Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

Bodies in Translation: Activist Art, Technology, and Access to Life (BIT) is a 7-year long SSHRC-funded Partnership Grant that brings together 23 community organizations and academic institutions to advance non-normative arts in Ontario and beyond. Our research cultivates activist art produced by fat, disabled, d/Deaf, Mad, and E/elder people through research activities aimed at interrogating the central claim of our partnership-that creating access to art for non-normatively embodied people and opportunities for the public to engage with such art will expand understanding of non-normative vitality and advance social justice in Ontario. In this colloquium, we present on four BIT-sponsored projects focused on accessing, cultivating, and mobilizing activist art: Bodies in Translation: Age and Creativity, which examines a group art exhibition that activated and mobilized aging arts; Technology, Art and Access to Life, which rethinks the relationship between technology and activist art through an art exhibition and a storytelling project that cultivated and mobilized disability art using technology; Decolonizing Disability and Activist Arts, which reimagines activist and disability arts through enacting radical reciprocity working in partnerships with Indigenous scholars, researchers, Elders and artists; and When Activist Art Meets Status Quo Structures, which explores the challenges of doing activist-oriented, arts-based research when working across multiple aggrieved communities and within neoliberalized and bureaucratized institutional structures.