By Hook&Loop Artist Collective1
The Access Artistry Manifesto was created as a creative access statement for UNDUE BURDEN's residency at The Painted Bride in Fall 2024. UNDUE BURDEN is an ongoing digital community archiving project led by members of Hook&Loop and Disabled, Chronically Ill, Sick, Mad,2 Neurodivergent+ people in Philadelphia. Hook&Loop is an accessible artist collective and network that builds accessible creative practices and interdisciplinary events.
We wrote the Access Artistry Manifesto to name our intentions and grounding philosophy around accessibility. It is incomplete, imperfect, and in process, just like us, and aims to present accessibility as art rather than as a legalistic task as it is often considered in art and cultural spaces. The Manifesto presents access as a generative, creative force and even its own artistic genre. We consider accessibility as art and access labor as work.
Hook&Loop's digital archive project UNDUE BURDEN was in residence at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia from October 19 to November 23, 2024, with the installation of a "living archive" and five sensorial programs that invited the public to expand and engage with our living archive. The living archive installation was created by Maggie Mills with fabrication assistance from B. H. Mills. It consists of seven 6' x 12' fabric loops printed with hand-drawn motifs and archive photographs on unprimed parachute cloth suspended from wood and metal armatures. The archive installation fabric motifs are composed of hand-drawn images that are woven together to represent Hook&Loop's vision for an accessible future. Three of the fabric loop motifs host images from the UNDUE BURDEN digital archive. Some of these images are accompanied by QR codes for audio descriptions and archive notes. The remaining four fabric loop motifs serve as frameworks for our living archive, which visitors were invited to contribute to during our residency workshops. Multiple other installations were set up across the space to invite in the fullness of Sick, Mad, and Disabled embodied experience, including a cozy library with handmade soft cushions, quilts, and rugs created by collective members, a low-stim lounge with sensory tools and low lighting, a space for naming and expressing disability rage, and an access altar to honor our disabled ancestors and reclaim spirituality. The events incorporated poetry, music, dance, a touch-based gallery, and an ILL-legal wedding party,3 each encouraging immersion, artistic collaboration, interdisciplinarity, audience [End Page E-17] engagement, and the valuation of Sick, Mad, Neurodivergent, and Disabled artmaking beyond nondisabled aesthetic constraints. Join our mailing list or find us on instagram at @hookandloopphl to learn more about upcoming events. Our meetings are virtual and open to all who identify as Sick, Mad, Chronically Ill, Disabled, or Neurodivergent+! Email Hook&Loop for more information at hookandloopphl@gmail.com.
Manifesto compiled, collaged, edited, and beautified by the Hook&Loop Access Artistry Team: Miranda Blas, Shannon Brooks, Rafi Ruffino Darrow, Aubrey Donisch, Julia Havard, CJ Jasen, Kai Kornegay, and Maggie Mills. Text, intention, and concept by Hook&Loop collective members and program leads for residency: Ernest Bing, Miranda Blas, Shannon Brooks, Nat DiFrank, Phoebe Dilworth, Julia Havard, Cris Iacoponi, Aalaya Jones, And Keller, Vinetta Miller, Maggie Mills, Jenna Powers, Pam Price, Miriam Saperstein, George Shands, and many other collective members who shaped Hook&Loop's approach to access, along with the creators of the book documenting UNDUE BURDEN's residency by This Must Be The Place: Samantha Mitchell and Virginia Fleming. This Manifesto is meant to be used, circulated, improved upon, and implemented as a tool, a spell, an invitation, a demand to build radical access.
This is an Access Portal.
We are access artists.
Beyond legal mandates, compliance, afterthoughts,
Access is Art!
Access space.
Many millions of people are newly disabled.
We meet this emergency with emergence.
We build ramps over stairs. We bust through doors of rooms that were not built for us (or crawl through back windows!).
We make art from bed and make being in bed our art. We dissolve boundaries between the physical and the virtual.
