WHAT CAN A BODY DO?

AMAN DA C ACH IA WHAT CAN A BODY DO? HAVE R FO R D CO LLEG E

 Joseph Grigely Laura Swanson

Christine Sun Kim Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi

Park McArthur Corban Walker

Alison O’Daniel Artur Zmijewski

Carmen Papalia

WHAT CAN A
BODY DO?

CURATED BY Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery

AMANDA CACHIA Whitehead Campus Center
Haverford College

OCTOBER 26 – 370 Lancaster Avenue

cover image :
DECEMBER 16, 2012 Haverford, PA 19041
Artur Zmijewski,
An Eye for an Eye 1998 haverford.edu/exhibits
 questions as: In what ways do visual To many, providing access simply means current museum and gallery protocols.
2
FOREWORD artists highlight or problematize the modifying a physical space. To those who Together, they challenge us to rethink the
3

In an interview about his recent book spectacle of visible disability? What are more informed, access also means ways in which meaning is made across
Disability Aesthetics (2010), Tobin are some of the possible relationships making information available in multiple a broad spectrum of human subjects, and
Siebers said that he aims “to disrupt between viewers, art objects repre- modes, hiring ASL interpreters, using in so doing, fundamentally extend what
the belief that disability can have no senting or thematizing disability, and technology creatively, providing texts in it means to be human.
connection to the ancient craft of the people with disabilities? Through large print and alternative formats,
We are delighted to collaborate with the
beautiful. When most people think about what aesthetic strategies and practices and so on. But once we begin to imagine
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, the John B.
disability, beauty does not immediately do artists render physical, sensory, what full access might look like, the
Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts and
spring to mind…Nevertheless, the history or cognitive difference? How do access possibilities seem endless, the concept
Humanities, and the Mellon Tri-College
of modern art unveils increasingly, as and aesthetics intersect, collide, and elusive and protean. Access involves
Creative Arts Residencies Program in
it evolves, a powerful connection to inform one another? more than checking off a list of practical
bringing this exhibition of contemporary
disability. Aesthetics opens us to more accommodations. It is a way of thinking
What Can a Body Do? asks and begins art, along with participating artists
expansive and diverse conceptions of about the world that challenges us to
to answer these questions in the local Christine Sun Kim and Carmen Papalia,
the human, and disability has become imagine how another body, another self,
and immediate specificity of the work into the gallery and classroom. In
a powerful tool for rethinking human experiences it. What could be more
itself. Moreover, it suggests the broader conjunction with this exhibition, disability
appearance, intelligence, behavior, and intellectually engaging than imagining
parameters through which this work studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-
creativity.” What Can a Body Do?, curated another’s world? Isn’t this something
might reshape issues inhering to the Thomson will speak at Haverford and
by Amanda Cachia, impels us to imagine like what we do when we read a novel?
body aesthetically, affectively, and philo- other area campuses as scholar-in-
a generative interplay between disability, Why are we so reluctant to imagine the
sophically. The work presented here, residence with the Greater Philadelphia
creativity, and beauty. different bodies and different lives
ranging from figurative and abstract Women’s Studies Consortium.
of the nonfictional people with whom
The exhibition builds upon a rapidly objects to performance pieces and Concurrently, the Berman Museum
we live and work?
expanding body of work in disability recordings of experiential art, not only of Art at Ursinus College is mounting
arts and culture as well as in the inter- engages with individual experiences By hanging the work at variable heights an exhibition focused on arts access
disciplinary field of disability studies. of embodiment and perception but also and providing audio description from and Temple University and the Temple
It also grows out of and responds asks how bodies perform beauty, how multiple perspectives, Cachia asks the Gallery are sponsoring disability arts
to the Haverford College symposium they make other bodies feel, how viewer to pay attention to the conventions programming. Our hope is that the
in/visible: disability and the arts (2011), they interact with other bodies: in other of how we display and describe works synergy at work both within and outside
at which Siebers, a scholar and critic words, what bodies do. It conceives of art and how we move through a gallery the Tri-College community will further
at the University of Michigan; Georgina of people with disabilities not as objects or experience a performance. Access open up the exhibition’s organizing
Kleege, a writer and museum consultant; of study or a stigmatizing gaze but is treated not as an afterthought but as question: What Can a Body Do?
Katherine Sherwood, a San Francisco- as subjects whose unique perspectives a creative process intrinsic both to art
based painter; and Ann Fox and Jessica engender valuable, particularized practice and curatorial practice. The
Cooley, curators of two disability arts knowledge. Several works foreground exhibitions coordinator, the gallery staff, Kristin Lindgren
exhibitions at Davidson College, spoke perception and accessibility through the curator, and the artists have worked DIRECTOR OF COLLEGE WRITING CENTER
VISITING ASST. PROFESSOR OF WRITING
to the intersection of art, disability, and their engagement with multisensory together to place access front and center,
access. The speakers addressed such experience and sensory translation. going well beyond ADA standards and

Debora Sherman
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR OF COLLEGE WRITING
 WHAT CAN A
4 In his study Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (1990), French philosopher 5
Gilles Deleuze famously grapples with Spinoza’s question: “What can a body do?” 3
This exhibition narrows Deleuze’s query then, asking “What can a disabled body

BODY DO?
do?” What does it mean to inscribe a contemporary work of art with experiences
of disability? What shapes or forms can these inscriptions take? How, precisely,
can perceptions of the disabled body be liberated from binary classifications
such as “normal” versus “deviant” or “ability” versus “disability” that themselves
delimit bodies and constrain action? What alternative frameworks can be employed
by scholars, curators, and artists in order to determine a new fate for the often
Amanda Cachia stigmatized disabled identity?

In “What Can a Body Do?” Deleuze draws from two statements by seventeenth-
century Dutch philosopher Baruch de Spinoza: “We do not even know what a body
is capable of…” and “We do not even know of what affections we are capable, nor
the extent of our power.”4 In other words, we haven’t even begun to understand
the potential of our own bodies! Most of us know even less about the disabled body.
It is important to think about what disability does rather than simply what it is.
Such reframing breaks binary constructs as it is focused on a type of concretized

1
INTRODUCTION being-in-the-world, on the truths of living inside a disabled body. As disability
bioethicist Jackie Leach Scully argues, “understanding the experience of disability
from this inside is essential to inform ethical judgments about impairment.” 5 Asking
what the disabled body can do helps us to understand what it means to think and
Disability is the attribution of corporeal deviance—not so
be through the variant body. To use a term originally developed by Michel Foucault
much a property of bodies as a product of cultural rules to describe ways of knowing that are left out, the disabled experience has been
about what bodies should be or do. 1
a subjugated knowledge.6 But what if disability could become an epistemic resource
and an embodied cognition embedded within politicized consciousness? 7 Or, more
We know nothing about a body until we know what it can do, simply, a way of knowing the world?
in other words, what its affects are, how they can or cannot
For this exhibition, nine contemporary artists, including Joseph Grigely,
enter into composition with other affects, with the affects of
Christine Sun Kim, Park McArthur, Alison O’Daniel, Carmen Papalia,
another body, either to destroy that body or to be destroyed Laura Swanson, Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, Corban Walker and Artur
by it, either to exchange actions and passions with it or to Zmijewski demonstrate new possibilities across a range of media by exploring
join with it in composing a more powerful body. 2
bodily configurations in figurative and abstract forms. The artists invent and

