User:Lor.ensō/SELF-(RE)DIRECTION/A-CANE-STICKYNOTE-NOTHERBODY/DIARY/ETC

Worksession: A Cane, Sticky Note, Another Body

Description of the week.

From 2 until 7 December 2024, I participated in Constants A cane, sticky notes, another body work session. In SI24, Martino Morandi suggested me to sign up for the week. As I am fully immersed into the subject of (in)access, (in)affordability and (dis)ability. This week purely spoke to me so I was glad to be selected.

Monday

Everybody was installed. Intro rounds were made of names and pronouns. Overviews were shared and emails given. We had some rooms in usage. The first main room was a Theater Space in which we were for 2 days. The second main room was on floor 1. We had a salon and also a soft space in the attic.

Dr Guislain

Tuesday

We had a presentation by Josefien Cornette about their works concerning ableism --> Cripping the Space, Engagement Arts. She presented a very intense work which were compressed interviews on ableist experiences in the arts. We listened to quite some of these Testimonies. There were some very relatable stories. Afterwards, she also presented privilege checklist and tools. Which seemed like some sort of manifesto in the shape of a checklist.

Checklist of what, as disabled, I can expect from institution

checklist of what, as non-disabled, should be aware of in the institution

One thing I asked at some point was based on

• Ik hoef bezoekers of personeel niet te onderrichten over structureel validisme. (I don't have to educate other people about structural valid-ism)

I was kind of agreeing with other things that were shared but at this point, I felt like: "Don't you want to bridge the gap of knowledge? Why?" The answer was that she meant that she doesn't have to be an expert in disability / accessibility practice without getting paid of it. (Which makes sense)

After that, it was time for lunch and we then resulted in a exhibition guided tour. I managed to talk with Josefien(still being a bit confused or rather overstimulated by her presentations).

After that, we went back into the main space and we had some open time to discuss things. Which was a weird feedback session. Because Josefien had to go and then we talked slightly behind their back.

The feedback that was shared in the room:

Inclusivity cannot be tackled via a list of bullet points DIsability and coloniality in the Belgian context? Belgium amputated congolese people if they did not comply with unrealistic production goals. Currently coloniality is doing this again Gaza sunbirds > Team of cyclists from Gaza brought attention to the fact that coloniality/Genocide creates disability.

• 

  Overwhelmed monster

• 

  Don't have to educate?!

• 

  Starting to feel abstractified from the talks

And from this moment I kinda felt that the conversation went out of focus, at least for me. I don't want to invalidate the above mentioned topics. But I was there for the sake of disability / accessibility, whereas above mentioned examples were more going towards inclusivity, identity politics and geopolitics. Which are all very valid problems with a huge urge. But it dominated the rest of the week.

Wednesday

New day, new space, new talker: Loraine Furter.

research into feminist publishing, likes to work with gradients and images, https://circulations.constantvzw.org/2024/cane-note-anotherbody/etherdump/pad/p/Loraine_Guided_Futuro

emotional punctionation  
interrogation heart           <3/?
Exclamation heart             <3/!    
Itch mark                     zz/!

Chicana feminist, cultural theory, and queer theory. 

She loosely based her best-known book, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza
Legitimatation of the people/their bodies who you're working with

A form of exclamation mark signaling an "itch", for example being uncomfortable with the title

"feminist publishing tools" as a title of a project, felt very big to loraine, there was some discomfort

tool: guided mediation through political questions - gives anker points through a landscape where you can have agency

staying with the itch (cf wih the trouble from harraway) assume the itch that you feel while affirming

part of phd research of loraine: https://speakingvolumes.space/

🌌🔮GUIDED FUTURO-FABULATION 🔮🌌

experimental tool to think+rethink situations.. publishing projects, research , etc.

proposal >> think feminist cyberspace+access

tool can be used to project oneself into the future website
closed eyes guided  reflection/meditation/fabulation

...I was intrigued by the Emotional punctuation and its interesting from a poetic point of view.

However I wasn't really into the whole "I'm wearing cosmic colours and feeling good" and some sort of (Sorry if I am too harsh) 🌌🔮 💖🌟💫✨ 'Yassification' ✨💫🌟💖🔮🌌 of institutional critique with such spirituality based emoji's. I didn't want to assume but I could just predict it related to Astrology and these fields. I am not into this, I don't want to talk about it, but considering my experiences with these certain coping spiritualities I needed to really look past this.

Concerning the meditation:

I would like to start with reminding ourselves that we have had very different mornings, we have very different Iives and bodies, and so this moment will feel different for everbody, and it is all ok  you might have thoughts from your lives popping in your mind, you might want to use this moment to take a nap, yawn, stretch, your belly might gurgle... You can welcome anything that invites itself in this moment.

(breathe)

Take a deep breath in through your nose, and a deep breath out through your mouth. Feel the air circulate in your body — your nostrils, your tubes, your lungs, your belly, but also all your cells and tissues, until the end of your body parts, the top of your head, your hair… 
Let the air fill your belly, this breathing brain of ours that we sometimes forget about when we are too concentrated or stressed. Make space for gut feelings.

