Digital Art Partnership

We are so grateful for the generous support of EQ Bank in developing a three-part publishing and event series dedicated to digital disability justice during the Fall of 2023.

Part ONE:

Issue 40.3 Fall 2023
Networked Learnings: Reflections on Digital Refuge, Access, and Disorientation from a Spoonie Arts Worker by Belinda Kwan

Belinda Kwan takes up questions about digital infrastructure in the arts sector prompted by Christina Battle’s editorial published as part of the BlackFlash Expanded program that wrapped up earlier this year. Kwan offers a series of lessons learned, based on their lived experience and their work in program design at InterAccess in Toronto. 

Part TWO:

Saturday October 21 2023
New Media Education Online: Toward Accessible Tools and Techniques.

This online workshop explored tools and techniques for making online art education more accessible, especially focusing on new media content.
Co-presented with Inter/Access
Facilitated by Belinda Kwan.

Key Workshop Focus Areas

Centring Disability Justice & Lived Experience:
We delve into the principles of disability justice, emphasizing the importance of recognizing the leadership and expertise of disabled/crip/mad/differently-abled individuals in technology and new media education.

Thinking Through Neurodiversity:
We look at the ways folks learn, teach, and communicate differently, and use this as a starting point for re-thinking new media and online education.

Redefining Accessible Tools:
Participants will reimagine what accessibility means in the context of new media education, understanding that accessibility is not just about compliance but about creating spaces encourage the unique strengths of all learners.

Working with Existing Tech Stacks & Roadmaps:
Through group activities and discussions, attendees will develop actionable roadmaps to integrate accessibility considerations into their own educational settings, promoting sustainable change within their institutions and communities.

Collaboration for Change:
The workshop will foster a collaborative environment, encouraging participants to share their insights, challenges, and success stories in implementing accessible new media education.

This event was recorded with note-taking and CART captioning. Transcripts and recordings are available upon request. For any questions, feedback, or additional requests for accommodation pertaining to this event, please email development@interaccess.org.

Part THREE

Saturday November 18 2023
Hybrid Dependencies: Crip Technoscience in New Media and Beyond
This online panel explores Black, Indigenous, and Crip technoscience and how intersectional disability justice lends itself to innovation.
Co-presented with Inter/Access
Coordinated by Belinda Kwan

Working against traditional narratives of inclusion and accessibility, crip technoscience centres the pivotal role of disabled people and communities in driving technological change.

In this panel co-presented with Inter/Access and moderated by Aimi Hamraie, a co-author of the Crip Technoscience Manifesto (2019), this event explores Black, Indigenous, and Crip technoscience and how intersectional disability justice lends itself to transformative modes of thinking and being in new media art and beyond.

This event will be recorded, and notetaking and CART captioning will be available throughout. Transcripts and recordings will be available upon request after the event.

For any questions, feedback, or additional requests for accommodation pertaining to this event, please email development@interaccess.org.

About the Guest Panelist/s

Amanda Amour Lynx (they/she/nekm) is a Two Spirit, neurodivergent, mixed urban L’nu (Mi’kmaw) interdisciplinary artist and facilitator currently living in Guelph, Ontario. Lynx was born and grew up in Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and is a member of Wagmatcook FN. Their art making is a hybridity of traditional l’nuk approaches with new media and digital arts, guided by the Mi’kmaq principles netukulimk (sustainability) and etuaptmumk (two-eyed seeing). Lynx’s artistic practice discusses land and relationality, environmental issues, navigating systems and societal structures, cultural and gender identity, (L’nui’smk) language resurgence, quantum and spiritual multiplicities. Their facilitation work focuses on designing community spaces committed to creating healthy Indigenous futurities, guided by lateral love, accessibility and world-building.

Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley (she/her/hers) works in animation, sound, performance, and video games. Her practice records the lives of Black Trans people, intertwining reality and fiction to create participatory work. In 2021 Brathwaite-Shirley was a resident artist at Wysing Arts Centre in South Cambridgeshire, UK. Her work has been shown at Science Gallery London, UK (2020); David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020); and arebyte Gallery, London, UK (2021), among many others.

Nat Decker (they/them) is a Chicago born Los Angeles based artist interpreting the intimacies of queer and disabled lived experience as provocation toward collective care and liberation. Creating between digital and material mediums, they identify the computer as an assistive tool affording a more accessible practice. Often from bed, they use digital 3D software to trace serpentine connections between the body and technology, reimagining fantastical mobility devices as cultural celebration and agitation of conventional desirability politics. This cyclically informs their work with sculpture, creating non-functional mobility devices as aesthetic scrutiny and frictional commentary on designations of usefulness. Nat is also an access worker, consulting on accessibility for organizations such as p5.js, New Art City, Creative Growth, the LA Spoonie Collective, and for various projects at the University of California, Los Angeles. In June 2022 they graduated from UCLA with a degree in Design/Media Arts and Disability Studies. Their work is available at http://natdecker.com.

Bobby Joe Smith III is a Black and Lakota (Hunkpapa and Oohenumpa) graphic designer and media artist. Design, computation, performance, writing, and lens-based image-making are mediums of expression and inquiry he turns to often. His creative practice is rooted in the ongoing decolonial and abolitionist movements led by Indigenous communities on Turtle Island and across the Black diaspora. His research draws from the decolonial, abolitionist, and post-apocalyptic strategies of Black and Indigenous people to construct a poetic vernacular of “unsettling grammars” — gestures, methodologies, and utterances that deviate, disrupt, and dismantle settler-colonial systems. By rearticulating these “unsettling grammars” through the disciplines of media art and design, Bobby Joe seeks to reveal vectors leading toward decolonial futures and generate work that resonates with the people and movements that comprise his community. He holds an MFA in Media Arts from UCLA, an MFA in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), a Post-Baccalaureate degree in Graphic Design from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), and a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Middlebury College. His work is available at www.bobbyjoesmith.com.

About the Moderator

Aimi Hamraie (they/them) is an associate professor of Medicine, Health, & Society at Vanderbilt University and directs the Critical Design Lab, a multidisciplinary and international collaborative of disabled artists, designers, and design researchers. They are a 2022 United States Artists Fellow and host of the Contra* podcast on disability design justice. With Cassandra Hartblay and Jarah Moesch, Hamraie co-curated #CripRitual, a multi-site exhibition of twenty-five disabled artists at the Tangled Arts and Disability and Doris McCarthy Galleries in Toronto. Hamraie’s creative practice spans social practice and design (wood, leather, textiles, architecture, and landscapes). Their intellectual and creative work is funded by the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, the Smithsonian Institution, the Mellon Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Arts, and the National Humanities Alliance.

ATTENTION: Emerging Digital Artists

Emerging Digital Artists Award – call for applications coming spring of 2024.