1 Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, 2 Gilles Deleuze and Felix 3 “What Can a Body Do?” was 4 Gilles Deleuze, “What Can 5 Jackie Leach Scully, “Thinking 6 For Foucault’s discussion of
“Disability, Identity, and Represen- Guattari, “Becoming-Intense, also the title of one of the chapters a Body Do?,” in Expressionism in Through the Variant Body,” in Dis- subjugated knowledges, see The
tation: An Introduction,” in Extra- Becoming-Animal,” in A Thousand in this study. Philosophy: Spinoza (New York: ability Bioethics: Moral Bodies, Moral Order of Things: An Archaeology of
ordinary Bodies: Figuring Physical Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizo- Zone Books, 1990), 226. Difference (London: Rowman and the Human Sciences (New York:
Disability in American Culture phrenia, Translated by Brian Massumi Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 84. Vintage, 1994).
and Literature (New York: Columbia (Minneapolis: University of
University Press, 1997), 7. Minnesota Press, 1987), 257.
6 reframe disability, each time anew. They challenge entrenched views of disability, both 7
positive and negative, and show that we do not yet know what bodies are, nor what
bodies—all bodies—can or should do. Their work confronts dominant cultural percep-
tions of scale, deafness, blindness, mobility, visible and invisible body differences,
as well as the negative characteristics often attributed to disabled people. These nine
artists adjust and destabilize an often reductive representation of the disabled body
to move toward more complex concepts of embodiment.

The notion of complex embodiment was developed by disability studies scholar

Tobin Siebers, reacting to the limitations of the ideology of ability. He says:

Disability creates theories of embodiment more complex than the ideology of

ability allows, and these many embodiments are each crucial to the understanding
of humanity and its variations, whether physical, mental, social, or historical. The
ultimate purpose of complex embodiment as theory is to give disabled people
greater knowledge of and control over their bodies in situations where increased
knowledge and control are possible.8

Complex embodiment argues that the perception and experience of disability are
complex, nuanced, and individual. Complex embodiment also suggests that there is
no one way to look at or think about experiences of disability, offering avenues of
inquiry that take us down an unconventional path. In turn, categories of difference,
identity, and disadvantage in relationship to disability can no longer be essentialized.
: Carmen Papalia,
Blind Field Shuttle: Open Engagement,
What would it mean to stretch the perceived contours of material bodies, where Portland State University 2011
identity is not understood as essential but as a complex coding of experience? As
Siebers has argued, “the disabled body changes the process of representation itself.
non-standard perceptual and sensory experiences. They create mixed, hybridized and
Blind hands envision the faces of old acquaintances. Deaf eyes listen to public
invented senses—even a new language.10
television…Mouths sign autographs…Could [disability studies] change body theory
[and contemporary art] as usual?” 9 The artists in this exhibition radically open up The artists foreground new possibilities such as how to experience music based on the
our expectations for encounters with the physical world and demonstrate that various imagery of physical gestures and movement in the work of Joseph Grigely, Christine
subject positions can be ruptured and replaced by a complex embodiment that Sun Kim and Alison O’Daniel, or how sound can provide a new entry point for a walk
includes impairment as a means for illumination. They use a blend of representational through an urban environment in Carmen Papalia’s installation. Park McArthur’s New
and non-representational imagery, immersive environments, two-dimensional and three- York City care collective complicates notions of capacity and ability in the intermingling
dimensional objects and sculptures, performances and social practice to explore of bodies playing roles of carer and caree. Laura Swanson and Corban Walker both
destabilize common notions of scale and prejudicial associations regarding height and

7 Jackie Leach Scully argues that See “Thinking Through the Variant 8 Tobin Siebers, “Disability and 9 Tobin Siebers, “Body Theory,” 10 In the “Introduction” of every being is in an open relation to which places us in an impossible
embodied cognition bases complex Body” in Disability Bioethics: Moral the Theory of Complex Embodiment in Disability Theory (Ann Arbor: Georges Bataille: A Critical Introduc- others…The most powerful example relation that we can never master.”
mental processes on the physical Bodies, Moral Difference, (London: —For Identity Politics in a New University of Michigan, 2008), 54. tion, Benjamin Noys talks about of the principle of insufficiency is (London, Pluto Press: 2000), 14-15.
interactions that people have with Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Register,” in The Disability Studies Bataille’s ‘principle of insufficiency’ language, because language imposes The principle of insufficiency has a
their environment; this is contrasted 2008), 84. Reader Third Edition, ed. Lennard which dominates all existence. He itself on us and puts us in relation striking resemblance to Deleuze and
with the classic or first generation J. Davis (London and New York: says “It means that no being is to others…It is language which Guattari’s question about what a
view of cognition as essentially Routledge, 2010), 317. ever complete, ever sufficient, and discloses the impossibility of an auto- body can do.
computational or rule-based. that because of this insufficiency nomous being, and it is language
 2
THE ARTISTS
8 size by offering alternative enclosures for dwarf embodiment. In Chun-Shan (Sandie) 9
Yi’s work, the artist challenges notions of a “complete” body by suggesting that the
body can reinvent itself through new footwear and “disability fashion,” while Zmijewski’s
intertwined male and female bodies, one an amputee and the others being non-
amputees, transform definitions of support and insufficiency. Within these possibilities, Joseph Grigely creates works that explore the failures, idiosyncrasies and ruptures
the artists maintain an authority and ownership over their bodies and their bodies’ of language and the dynamics of everyday communication. Grigely has been deaf since
experiences that rearrange, reorder and help us rethink what a body can do. the age of ten, a factor that has shaped his work and has become a central aspect
of his artistic practice. He first became known in the early 1990s for a series of works
What else happens when different bodies and objects come together? What is the power
he called Conversations with the Hearing. From tabletop tableaux and intimate wall-
of this conjunction? As suggested by Deleuze at the beginning of this essay, affect
based works to room-sized installations, these works grow from the scraps of paper and
is an ontological openness and vulnerability to change in anything we might encounter.
handwritten notes produced when he communicates with the hearing world—a strategy
For example, Brian Massumi uses the concept of affect as though it has a “margin
Grigely employs when he cannot read lips.
of manoeuvrability, where we might be able to go and what we might be able to do in
every present situation.” 11 Queer theorist Jasbir Puar calls affect “a site of bodily Songs Without Words is a series that explores Grigely’s interest in music, which includes
creative discombobulation and resistance.” 12 The nine artists in this exhibition operate recalling his own memories of music as a child and his current relationship to music
within such a margin: a space that offers resistance and yet is also filled with abundant as a deaf man, fascinated with the way music “looks.” This difference between how
possibilities, where there is a push for a broader politics of disabled identity. sound looks and how sound sounds is in many ways both the theme of Grigely’s life as
a deaf person and the theme of his work as an artist. In Songs Without Words, an
The power of allowing the audience to encounter the multi-sensorial work in this
original installation of twelve pigment prints, three of which are included in this exhibi-
exhibition also lies in the possibility of being destabilized by the “radical alterity of
tion, Grigely visually represents sound via images of people singing that have been
the other, in seeing his or her difference not as a threat but as a resource to question
clipped from The New York Times. The newspaper captions have been removed, adding
your own position in the world.” 13 These affective spaces offer the profound capacity
another layer of linguistic absence to the work, leaving us with an experience of these
for change, evolution, transformation and movement, both literal and metaphoric,
performances only through their gestures. The seemingly simple gesture of giving
and ultimately, reap new form and restabilization. They impel us not simply to look at
us what the artist calls “music with the sound turned off” foregrounds all of the often
bodies, but to contemplate what it is to live our bodies. Ultimately, perception is not
overlooked aspects of musical performance—a singer’s face contorted in the ecstasy
based in the information the body receives about the world, but in how the body
and strain of performance, a rapt audience, the agility of hands on a piano. Grigely
inhabits this world. These artists teach us that what a body has the ability to be and
says of this experience:
do is open to question.
I continue to be intrigued by watching music performances. Even without actually
hearing an orchestra or a choir or a rock band, the visual nature of the performance
permits one to “hear” the sound as a fiction: when you watch the bows of the
violins, or the conductor, or the faces of a choir, or the wrenched-up faces of rockers,
implied sounds come together in an ineffable way. 14