While breathing, start thinking about what you need today…

Maybe you need energy ... confidence ... maybe you need care, self-care ... maybe you need courage ... joy ... calm ... time for yourself and your peers ... slowing down ... going faster ... finding your own rythm ... maybe you need to burn patriarchy, take down colonial statues, flatten inaccessible staircases, eat the rich, shout, cry ... maybe you need to rest ... maybe you need support, space, a holiday, a break ... maybe you need to stop ... for a while ... maybe you need to be here, there, then ...

Focussing on the last paragraph:

Maybe you need energy ... confidence ... maybe you need care, self-care ... maybe you need courage ... joy ... calm ... time for yourself and your peers ... slowing down ... going faster ... finding your own rhythm ... maybe you need to burn patriarchy, take down colonial statues, flatten inaccessible staircases, eat the rich, shout, cry ... maybe you need to rest ... maybe you need support, space, a holiday, a break ... maybe you need to stop ... for a while ... maybe you need to be here, there, then ...

I was closing my eyes and into this guided meditation and I just lost the focus once again. Because I have had my share of (guided) meditations, both in the YouTube 'guided meditation to help you relax, sleep' sense or (za)zen meditations. But at some point the 'maybe you want to burn down the patriarchy' it kinda felt again (concerning Tuesdays ending) that there was some sort of narrative being shared or maybe even pushed. It was a sessions to create a portal to an ideal interface but I feel like I experience my imagination rather autonomously than this forced narration. Also, the idea of the patriarchy + 'yassification' reminds me of this video.

Ideal futures are of course with dissolved power structures and no war and all. But for me ideality equals normalcy and in my honest grief full point of view. Ideal would be that my father would have lived for another 20 years to enjoy his retirement. But he can't. This sugar coated storytelling is just a bit frustrating and I from that moment started to feel even more frustrated.

The second part of the day we spent on 'institutes' and their access challenges / potentialities. Finally, something that relates to what I signed up for. It was alright, my focus was starting to diffuse into tired numbness after lunch dips.

By the end of the day, I started to talk with Martino about my frustration and trying to exemplify my stance through the metaphor of umbrella terms. My coordinate is not where the other topics were about.

It was starting to get foggy

and the fogness started to drip from the inside. Taking over the umbrella.

Thursday

I had a talk with Imane about these things and my frustrations. It was heard. On Thursday we went in groups and I joined Ren's vernacular technologies discussion / group / whatever it was. The talks were about things considering

anarchism and accessiiblity - what would accessibility look like from an anarchist perspective 
anarchism - alternative cultures - during Covid, a lot of people who had more of an anarchist or socalist brain - regulations became 'ableist' -
 autonomous freedom vs. 'health'
thought things would be more social - this is not the anarchism that I need
in Berlin during Covid
'pureness' 'be well' 

imperialism & empiricism --> not the same things
empires and how people - the power structures you are in, an academic look into it
how big farma holds patents

big companies pay a fine to not have disabled people in their work and that money goes to the werkstatten (a center where disabled people can work for very little money and live there)

neurodiverse people working from home hyperfocus as a feature fro IT companies
Tecnology feels very far 
procedures and regulations that block mobility needs
applying for travelling (takes weeks)
'social taxi' needs to do rounds, takes more time because they need to pick up more people on the round

- complaining but not ending up being gaslighted as being the problem
- dealing with negative feelings when there is no space for them

In general, I started the day feeling that I had some input. But in the end of the day it went on about ways of 'how to deal with the amount of ranting, venting, complaints' and then named some ticketing / server-based talking and it got basically no to laughed at response. :") I resulted in silence and in the end it became this gaslight bingo from negative to positive things. 'Salty / gaslight / small wins' and if you have bingo. then a 'playlist' starts playing (???)

I spent my Thursday afternoon going for Ramen and to the museum night.

Friday

I was floating, might want to join the map, technologies ideas.

Card game:

speculative scenarios based on different elements

*SPLINT game + Techno Vernacular Degrowth

Lula, Ava, Lorenzo

Would like to play with the Splint cards

starting from Techno Veracular,

how to work with technological degrowth to improve access.

We played the SPLINT game. Finally some inspiration.

Afterwards there was a feedback moment.

Niek Hilkmann said: I felt very well taken care of, food was great and so was housing;  felt very welcomed. content wise a little bit lost sometimes. Expected a bit mmore of a dialogue with the museum workers which was a shame because he was very much interested in what was going on here. That resulted in Niek taking more of a stand back today and going more to the Museum

I felt the same way, Same - in a way, very much interested in access & disabilities and - not so easy to discuss here, even though he was interested in most discussion; (different coordinates but 'on the same spectrum')Very nice conversations, good insights from other people around so it was a success. But existential question of what he was doing here. have these narratives, really helpful, can use in graduation project. How different POV towards psychiatric institutions - having the conversations here and meeting people who live here, having this tension of this feeling, uncomfort & discomfort - not in a bad way, felt inspiring.

And that basically narrows down my annoyance towards this week. I have some new resources, thoughts. But I wanted to go home really bad instead of staying in this echo chamber.

Saturday

I was happy to go home, it was weird, it was great, inspiring. But I was just done. I haven't made anything, brainstormed a whole week.