Weekend Symposium at ImPulsTanz 2016
description
Central to the activities of late capitalism, the contemporary body faces constant demands to perform as a highly functional independent system in endless competition. Is this how we want to live? With service assistants, animals, machines and other varied systems of support, people with disabilities and people who need high levels of assistance often find themselves in generatively complex relations of dependency. Without fetishizing disability, the symposium „Who Cares?“ asks: to what extent can these experiences of interdependence – the acknowledgement that we need one another – serve as a model for new relationships? What kind of alternatives can be derived through approaching care as political potential? In a landscape that coldly assumes ‘self-sustainability’ within a ‘level playing field,’ care (often flanked by egoism, paternalism, altruism and shrugging shoulders) becomes a privilege for those who can afford it rather than a basic human right. What we are looking for is a "crip future" (Alison Kafer) in which disability and care are not only seen as medical issues but as social and political methodologies of resistance that call for all bodies in crisis to move towards an inclusive interdependence. A critical and political version of care founded on the relational ethics which disability demands is essential to challenge neoliberal fantasies of independent individualism.
Who Cares was a trans-disciplinary symposium, curated by Jeremy Wade and hosted by ImPulsTanz in 2016. Theoreticians, activists and artists with and without disabilities from the areas of commerce, post-humanism/disability studies, art and sex work offered lectures, performances and controversial positions on the question of care while inviting audiences for discussion and participation.
Featuring Jeremy Wade, James Leadbitter, Kim Noble, Jess Thom, Hannah Hull, Robert McRuer, Dasniya Sommer, Silke Schönfleisch-Backofen, Matthias Vernaldi, Judith Aregger, Siegfried Saerberg, Nina de Vries, Maximilian Haslberger, Daniel Häni, Adrienne Goehler, Matthias Rösch, Saša Asentić, and Dalibor Šandor.
Who Cares was a trans-disciplinary symposium, curated by Jeremy Wade and hosted by ImPulsTanz in 2016. Theoreticians, activists and artists with and without disabilities from the areas of commerce, post-humanism/disability studies, art and sex work offered lectures, performances and controversial positions on the question of care while inviting audiences for discussion and participation.
Featuring Jeremy Wade, James Leadbitter, Kim Noble, Jess Thom, Hannah Hull, Robert McRuer, Dasniya Sommer, Silke Schönfleisch-Backofen, Matthias Vernaldi, Judith Aregger, Siegfried Saerberg, Nina de Vries, Maximilian Haslberger, Daniel Häni, Adrienne Goehler, Matthias Rösch, Saša Asentić, and Dalibor Šandor.