11 Brian Massumi, “Navigat- 12 Jasbir Puar, “Prognosis Time: 13 Arun Saldanha’s reinterpreta- 14 Joseph Grigely in “Nudist Plays: : Joseph Grigely,
ing Movements: An Interview with Towards a Geopolitics of Affect, tion of Levinas in Psychedelic White: A Dialogue with Joseph Grigely by Ian Songs Without Words
Brian Massumi,” interview by Mary Debility, and Capacity,” in Women Goa Trance and the Viscosity of Race Berry,” Joseph Grigely: St. Cecilia,
Zournazi in 21 (Massumi 2003). and Performance: A Journal of (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota curated by Ian Berry and Irene
(Sekou Sundiata)
Feminist Theory 27 (June 2012), Press, 2007), 118. Hofmann (Baltimore: The Frances (detail) 2012
161-162. Young Tang Teaching Museum and
Art Gallery at Skidmore College,
Contemporary Museum, 2007), 6.
10 For example, in Songs Without Words (Eartha Kitt) (2012) Kitt’s body language is 11
a powerful portrait: her right arm raised, strong and authoritative, her mouth contorted
wide open as her voice pierces a note through the microphone, fingers spread on her
right hand. All these visual clues aid us in imagining how the music ricochets through
Kitt’s entire body. The other images are entitled Songs Without Words (Faust) (2008)
and Songs Without Words (Sekou Sundiata) (2012). Like the image of Eartha Kitt, the
body language and exaggerated gestures of Faust’s female opera singer in New York
City’s Central Park and the poet and performer Sekou Sundiata allude to the powerful
embodiment of music in the human form.

Performance artist Christine Sun Kim also explores sonic media without the benefit of
hearing. She finds how to make its presence more physical, to show greater dimensions
of movement, and to establish a personal connection to the aural. Deaf from birth,
Kim turned to using sound as a medium during an artist residency in Berlin in 2008,
and has since developed a practice of lo-fi experimentation that aims to reappropriate
sound by translating it into movement and vision through performance. While growing
up, Kim perceived sound as a form of authority and without realizing it, the artist was
never at ease nor in complete control of sounds she made. As she grew older, she
acquired two languages, American Sign Language and English, and she became aware
of her relationship to sound, at which time she began to use the term “ownership.”
: Christine Sun Kim, : Christine Sun Kim,
Kim’s reception of language is shaped by sign language interpreters, limited subtitles on
Etude #2 (detail) 2011 Untitled (Bedshaker drawing) 2011
television, written conversations on paper and emails. These modes have naturally led
to a loss of content and a delay in communication, which greatly influences the way she
perceives reality and experiences the world.

For What Can a Body Do? Kim will participate in a sound performance at the opening.
The performance will be composed of field recordings of ambient sound from the
Haverford College campus. Speaker drawings #1-#10 (2012) will be created from the
one language—graphic notation, musical notation, and ASL “Glossing” (the coded
ink- and powder-drenched quills, nails and cogs that dance across ten round wood
representation of American Sign Language, abbreviated to ASL) and ASL—to reinvent
boards to the vibrations of subwoofers and speakers beneath. Speaker drawings will
a new syntax and structure for her compositions. Kim has thought about how
then be hung up on the walls of the gallery space after Kim’s performance. Along with
American Sign Language is full of visual nuances that are mostly shown on faces rather
drumhead, subwoofers, paper, objects, and wet materials, the end results will emerge as
than through hands and how what can be seen on the face supplements what
physical and visual records of sounds.
is signed by the hands.15 Like sound, ASL cannot be captured on paper; thus, Kim
Kim’s Etudes #1, #2 and #3 were produced during the summer of 2011, when the combines these various systems in an attempt to open up a new space of authority/
artist appropriated notational elements from three different systems of inscription and ownership and rearrange hierarchies of information.

15 Signing is enormously spatial

compared to linear English and so
many aspects are happening simulta-
neously such as grammar, placement,
tone, etc.
12 Movement and stillness—both individual and social—are starting points for life. It reads “Park McArthur, with Margaret Herman, John McArthur, Nancy Herman, 13
Park McArthur’s interrelated series of works. Her use of temporary sculpture, Emery Herman, Tina Zavitsanos, Alexandra McArthur, Amalle Dublon” and so on. The
works on paper, and short video present some of the ways personal mobility second wall label, Abstraction (2012), is about McArthur’s relationship to funding
is tied to social and political movements. Because McArthur’s life and outlook are structures that continue to make her life as an artist possible—parents, family money,
shaped by the physical challenges of her degenerative neuromuscular disease, grants, scholarships—capitalist accumulation in the form of an abstracted, compiled list.
working with concepts of mobility is a political and personal project. 
Alison O’Daniel works across disciplines, combining sculpture, sound baths,
In It’s Sorta Like a Big Hug (2012) McArthur had a friend record one of her painting, sports/dance teams, and films with live music or sign language accom-
experiences of being cared for by a collective of friends in her New York City paniment, examining perceptual and emotional sensitivity between people, objects
neighborhood. The collective included a group of ten people that McArthur linked and environments. Installations, films, and instances of the performative create
together in order to orchestrate and facilitate her bedtime routine each night of a biographical imaginary that shifts bodily comprehension toward a physical and
the week. To build the care collective, McArthur had to cast a wide net; six friends tactile language of perception. Her films become a sensory experience for the viewer
and two hired assistants comprised the final group. The care collective is a
16
through a combination of subtle and pronounced transformations of narrative
collaborative endeavor insofar as it takes seven people to cover the week’s seven filmmaking and cinematic experience.
days, but no individual spends time with any other individual; some participants
A screening of O’Daniel’s new film, Night Sky (2011) will take place during the course
have never met each other.
of the exhibition. Night Sky is a 75-minute feature-length narrative film with parallel,
Echoing Jasbir Puar’s notions of challenging debility, capacity and ability through overlapping stories: two girls—Cleo and Jay—travel through the desert while a group of
a process of destabilization and then restabilization, McArthur says that processes of contestants compete in a current-day dance marathon. A small hula hoop serves as a
unraveling and restabilizing occur as individuals in the collective make themselves window between worlds, hovering unnoticed in the midst of the marathon contestants
vulnerable to one another in the “eventness” of working to deliver each body safely and simultaneously hanging in the desert air. Sound bleeds between the locations,
from platform to platform, surface to surface. In McArthur’s relations with every drawing attention to a parallel series of events, while locations collapse into one another
individual of her care collective, she experiences the strain of someone’s body lifting and places formerly encountered continue to announce their presence.
her own and the strain of her own body keeping herself upright. McArthur invites
O’Daniel made Night Sky with a cast and crew that was half deaf and half hearing,
viewers to think about how the care partner’s body and McArthur’s body work their
mirroring the two main characters whose friendship seems to expand despite or because
mutual instability together. The artist concludes that the conditions of debility
one of them is deaf and one can hear. O’Daniel is partially deaf, wears hearing aids
and capacity are tenuous and proximate at all times. Most importantly, this proximity
and lipreads. She builds a visual, aural, and haptic vocabulary for making her work from
opens up the possibility for us to familiarize ourselves with wide spectrums of
experiences associated with her hearing. She says:
“beingness.” She says that this is “potentially radical and definitely radically difficult.” 17
The nuances of different experiences associated with deafness are incredibly
As an extension to the video, McArthur has also contributed two text-based works
inspiring to me. I’ve been interested in examining the ways that missed information,
to this exhibition. Each piece is formatted to look like an unusually large wall label,
lacking details, and blank spaces might open up a transcendent relationship between
approximately 6" wide by 36" long, mounted on museum board, innocuously and
the body and knowledge. Indeed, there are different ways of knowing, and Night Sky,
randomly placed around the gallery. The first, titled Carried and Held (2012) is an
and the performances associated with it, highlight this. 18
index of all the people who have physically carried and held McArthur throughout her

