970s, when Handicap Camp was set, before the Americans with Disabilities Act, would I hate my body even more after being injured?

In the 1960s, at Camp Jened in New York State, disabled people danced freely. Source: Documentary “Disability Camp”

When telling my story again, I would like to add this:

You finally enjoy the basic facilities for the disabled: buses that can “kneel down”, ramps at the door, doors that open automatically by pressing the button for the disabled sign, electric mopeds available for short-term rental, electric vehicles for people with mobility disabilities in supermarkets, and more. There are essential, delivery services;

When you learn that you can apply for a parking space for the disabled, you realize that the above facilities are not just for the “disabled”. Therefore, “disabled” is not a status, but a state that everyone can reach at any time, even if it is a temporary state;

Every time you go to the rehabilitation center by school bus or bus, the driver will greet you warmly and drop you off in advance at non-stop points;

Fill in the scale before rehabilitation, and when negotiating goals and training plans, you realize that treatment goals are originally negotiable and should be related to personal lifestyles (such as work habits, living habits, exercise habits), so There is no single “cure” end point in medical services. It has a lot of flexibility and room for error, and it is more like a complete social service.

All these supporting social services will allow you to accept it as a new part of yourself more smoothly when facing irreversible wear and tear of your body. An inclusive and sound society should promise independent rights and channels, but at the same time, it should not force you to become a saint of “high quality”. Let everyone feel at ease that they are not perfect, that they are incomplete, that they can become ordinary, and that they can ask for help and cooperation. Isn’t this our ideal social picture?

Now, I can say with more certainty: These 4 months have indeed been a precious practice of embodying the understanding of disabilities by using myself as a method.

· about the author ·

Daguangn, an observer who is new to the disabled community, and a Ph.D. candidate in physics.

· Author Postscript ·

This article is a scatter perspective, fragmentary, detailed drawing, no systematic discussion, no theoretical argument, but I want to honestly keep its youthful appearance as an essay, and my freshness as a beginner in the community look. I think, in the Chinese environment where the topic of barrier-free has just started, my youthfulness is just an opportunity to connect with more readers who want to open the door of new cognition from zero to one.

When I was writing, I conceived readers who were like me, non-anthropology majors, non-humanities and social science backgrounds, and ordinary readers with general reading interests. This assumption may be very different from the daily readership of Kyuwashi. Therefore, when discussing with the editor, I will often explain why I want to add some prospect descriptions, avoid certain statements, and give some preparations and psychological buffers to readers who have never been exposed to this issue. I still can’t grasp the complexity of anthropological requirements, but my hope is that people who read this 10,000-word babble, even if they can only catch a flash of a useful word from it, it is powerful. I still remember the first time I discussed the first episode of “Sound of Metal” on the podcast “Sound of Loudness” [6] and I was excited when I heard the lectures of “deaf/hearing” and “disabled/non-disabled”. The system is reversed, immediately breaking the inherent division of “able people/non-able people” in the brain. If the Venn diagram in the brain used to be that the able-bodied people were in the central circle, and the non-sound people were all the areas outside the circle, then it became a lot of parallel but overlapping circles with a large area. This is probably the power of words. Since then, this seedling has spread around, related to the relationship between disability and old age, care, reproductive rights and life rights, artistic aesthetics, etc., and gradually realized that disability is not just an identity label that has nothing to do with the current me. It is also a basic perspective of feminism to see the world.

When I was invited to write a manuscript, I was panicked: Why did you ask me to write some “field notes”, I am a theoretical computing party who doesn’t even need to enter the laboratory, what is the field? What’s more, there are only a few circle of friends creations and miscellaneous pens for folders on weekdays, and I have no experience in team leader drafts. The more I look at the previous articles of the official account, the more I am persuaded to dismiss them. Monograph translations, media criticisms, extensive quotations, word by word, how can I speak like this group of people? However, just after watching the performance, all kinds of thoughts always come together, coupled with the self-consciousness of an old reader, so I don’t feel uncomfortable. As a result, the editor is like a powerful prompt engineer (prompt engineer), and I am the super wordy ChatGPT. After the prompt question is reached, I spit out a large text.

In fact, I want to say, thanks to the editors for their encouragement and assistance. They know how to work with people with different knowledge backgrounds and language habits. They inspired me to write in the most familiar and good way of telling, and my psychological concerns were quickly dispelled. Instead, I cherished Input from my layman’s perspective. At the same time, they also fully respect the wishes of the author. The selection and polishing of each small argument, word, and title are subject to discussion, fully confirming my intentions, and helping to realize a picture description that is friendly to the visually impaired, and for the Swipe finger friendly list of subtitles.

Finally, friends who are not majors in anthropology are welcome to submit original manuscripts to Jie Shengzhi, and share love with the editors!

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