Why disability culture is the frontier
Happy summer in Chicago!
It feels like we're in for a couple months of pure beauty in this city, so Cuerpos Justificados / Justified Bodies is throwing a little party to celebrate.
Concert at Dorothy Sunday 6/11 at 7pm
CJ, our loose organization that throws disability-lead events, is back with an event at a pretty sweet cocktail lounge in West Town. We chose to do this concert at Dorothy (2500 W Chicago Ave) because of the venue's commitment to accessibility. Even though the bar is an underground speak-easy, they have a functional elevator that goes directly from the street into the lounge. Super cool! A staff member will be posted at the corner to assist with wayfinding before the show and during the first 30 minutes of performance, but if you're arriving late the staff in the restaurant above (Split Rail) are trained to assist.
The night will feature intimate performances from Raro, Lyn Rye and Ashley Grigs. The event will run from roughly 7pm-10pm and their is a $15 cover charge.
Great songs, tasty cocktails and good people, it's a great combination for a summer evening in my opinion. Hope to catch you there!
Full event details and advance tickets are here.
Why disability culture is the frontier
Organizing around an identity that is far from accepted or understood in mainstream culture leads to a lot of reflection and self-analysis. Who exactly am I doing this for? Do I really think I can work to amplify voices of disabled artists or am I just trying to find somewhere I fit in?
There's probably no one answer that captures it all, but what I do know is understanding disability--or coming to terms with the fact that it can never fully be understood--fosters the type of thinking this world needs.
The thing with disability is that there's no way of summing it up quickly. There's no one thing or loose collection of things that represent what the disability experience looks like. Someone can have a very visible disability, but be connected to resources that enables them to live a very empowered life, while someone else can have an invisible disability, but be isolated in a community ignorant to the breadth of disability, which creates extreme marginalization. Someone can be able-bodied today, and disabled tomorrow... And some disabling conditions can change over time, potentially making someone "less disabled" than they once were.
This utter lack of clearly defineable good / bad or better / worse is the exact type of thinking our society struggles with most. We have an iron grasp on the fact that people are individuals with preferences, but it often feels we have no idea how to create situations where individuals can truly co-exist. When we're not tied up performing for a camera that will broadcast our individualized experiences to the digital void, we're spending time trying to peg ourselves to brands or groups. Increasingly with groups, because there's often no insentive to join outside of making a public proclaimation that you're either in agreeement or disagreement with a single narrow set of issues or concepts, you're either with the program, or your not.
With disability, the "program" is always changing. You're constantly asked to revaluate ways of doing basic tasks, and other people's perceptions of you frequently corner you into asking yourself 'what is a truly meaningful life?'
In tightly-wound times of speed, brute efficiency and exploitation, it's this type of multilateral thinking disability culture generates that's going to help us slow down, reconnect and hopefully find some sort of way forward. It's okay to show up in different ways for the same thing. It's okay to have three people doing the same task in different ways, even if homogenizing would be faster. It's okay to take it all apart and try to put it back together in a different way, even if the first try took a long time.
This is the thinking behind Cuerpos Justificados. At the end of the day, we're prsuing an ideal of basic human dignity. All bodies are justified in moving the way they need to move to get through life. We just need to remember to take a breath and think so as to not trample one another in a sprint towards our own opes and dreams. As in music, it's a lot harder to play slow convincingly than it is to play fast, but I believe we can do it. We've at least got to try.