: Park McArthur, 16 The majority of people who 17 Park McArthur, “It’s Sort of
Still from It’s Sorta Like form the care collective are white art- Like a Big Hug: Notes on Collectivity,
ists, academics or organizers, many Conviviality, and Care,” paper for
a Big Hug (detail) 2012 of whom are queer and politicized. Cripples, Idiots, Lepers, and Freaks:
They are in their 20s and 30s. Extraordinary Bodies/Extraordinary
Minds, The Graduate Center of the
City University of New York, March
23, 2012.
14 O’Daniel then wanted to make one film where the narratives within would intersect, Lisa Reynolds, and the artist herself were presented with a fundamental question: how 15
touch, and separate for the deaf audience and for the hearing audience. In this case do you describe music to a deaf audience? O’Daniel says:
disability is no longer negative or pejorative. In other words, disability doesn’t have
We didn’t want to simplify the experience at all, but instead to capture the sensuality
to equal inability. O’Daniel is more interested in making a point of disability conventions
and also the physical experience of listening to a song. Through abstract descriptions
and how disability is defined. So what does it mean to hear?
of objects and nature, and rarely, but sometimes more esoteric explanations of
Night Sky can be screened either with live music or a prerecorded original score, in instruments’ function and relationship to the body, we began to construct a score
a theater, or outdoors in the midst of ambient sounds competing with the film, in out of sign language that embodied the same emotional register as the music. 19
addition to the ASL interpeter. In writing the sign score, the artist’s ASL collaborator, (see fig. 1)

Ultimately, an entirely new layer of narrative is created for those with knowledge of
American Sign Language. In the screenings with sign accompaniment, there are
extended moments of quiet—including a nine-minute overture of sign that the audience
acclimates to—and sections where the sound of Lisa’s feet on the platform becomes
as important to a hearing audience as the sound of the audience members shifting
in their seats. A cough, a stomach rumbling, an air conditioner kicking in, the sound of
a film’s soundtrack in a theater nearby, someone getting up to use the restroom all
begin to blur with the diegetic sounds in the film, and live sign accompaniment expands
for the hearing/non-signing audience to include the audience’s contributions.

The audience’s fragmented and potentially incoherent experience foregrounds assump-

tions about hearing impairment: O’Daniel is trying to make the ear operate as the
eye does, as if comprehending information slowly, like reading subtitles (although no
captions are included with the film). Thus, audiences confront their own limitations
and experiences of how exclusion shapes their reading of the filmic action.

God’s Eye (2011) is a video installation utilizing and expanding upon materials from 
Night Sky. An eye, that of Night Sky character Deafinitely, is projected on a hanging
cardboard box that shifts and sways as a disco ball rotates inside. “God’s Eye” is the
Dog’s Eye—specifically, O’Daniel’s dog’s blue eye with the reflection of a window in
it. The cardboard box is the original shipping container for the disco ball, a central prop
that hangs above the dance marathon contestants who compete to silence in a parallel
narrative within the film. The cardboard box and the disco ball inside refer to the
bodies of the exhausted contestants and the two girls traveling through the desert. The
disco ball—here hidden except for a moon-like sliver below—is the one constant in a
dance space, a rotating beacon that continues the trance of movement. 20

18 Alison O’Daniel, Night Sky 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid.

artist statement, 2012.
figure 1 (opposite) :

Alison O’Daniel, Lisa Reynolds

and Rainy Orteca, ASL score
for Night Sky 201 2
16 In Carmen Papalia’s work, relationships of trust and explorations of the senses unfold single file with their arms outstretched, their hands holding the shoulders of the 17
as the artist leads walks with members of the public in Blind Field Shuttle as part of his person in front of them. The brightness of the corridor reflects the experience of
experiential social practice. This work is a non-visual walking tour where participants closing one’s eyes in a dimly lit room. The corridor blocks outside noise so the
tour urban and rural spaces on foot. Forming a line behind Papalia, participants grab listeners can become immersed within the sound experience and imagine themselves
the right shoulder of the person in front of them and shut their eyes for the duration of as participants on the walk. Five speakers are installed on the facing walls of the
the walk. Papalia then serves as a tour guide—passing useful information to the person corridor at various heights, including the height of the artist (5'9"), the height of the
behind him, who then passes it to the person behind him/her and so forth. The trip curator (4'3"), the average height of a woman (5'4"), the average height of an
culminates in a group discussion about the experience. As a result of visual deprivation, eight-year-old (3'9"), and the accessible fixture height for a wheelchair user (4'6"),
participants are made more aware of alternative sensory perceptions such as smell, reflecting the diversity of peoples’ heights on the actual walks and in society
sound, and touch—so as to consider how non-visual input may serve as a productive at large.
means of experiencing place.
Papalia sees value in developing an experience like the Blind Field Shuttle into a
Produced for the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Blind Field Shuttle: Portland, June 16 & 17 gallery installation, recognizing the many ways in which society still “disables” indi-
(2012) is Papalia’s first attempt to develop a non-visual document of his non- viduals through systemic barriers, negative attitudes and exclusion.21 Papalia says:
visual walking tour. The Blind Field Shuttle recordings are the product of Papalia’s
I consider both the walking tour itself and any documentation of the project
collaboration with sound artist Kai Tillman. The resulting work presents a system for
(non-visual or otherwise) as contributing to a productive model for accessibility
Papalia’s own access to the documentation of a memorable event—in this case, the
—where people of all abilities can recognize the many entry-points to experience,
two walks that he led, on consecutive days, through a park in Portland, Oregon on June
and can consider each entry-point a relevant (and valuable) way of being. 22
16 and 17, 2012. Each walk followed the same route through the park on the Portland
State University campus, but the soundscapes that were captured are in stark He believes that the more models for change find their way into places where people
contrast to one another. The document made on Saturday, June 16 depicts a group might experience them, the better.
meandering through a bustling farmer’s market on a sunny afternoon, while the
document made on Sunday, June 17 depicts a group strolling through a relatively quiet Laura Swanson is a Korean-American artist who addresses feelings of alterity—from
public park on a breezy morning. While each acoustic experience is different, sound having a conspicuously different body—with the creation of coping mechanisms and
serves as the material with which the viewer is able to develop a sense of place. The refuges in her fantastical dwelling spaces and staged photographs. Swanson questions
documents of these events, and the immersive sound environment in which they the desires in wanting to look at difference. Her exploration of a space without
exist, reflect Papalia’s own experience of moving through a place without sight and articulated difference is materialized in her use of objects. For example, a series of
introduce a way of seeing that is not reliant on the visual sense. Papalia’s intention anthropomorphized objects presented as pairs extends the interrogation of bodily
in developing a non-visual experience, both in the walking tour itself and the difference in Swanson’s previous work TOGETHER together (2009).
documentation of that work, is not to simulate the experience of blindness for the
For Swanson’s new installation Display (2012), the artist’s interest in these pairings
viewer/participant, but to show one of the many overlooked entry points to experience
of objects has evolved from whether people notice them because of their unassuming
—a gesture that works against the primacy of the visual.
character and the way they blend into the environment to the very idea of displaying
From these recordings, the artist has created a site-specific installation in the gallery such objects to be noticed. Pointing to how these new pairings have become a
where the sounds are experienced in a narrow corridor as long as ten people standing conspicuous display, the artist has installed two stools commonly used in schools or

: Carmen Papalia, 21 In this paragraph, Papalia is concrete in architecture and practical individual who is inherently
using the word “disables” in a new engagement—that disable society “disabled” or “deviant.”
Blind Field Shuttle:
context. While previously I use the at large, not just those with physical
California College of the Arts, noun as a marker of identity that disabilities. This is the definition
San Francisco 2012 captures physical difference, here, of disability based on the social 22 Carmen Papalia, artist
Papalia notes that it is the barriers, model, where it is society that dis- statement, 2012.
attitudes and exclusions—made ables the individual, not the
 : Laura Swanson, of a so-called defective identity to one or the other because these objects are immune
18 19
Stools (study drawing) 2012
from such designations without context. These objects are not subject to prejudicial
associations regarding size in the same way that the human body is.

