Altered Access Panel: The Body

To attend The Body virtually, please navigate to the livestream link by 1:00 PM on Saturday April 22.

Livestream

Devices or technologies that serve as tools for a physically disabled body are generally understood as support rather than embodiment.

Making these tools an integral component of visual art forms is not only a vibrant arena for cultural production but, by becoming embodied as artwork, also fosters the dialogue and expands the meaning of simply what a body is and what it can do. We live in a world with continuous innovation of technologies and expansive design for prosthetics, mobility aids, and hearing devices, but there is also value in the simplicity of forms and the creativity at play in hack culture. These panelists create visual systems that make visible and reinvent how bodies move in spaces. This discussion will focus on the body as a mode to transformation, creation, and embodiment. 

Weblink to access livestream will be available the week of event. 

About the Speakers

Panteha Abareshi

Panteha Abareshi was born in Montreal, Canada, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. She received a BFA from the University of Southern California’s Roski School of Art and Design. Abareshi has previously performed and exhibited at Kunsthaus Zürich; Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Human Resources, Los Angeles; and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery; among others. 

Kevin Gotkin

Kevin Gotkin is an access ecologist, distinction merchant, institutional critic, and community organizer. They have been organizing in the disability art worlds of Lenapehoking (so-called New York City) since 2016, when they cofounded Disability/Arts/NYC with Simi Linton to shape a public platform for disability artistry. They currently serve as Organizer in the disability arts collective Kinetic Light. They help steward the Critical Design Lab (2022 United States Artist Fellow) and the REMOTE ACCESS party collective. In 2021, they were an inaugural member of Creative Time’s Think Tank. They received their PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2018 and were Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU until 2021.

Christopher Jones and Liza Sylvestre

Christopher Robert Jones and Liza Sylvestre are artists and writers based in Illinois. They are Research Assistant Professors at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where they cofounded Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts, a transdisciplinary initiative housed within the College of Fine and Applied Arts.

Yo-Yo Lin

Yo-Yo Lin 林友友 is a Taiwanese-American interdisciplinary media artist who explores the possibilities of self-knowledge within emerging, embodied technologies. She often uses video, animation, live performance, and sound design to create meditative “memoryscapes.” Her recent body of work reveals and revalues the complex realities of living with chronic illness and intergenerational trauma. She creates openings into these realities through spaces, performances, and tools. Her practice often facilitates sites for community-centered abundance, developing into physical and virtual media installations, workshops, accessible nightlife parties, and artist collectives. 

She was a 2019 Artist-in-Residence at Eyebeam, a 2020 Open Call Recipient for the Shed, and the 2021 Red Burns Fellow at NYU Tisch ITP/IMA. She has shown work at international multimedia art galleries (Human Resources, Los Angeles; Lincoln Center, New York; La Corte Arte Contemporanea, Florence), film festivals (New York Film Festival and SXSW, Austin, Texas), performance venues (Gibney Dance and Ars Nova, both New York), and conferences (Allied Media Conference). Her work has been featured on NOWNESS and in Art in America and Surfacemagazines. She is the cofounder of ROTATIONS, a collaborative movement practice working toward deepening our understanding of artistry, disability, and access. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Yo-Yo now lives and works in New York City.

The Max Wasserman Forum

The Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art was established in memory of Max Wasserman (MIT Class of 1935), a founding member of the Council for the Arts at MIT. This public forum was endowed through the generosity of the late Jeanne Wasserman and addresses critical issues in contemporary art and culture through the participation of renowned scholars, artists, and arts professionals. The Forum is organized and presented by the MIT List Visual Arts Center.