We shift tables, chairs, and paradigms to reclaim our space.
Allow your needs to expand and contract like bodies and brains.
Access time.
We slow down; we speed up. We stop. We rest with ease and without fear of penalty. [End Page E-18]
We reject productivity. We celebrate the late and the unfinished.
We grieve. We are always in process.
Rearrange time. Break time.
Access rage.
We are brutalized by the carceral state, inaccessible spaces, forced poverty, and the medical industrial complex.
We have been abandoned by our government, our doctors, our families, our schools.
We demand to be witnessed and not surveilled.
Refuse to be small and quiet. Be big and loud.
Access care.
We honor our differences.
We care radically. We reclaim our care as sacred.
We ask for what we need without apology.
Demand a world where our care is loved work, and our care workers are cared for.
Access imperfection.
We hurt each other. We listen.
We experiment, we mess up, we try again and again.
Promise to practice and grow.
Access pleasure and comfort.
We choose families, partners, intimacy, and love.
We are sexy!
We make sensory spaces, textured art, handmade cushions, and hand-tufted rugs.
We wear our art; we let art wear us out. Art makes us sweat!
Access feels good.
We hold our art. Our art holds us.
Celebrate disability.
Access abundance.
We are flexible and compassionate. We create endless options.
We marry ourselves!
We value disabled work and rest.
Pay. Us. More!
We reject the myth of scarcity and the supremacist hierarchies that support it.
Build a world where access is unlimited.
The stories in our archive are by us and about us. We document Disabled art. We document Disabled love, rage, exclusion, and belonging. We document stories that have been ignored and silenced.
We are here.
Access artistry will not be gatekept.
This is an Access Portal.
We are access artists.
You are an access artist.
Access for UNDUE BURDEN was developed with the support of and in consultation with Akili Davis, Anya Gholson, Octavia Rose Hingle, Blue Park, and Alanna Raffel, and was informed by the work of I Wanna Be with You Everywhere, Alice Wong and the Disability Visibility Project, Sins Invalid, BlackStar, Alison Kopit, Kinetic Light, TechOWL, and Madison Zalopany. UNDUE BURDEN came into being and continues to grow through our expanding network of Sick, Disabled, Mad, and Neurodivergent people with diverse experiences and stories. We are grateful for the wisdom this community offers to us and for the education the leaders of Disability Justice generously share. We are grateful to be in community with Disabled elders, comrades, young people, and nondisabled accomplices and to have the opportunity to build radically accessible spaces for us all. We are extremely grateful for our many care workers whose support is invaluable. Endless thanks to the community of Sick, Disabled, Mad and Neurodivergent people and nondisabled accomplices who have collaborated with us on this project: performed, contributed labor, donated to the archive, attended a Zoom meeting, or offered advice, a ride, or emotional support.
1. Julia Havard, Ernest Bing, Miranda Blas, Shannon Brooks, Rafi Ruffino Darrow, Nat DiFrank, Phoebe Dilworth, Aubrey Donisch, Virginia Fleming, CJ Jasen, Aalaya Jones, Kai Kornegay, Maggie Mills, Cris Iacoponi, And Keller, Vinetta Miller, Samantha Mitchell, Jenna Powers, Pam Price, Miriam Saperstein, and George Shands. Bios for individual collective members may be found here.
2. We reclaim the term "Mad," which originates out of the psychiatric survivors' movement of the late 1960s and 1970s, to indicate a political valuation of and pride in experiences of psychiatric disability and mental illness.
3. The ILL-egal Wedding event, "Feeling Connection" is a celebration of Disabled defiance against expectations around mind/body autonomy and the limitations of SSI/SSDI. The event involved the SSI/SSDI "marriage penalty," responding to loss of benefits disabled people can experience if they get married. Additional teach-ins involved relationships, consent, and sex. The event culminated in an ILL-egal wedding ceremony & dance party that celebrated disability intimacy, joy, and relationships.