Irish artist Corban Walker takes a different approach to destabilizing common

notions of human scale. His work often relates to architectural scale and spatial
perception, utilizing industrial materials such as steel, aluminum and glass, drawing
on the aesthetics and principles of minimalism to foreground different perspectives
in relation to height. Walker is four feet tall and creates his sculpture stacks in direct
proportion to his body using the “Corban Rule,” a precise mathematical calculation
he devised, wherein he uses his own height as the measure of his art.23 Eamonn
Maxwell has explained that “given that the premise for architecture and the related
design is the six-foot man, Walker has to constantly adjust to fit into what is determined
as normal…he is asking the viewer to please adjust to his viewpoint on the world.” 24

In contrast, TV Man (2010) is an exactly life-size looped video replica of the artist
standing in one place inside the monitor of a flat-screen television that is larger in
scale than Walker himself. He wears dark clothing and spectacles. Here, Walker is not
only adjusting and “fitting” into the built environment through this hyper-sized piece of
technology, but he has inserted himself into its very frame. Through Walker’s simple,
yet pointed self-portrait, he confronts the audience directly. There is no denying Walker’s
unflinching gaze on the non-disabled subject. Here, he stands inside a world that has
businesses on a low platform that resembles the display of new products or cars at been mapped out for the “non-disabled” person. Similar to the effect of Swanson’s
trade shows or in retail showrooms (Stools, 2012). Adjacent to the platform, two items rotating display, the viewer is unable to escape the methods and the means in which
of clothing rest on adult- and child-sized dress forms on wheels (Clothes, 2012). disabled embodiment can be trapped or enclosed.

With each pairing, the objects come in different sizes—one is short or small and the Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi makes wearable art that addresses bodily experience and
other is tall or large. This work is a double portrait: the shorter/smaller stool and social stigma. Yi has been influenced by members of her family who, like her, have
article of clothing stand in for the four-foot-tall Swanson, and the taller/larger stool and been born with variable numbers of fingers and toes for generations. Thus, Yi’s
article of clothing represent her six-foot-tall partner, Greg. It is important to note that work often revolves around memories of social interactions that were focused on the
despite the difference in the stature of the objects, they are all fundamentally the same. appearance of her body. The process of making her adornments and objects unleashes
Their height makes each of them function more efficiently in a particular situation. the artist’s hidden emotions and distress. By using metals, fabrics and found objects
Neither is really better than the other. However, value-ridden binaries such as tall/short, in combination with heavily handcraft-oriented techniques like metalwork, crochet, felt-
good/bad, sexual/asexual, and normal/pathological strongly inform our views of people making and sewing, the artist reexamines the stereotypes and values placed on
with varying heights. Here, Swanson’s doubling of the objects defies the assignment physical “deformity” and their impact on a person’s well-being. Each material and

23 Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian of Vitruvian Man. Regretfully, the against these ideal proportions and 24 Eamonn Maxwell, “The Line
Man (1487) is a drawing of a man representation of a bodily ideal in substituting them with the measure- Begins To Blur,” in Corban Walker:
that mapped out “ideal” notions Vitruvian Man and Modulor is ments of his body. Ireland at Venice 2011 (Ireland:
of human perfection, proportion, and still seen as the ideal form today, Culture Ireland, 2011), 19.
beauty as defined in classical sculp- contributing to ableist attitudes and
ture. Le Cobusier’s Modulor (1948) discrimination against the disabled
was developed based on the tradition minority. Thus, Walker is working
20 its construction method gives the artist a new voice to speak of the unspoken. For Yi, 21
making art about her body becomes a process of embodiment.

How can the body move and how does the body feel wearing disability fashion? In
Dermis Leather Footwear (2011) Yi uses latex, cork, rubber, and thread as she focuses
on body reconfiguration through mapping the memories of medical and surgical inter-
vention. Altering the purpose of conventional prosthetics and orthotics, which aim to
create more-or-less standardized body form and function, the artist blends prosthetics
and jewelry-making to make this unique, personalized footwear for a female friend.
The wearable item is designed based on the individual’s medical experience, physical
position and state of mind.25

Ultimately, this work poses the question of what it means to expect a “complete” body.
Rather than reject the notion of physical alteration, Yi provides intimate and empathetic
bodily adornment as a tool for remapping and engaging with a new physical terrain,
one imbued with personal standards of physical comfort and self-defined ideals of
beauty. Viewed as a collection of wearable works, the objects and the wearers call for
a recognition of collective human experience and create space for a possible future
field: Disability Fashion.

Artur Zmijewski is a Polish artist who has a long-standing interest in bodily

difference. In 1998 he developed the project Oko za oko (An Eye for an Eye) consisting
of several large-format color photographs, three of which are included in What Can
a Body Do? along with a video. The photographs and video depict a naked man with
amputated limbs, accompanied by able-bodied people (a man and a woman) who in the
staged photographs and in the film “lend” their limbs to the amputated as they stroll,
climb stairs or bathe together. The naked bodies of the protagonists were assembled by
the artist in complex compositions creating bodily hybrids: two-headed men, men
with two pairs of arms, woman’s body as alternative leg/support etc., and at the same
time the appearance of new able-bodied organisms in which the “healthy” supply the
amputated with substitute limbs. The title of Zmijewski’s work recalls the antique rule of
dispensing justice, but the artist is concerned not with the question of revenge but
with that of possibilities.

In this work, Zmijewski poses challenging questions: Are those who help, as well as
those to whom the help is offered, at risk of losing their integrity? Where lies the

25 Indeed, as historian and scholar Katherine Ott, “The Sum of Its Parts:
Katherine Ott notes, “analysis and An Introduction to Modern Histories
interpretation of prosthesis have… of Prosthetics,” in Artificial Parts,
come from psychoanalytic theory… Practical Lives: Modern Histories of
The prostheses has become a literal Prosthetics (New York and London: : Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi,
symbol of more complex issues.” New York University Press, 2002), 3. Dermis Leather Footwear 2011
22 border between human cooperation and a symbiosis of individuals carried to excess?
Is it possible at all for one person to “compensate” another for his/her impairments?
BIBLIOGRAPHY Noys, Benjamin.
“Introduction.” Georges
Scully, Jackie Leach.
“Thinking Through the
23

Bataille: A Critical Variant Body.” Disability

Additionally, Zmijewski’s work offer a new reading of affect and how bodies move with
Introduction. London, Bioethics: Moral Bodies,
and in composition with one another, particularly in comparison to Park McArthur’s work Pluto Press: 2000. Moral Difference. London:
and to Deleuze’s thinking about bodies. Zmijewski’s protagonists become destabilized Rowman and Littlefield
O’Daniel, Alison. Publishers, 2008.
and restabilized through their physical and emotional encounters with one another. He
Artist Statement, 2011.
questions here what happens in the exchange between legs, skin, hands, arms, genitals, Siebers, Tobin.
breath and other body parts of the two men and woman. New possibilities are created Deleuze, Gilles. Grigely, Joseph. O’Daniel, Alison. “Body Theory.” Disability
“What Can a Body Do?” “Nudist Plays: A Dialogue Night Sky Artist Theory. Ann Arbor:
through such an exchange, and the intertwining of their capacities, abilities and
Expressionism in Philo- with Joseph Grigely by Statement, 2011. University of Michigan,
debilities transform concepts of mobility, immobility, pathology, beauty and especially sophy: Spinoza. New York: Ian Berry.” Joseph Grigely: 2008.
disability. These bodies point towards the need for a new language to assess notions Zone Books, 1990. St. Cecilia. Curated by Ott, Katherine.
Ian Berry and Irene “The Sum of Its Parts: Siebers, Tobin.
of “support” and insufficiency.
Deleuze, Gilles Hofmann. Baltimore: An Introduction to Modern “Disability and the Theory
and Felix Guattari. The Frances Young Tang Histories of Prosthetics.” of Complex Embodiment—
The works of Joseph Grigely, Christine Sun Kim, Park McArthur, Alison O’Daniel,
“Becoming-Intense, Teaching Museum and Artificial Parts, Practical For Identity Politics in
Carmen Papalia, Laura Swanson, Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi, Corban Walker and Artur Becoming-Animal.” A Lives: Modern Histories
Art Gallery at Skidmore a New Register.” The
Zmijewski destabilize reductive representations of the disabled body. They create new Thousand Plateaus: College, Contemporary of Prosthetics. New York Disability Studies Reader.
thinking about bodily experiences and disrupt negative associations of impairment. Capitalism and Schizo- Museum, 2007. and London: New York Ed. Lennard J. Davis.
phrenia. Translated by University Press, 2002. London and New York:
Their works move away from binaries such as “ability” and “disability” to think radically
Brian Massumi. Kim, Christine Sun. Routledge, 2010.
about what the body can do given more complex theories of embodiment. Disability Minneapolis: University of Artist Statement, 2011. Papalia, Carmen.
studies scholar Carrie Sandahl has asserted that “disabilities are states of being that are Minnesota Press, 1987. Artist Statement, 2012. Swanson, Laura.
Massumi, Brian. Artist Statement, 2012.
in themselves generative, and, once de-stigmatized, allow us to envision an enormous
Garland-Thomson, “Navigating Movements: Puar, Jasbir.
range of human variety—in terms of bodily, spatial, and social configurations.” 26 Rosemarie. An Interview with Brian “Prognosis Time: Towards
Collectively, the artists in What Can a Body Do? offer new possibilities of what consti- “Disability, Identity, Massumi.” Interview a Geopolitics of Affect,
and Representation: by Mary Zournazi. 21. Debility, and Capacity.”
tutes a representable body through their powerful multi-sensorial art practices, and
An Introduction.” Massumi, 2003. Women and Performance:
with this, they also expand our thinking about disability itself.
Extraordinary Bodies: A Journal of Feminist
Figuring Physical Maxwell, Eamonn. Theory 27, June 2012.
Disability in American “The Line Begins To Blur.”
Culture and Literature. Corban Walker: Ireland Saldanha, Arun.
Amanda Cachia is a curator from Sydney, Australia. She recently completed her second New York: Columbia at Venice 2011. Ireland: Psychedelic White: Goa
Masters in Visual & Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts (CCA) in San University Press, 1997. Culture Ireland, 2011. Trance and the Viscosity
of Race. Minneapolis:
Francisco. Cachia received her first Masters in Creative Curating from Goldsmiths College, McArthur, Park. University of Minnesota
University of London in 2001 and will embark on a dual PhD in Art History, Theory & “It’s Sort of Like a Big Press, 2007.
Criticism and Communication at the University of California, San Diego in Fall 2012. Her Hug: Notes on Collectivity,
dissertation will focus on the intersection of disability and contemporary art. Cachia has Conviviality, and Care.” Sandahl, Carrie.
Cripples, Idiots, Lepers, “Considering Disability:
curated approximately thirty exhibitions over the last ten years in the United Kingdom, the
and Freaks: Extraordinary Disability Phenomenology’s
United States, Australia and Canada.
Bodies/Extraordinary Minds, Role in Revolutionizing
The Graduate Center of the Theatrical Space.” Journal
City University of New York, of Dramatic Theory and
March 23, 2012. Criticism. Spring 2002.
26 Carrie Sandahl, “Considering
Disability: Disability Phenomenol-
ogy’s Role in Revolutionizing
Theatrical Space,” in Journal of
Dramatic Theory and Criticism
(Spring 2002), 19.
24

THE 25

ARTISTS

: Alison O’Daniel,
Still from Night Sky 2011
Joseph Grigely
27

: Songs Without Words

(Faust) 2008

Joseph Grigely (b. 1956, East Berlin, Istanbul and Sydney Biennials.
Longmeadow, MA) has exhibited He has published several books,
extensively in solo and group exhib- including Textualterity: Art, Theory,
itions internationally since 1994. and Textual Criticism; Conversation
Venues include Anthony d’Offay Pieces and Blueberry Surprise, as
Gallery and the Barbican Centre in well as essays on disability theory and
London, the Musée d’Art Moderne body criticism. He holds a Doctorate
in Paris, the Whitney Museum of in Philosophy from Oxford University
American Art in New York and and is currently a Professor of Visual
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in & Critical Studies at the School of
: Songs Without Words San Francisco. Grigely has also been the Art Institute of Chicago.
(Eartha Kitt) 2012 included in the Whitney, Venice,
Christine Sun Kim
29

: Untitled (Speaker drawing)

2011

: Untitled (Bedshaker drawing)

2011

: Etude #3 (detail) 2011

Christine Sun Kim (b. Orange in 2010 and the Lower Manhattan
County, CA) is a New York City-based Cultural Council Swing Space program
performance artist who recently in 2009. Kim has been the recipient
received her MFA in Sound/Music at of various awards, including the 2012
Bard College. Her drawings, sculptures Newhouse Award through the Wynn
and performances have been featured Newhouse Foundation in New York,
in various exhibitions and programs, 2009 Harvestworks Educational
among them Recess Activities, Inc., Scholarship and the 2009 Emergency
New York City; Rensselaer Polytechnic Grant from Foundation for Contemp-
Institute, Troy, N.Y.; TCB Gallery, orary Arts. Additionally, Kim has been
Melbourne, Australia; and Takt an educator at the Whitney Museum
Kunstprojektraum, Berlin, Germany. since 2006 and is actively involved in
She participated in the Youth Insights developing the programming initiatives
Artist Residency at Whitney Museum for deaf audiences.
Park McArthur
31

Park McArthur (b. 1984, Raleigh, Art and The International Journal of : Stills from It’s Sorta
NC) graduated from Davidson College Feminist Approaches to Bioethics’ Like a Big Hug 2012

in 2006 and from The University of forthcoming issue on vulnerability.

Miami with an MFA in sculpture in Her artwork has been included in
2009. She is currently attending the group exhibitions at the Smithsonian
Skowhegan School of Painting and Museum, ICA Philadelphia and
Sculpture and recently participated Botkyrka Konsthall Sweden.
in the Whitney Independent Study
Program. She works on individual and
collective projects concerning
disability, care and correspondence.
She has contributed to Aspect Maga-
zine: The Chronicle of New Media
 Alison O’Daniel
33

: Stills from Night Sky 2011

: God’s Eye 2011

Alison O’Daniel (b. 1979, Miami, General Gallery and in conjunction

FL) lives and works in Los Angeles, with Performa 11, she premiered her
California. She teaches at Otis College first feature film, Night Sky, at the
of Art and Design and is a recipient Anthology Film Archives on November
of the 2011 California Community 21 and 22, 2011. Major exhibitions
Foundation Emerging Artist Fellow- include RampART, Los Angeles
ship, a Puffin Foundation grant (2010); Workspace 2601, Los Angeles
and the Agnes Gund Fellowship. She (2009); Stuttgart Film Festival,
attended the Skowhegan School of Stuttgart (2008); Transitions Gallery,
Painting and Sculpture in 2007 London (2007); Oberhausen Film
and studied at UC Irvine, Goldsmiths Festival, Oberhausen, Germany (2007)
College and The Cleveland Institute and Kunstlerhaus, Vienna (2005).
of Art, where she has also taught.
As part of the group show “Walking
Forward–Running Past” at Art in
Carmen Papalia
35

: Blind Field Shuttle: California College

of the Arts, San Francisco 2012

Carmen Papalia (b. 1981, Social Practice Conference. Papalia

Vancouver, BC) makes experiential has contributed to programming at : Blind Field Shuttle:
projects about access with regard to the Columbus Museum of Art, the Mildred’s Lane, PA 2011

public space, the art institution Portland Art Museum, the Vancouver
and visual culture. His current work Art Gallery and the Purple Thistle
creates the opportunity for partici- Center. His upcoming projects include
pants to explore the entry points to a series of art objects that can be
experience that are often overlooked, experienced non-visually and a
and engage in non-visual methods performance in which he will develop
of knowing and interpretation. His a walking map with the help of a
work has been shown at Pro Arts in marching band for Grand Central Art
Oakland, California; Gallery Gachet in Center in Los Angeles. His writings
Vancouver, British Columbia, and as can be found in Stay Solid: A Radical
part of the Mildred’s Lane residency Handbook for Youth (AK Press, 2012).
and the Open Engagement: Art +
Laura Swanson
37

: TOGETHER together 2009

: TOGETHER together 2009

Laura Swanson (b. 1978, Video in Berlin, Germany, the Media
Minneapolis, MN) received her MFA Arts Gallery in Warsaw, Poland and in
in Digital + Media from the Rhode South Korea at the Jeju Museum of
Island School of Design in 2011 and Contemporary Art. Her awards include
BFA in Design & Technology from the a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the
San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. John Renna Art Scholarship from the
The artist’s work has been exhibited National Endowment for the Arts.
within the United States at the She lives and works in New York City.
RISD Museum of Art, Camera Club
of New York and San Francisco Arts
Commission Gallery and internationally
at Arsenal – Institute for Film and
 Corban Walker
38 39

: TV Man 2010 Corban Walker (b. 1967, Dublin, Walker first exhibited with The Pace
Ireland) has gained recognition Gallery in the fall of 2000 and held
for his installations, sculptures and subsequent exhibitions at the gallery
drawings that relate to perceptions in 2007 and 2009. In 2008, he was
of scale and architectural constructs. a Visiting Artist at the Museum of
His local, cultural and specific philo- Glass in Tacoma, Washington. Walker
sophies of scale are fundamental recently represented Ireland at the
to how he defines and develops his 54th Venice International Art Biennale
work, creating new means for 2011. He has lived and worked in
viewers to interact and navigate their New York since 2004.
surroundings. Walker graduated
with honors from the National College
of Art and Design, Dublin, with a
degree in Fine Art Sculpture in 1992.
His first solo show was held at the
City Arts Centre in Dublin, Ireland in
1994. Since then, he has mounted
solo exhibitions internationally and has
realized eight important public
commissions. Walker’s work is part
of numerous public and private collec-
tions around the world, including the
Irish Museum of Art, Dublin.
Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi
41

Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi (b. 1981, : Dermis Leather Footwear 2011

Taiwan) received a BFA and MA

from the School of the Art Institute
of Chicago and an MFA from the
University of California Berkeley.
She has worked as an art therapist
in Taiwan and helped to establish
disability culture in China. She is
currently residing in Chicago,
completing her PhD in Disability
Studies at the University of Illinois.
Artur Zmijewski
43

: An Eye for an Eye 1998

Artur Zmijewski (b. 1966, Warsaw, springboard for Czereja, an arts

Poland) studied at the Faculty of periodical he published in the late
Sculpture of the Academy of Fine Arts ’90s, and he continues to be an art
in Warsaw in the years 1990–1995 critic. Zmijewski was part of the Polish
and was awarded a diploma at the Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in
studio of Professor Grzegorz Kowalski 2005, and he has received several
in 1995. In 1995 he was a bursar awards for his work. He was appointed
of Gerrit Rietveld Academie in curator for the 7th Berlin Biennale,
Amsterdam. Zmijewski creates which took place in 2012.
: An Eye for an Eye 1998
installations, objects, photographs,
videos and films that explore human
behavior and physicality as a form
of social activism. His intellectually
reflective approach became the
 8 Speaker drawing #5, 2012
LIST
44 Joseph Grigely Park McArthur Laura Swanson 45
Ink and powder-drenched quills Artur Zmijewski

OF 1 Songs Without Words

(Eartha Kitt), 2012
on round wood panel
16"
17 Carried and Held, 2012
Text on label
23 Displaywith Stools and
Clothes, 2012 28 An Eye for An Eye, 1998

WORKS Pigment print

40 × 35"
9 Speaker drawing #6, 2012
8 × 36" Sculpture
Variable sizes
Digital video
11:28
Ink and powder-drenched quills 18 Abstraction, 2012
on round wood panel Courtesy of Foksal Gallery
2 Songs Without Words Text on label Foundation, Warsaw
(Sekou Sundiata), 2012 16"
8 × 36"
Pigment print Corban Walker
29 An Eye for An Eye, 1998
10 Speaker drawing #7, 2012
40 × 35" 19 It’s Sorta Like a Big Hug, Photo on dibond board
Ink and powder-drenched quills 2012 24 TV Man, 2010
on round wood panel 39.3 × 39.3"
3 Songs Without Words Digital video LCD monitor 65", computer
24" Courtesy of the artist and
(Faust), 2008 16:53 and video file
Galerie Peter Kilchmann,
Pigment print 61-1/8 × 36-3/8 × 4"
11 Speaker drawing #8, 2012 Zurich
40 × 35" Edition 2 of 3
Ink and powder-drenched quills
on round wood panel Alison O’Daniel Courtesy of the artist and 30 An Eye for An Eye, 1998
24" The Pace Gallery Photo on dibond board
Christine Sun Kim
20 God’s Eye, 2011 39.3 × 39.3"
12 Speaker drawing #9, 2012
Original cardboard box Courtesy of the artist and
4 Speaker drawing #1, 2012 Ink and powder-drenched quills for disco ball, rotating Chun-Shan (Sandie) Yi Galerie Peter Kilchmann,
Ink and powder-drenched quills on round wood panel disco ball hanging inside, Zurich
on round wood panel 24" projection of dog’s eye,
16" 25 Dermis Leather Footwear, 2011
string, hair-wraps, chain 31 An Eye for An Eye, 1998
13 Speaker drawing #10, 2012 Sculpture: Latex, cork & thread
Variable sizes Photo on dibond board
5 Speaker drawing #2, 2012 Ink and powder-drenched quills Dimensions variable
39.3 × 39.3"
Ink and powder-drenched quills on round wood panel 21 Night Sky, 2011
on round wood panel 26 Dermis Leather Footwear, 2011 Courtesy of the artist and
24" Film
16" Digital chromogenic print Galerie Peter Kilchmann,
75:00
14 Etude #1, 2011 20 × 30" Zurich
6 Speaker drawing #3, 2012 Pen on paper
Ink and powder-drenched quills 36 × 36" 27 Dermis Leather Footwear, 2011
on round wood panel Carmen Papalia Digital chromogenic print
16" 15 Etude #2, 2011 with Kai Tillman 20 × 30"
Pen on paper
7 Speaker drawing #4, 2012
36 × 36" 22 Blind Field Shuttle: Portland,
Ink and powder-drenched quills June 16 & 17, 2012
on round wood panel 16 Etude #3, 2011 Multi-channel sound installation
16" Pen on paper
36 × 36"
 Printed in conjunction with the exhibition
46
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PRESENTED BY THE JOHN B.
HURFORD ’60 CENTER FOR What Can a Body Do?, curated by Amanda
47

THE ARTS AND HUMANITIES Cachia, October 26 – December 16, 2012.

I am so grateful to the entire dedicated staff Sometimes, by Kevin Gotkin, a PhD student
at Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery, Haverford College at Annenberg School for Communication,
Laura McGrane haverford.edu/whatcanabodydo
who made this exhibition possible, especially University of Pennsylvania. I thank Kevin for KOSHLAND DIRECTOR
Matthew Callinan, John Muse, Aubree Penney his generosity in lending this enlightening video
and all the AV and preparatorial staff— about the potential of disability during the Emily Cronin Copyright © 2012 by Amanda Cachia,
Jeremiah Misfeldt and the Equivocal crew— course of the exhibition. ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Kristin Lindgren, Debora Sherman and the
for the installation. I am deeply appreciative John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts
to Haverford College faculty members Kristin I’ve been so privileged to work with the nine James Weissinger and Humanities, Haverford College.
Lindgren and Debora Sherman, who initiated talented artists in this exhibition: Joseph ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR
Artwork is copyright © the respective artist
this entire project, starting with the conference Grigely, Christine Sun Kim, Carmen Papalia
Matthew Seamus Callinan and affiliated gallery. All rights reserved.
in/visible: disability and the arts in 2011. This (with Kai Tillman), Park McArthur, Alison
CAMPUS EXHIBITIONS COORDINATOR No portion of this book may be reproduced
extends to their mentorship and guidance of O’Daniel (with Lisa Reynolds), Laura Swanson
(with Greg Kuball), Corban Walker, Chun-Shan or utilized in any form or by electronic,
audio description for the works in the exhibition Tom W Bonner
(Sandie) Yi and Artur Zmijewski. Alongside mechanical, or other means without the prior
to students in their classroom. I thank all MELLON TRI-COLLEGE CREATIVE
the artists, I thank all the galleries that have RESIDENCIES COORDINATOR
written permission of Amanda Cachia,
the students who participated in this project,
facilitated loans of the artists’ works, including Kristin Lindgren, Debora Sherman and the
especially Emma Hunter and Julia Kornetsky,
The Pace Gallery in New York, Foksal Gallery Kerry Nelson John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts
and Alicija Kielczewska for the sound trans-
Foundation in Warsaw and Emily Dittman and ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT
cript of Artur Zmijewski’s work. The audio and Humanities, Haverford College.
tracks on the audio CD that accompanies the Andrew Saluti who facilitated the shipment

catalogue were generously mastered by of work by Christine Sun Kim from Palitz
Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery Staff: PHOTO CREDITS
student David Cookmeyer. Gallery in Lubin House at Syracuse University
in New York. I’m especially grateful to Mateo Anna Benjamin, Pia Chakraverti- p. 7: Jason Sturgill
I also owe my gratitude to the staff at the Chacon and Annemarie Reichen from Galerie Wuerthwein, Michael Ferrara, Noelia p. 16: Jordan Reznick Renner
John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Arts Peter Kilchmann in Zurich for their swift Hobeika, Dylan Kahn, Alicja Kielczewska, p. 34: Jordan Reznick Renner
and Humanities at Haverford College who professionalism and helpfulness. Aubree Penney (Manager), Michael p. 35: Kristin Rochelle Lantz
supported the vision and concept for this
Rushmore (Manager), Valerie Smosna
show, especially Associate Director James I also would like to mention all the other people
Weissinger. I’m thrilled that they have all been who have guided me and provided advice and
Mellon Tri-College Creative Residency ISBN-10: 0983050082
so committed to presenting work based on sage wisdom in my path towards curating
Interns for What Can a Body Do?: ISBN-13: 978-0-9830500-8-7
the disabled subject and challenging people’s intelligent, accessible exhibitions: Rosemarie
Julia Hunter and Emma Kornetsky
perceptions. I’m even more thrilled that the Garland-Thomson, Georgina Kleege, Katherine
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation was able to Sherwood and faculty at the California College
provide funds from the Mellon Tri-College of the Arts who were the first to encounter The John B. Hurford ’60 Center for the Design by Ellen Gould (softreturn.net)
Creative Residencies for artists Christine these ideas during my Masters degree and Arts and Humanities is grateful to Israel Printed and bound in Minneapolis, MN
Sun Kim and Carmen Papalia. The Greater provided critical feedback. These people were Burshatin and John Muse for their roles in by Bolger, Inc.
Philadelphia Women’s Studies Consortium Vivian Bobka, Michele Carlson, Julian Carter, the planning stages of this exhibit for the
has been fabulous at promoting this event Stephanie Ellis, Jacqueline Francis, Susan 2012-13 Cantor Fitzgerald Season.
within a wider network so that a great many Gevirtz, Joseph Grigely and Tirza Latimer.
more students can enjoy this project. Ellen Finally, none of this could have been possible
Gould has been a patient, dynamic graphic without the love and support of my partner
designer for all aspects of this exhibition. Ryan Gambrell, who constantly inspires and Haverford College
I’m also pleased to include as an adjunct to reminds me that what the body can do is Haverford, PA 19041
the exhibition the video entitled The Rupture, limitless. —Amanda Cachia haverford.edu/exhibits
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AUDIO

The Compact Disc included here has been provided to allow greater accessibility
to the exhibition What Can a Body Do? hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery
at Haverford College. Included on this disc are audio recordings of catalog texts,
as well as an introduction and one of the sound recordings for Carmen Papalia’s
work Blind Field Shuttle: Portland, June 16 & 17 (2012). For more information
and to hear audio description recordings for works in this exhibition please visit
haverford.edu/whatcanabodydo.

Blind Field Shuttle and accompanying recordings © Carmen Papalia, 2012

1 Introduction to the Audio CD 01 :36

Recorded by Amanda Cachia

2 Foreword (pp 2–3) 06: 05

Recorded by Kristin Lindgren

3 Essay: “Introduction” 09 : 55
(pp 4–8)

Recorded by Amanda Cachia

4 Essay: “The Artists” 29 : 29

(pp 9–22)

Recorded by Amanda Cachia

5 Curator and Artists Bios 10 : 06

(pp 22–42)

Recorded by Julia Hunter and

Emma Kometsky

6 Blind Field Shuttle: 01 : 08

“Introduction”
Recorded by Carmen Papalia
and Kai Tillman

7 Blind Field Shuttle: 20 : 13

“Saturday June 16, 2012”
Recorded by Carmen Papalia
and Kai Tillman