Image description: A woman's hand holds a bright orange against a light blue, slightly crumpled background of fabric.
Michelle Miles, hand model, 2018, film still
CRIP TIME
“You don’t need to be fixed, my queens—it’s the world that needs the fixing.”
—Johanna Hedva
In a world that builds on unceasing bodily functionality, mobility, availability, and their constant expansion, every form of dysfunctionality leads to immediate exclusion or is declared in need of treatment. The violence inherent to normative conceptions of the body, and thus to education, labor, architecture, medicine, and pharmacology, is fatal. Human beings are constantly restricted and disabled by social barriers. Accessibility, however, is the basis for participation and justice. Sickness is not an individual but a collective societal matter. Health is not only a medical but also a political terrain on which social power relations play out.
Individual autonomy is a myth. Recognition of our mutual dependence, however, can help us rethink society. Rather than constant availability, the term crip time is based on the idea of multiple needs. Changed temporalities can come about, new forms of care and connection can develop, and a different way of thinking and perceiving can take hold.
The order of the day is to understand the vulnerability of our bodies as something constitutive. It is our vulnerability that makes us sensitive, perceptive, and different from one another.
Information in IS
Video documentation of the exhibition
Johanna Hedva once said:
You don't need to be fixed, my queens.
It's the world that needs the fixing.
This is how our world works:
— All things and people must function efficiently.
— Bodies shall be healthy.
— Everybody is mobile.
— Everybody can be everywhere and do everything.
And everything can still be optimized.
Or made even faster.
If something or somebody is different or does not function properly:
Then others often think: treatment is necessary.
So that everything works again.
What does it mean to not function properly?
This means exclusion.
A person is not included.
A thing is not used.
There are rules for different life areas:
— Learning and researching
— Working
— Putting up buildings
— Medicine
These rules are helpful.
But they are also a form of violence.
If people do not fit to the rules,
then rules can become barriers.
Barriers limit people.
People are excluded.
They can not take part in an event.
They can not visit a certain place.
They can not use a special service or a vehicle.
This is important for participation and justice:
Everybody can do something or use something equally good.
All people are equal in value.
Sickness is not just about the person who is sick:
it is about everyone in society.
Health is not only a topic for experts in this area.
Health is a political topic.
Because it concerns all people.
There is no such thing as a fully independent person.
No person makes decisions which only concern himself or herself.
We all live together in one society.
We need each other.
If we can learn that,
then this will change the way we think.
This will also change our society.
We must learn:
Every person needs other things in life.
People have many different wishes and needs.
This is what the exhibition is about.
It is a about another meaning of time.
We need new ideas and concepts for the following:
— How do we care for each other?
— How do we become one community?
— How do we see each other?
We are all vulnerable.
And when we understand that our bodies are vulnerable:
Then we can change.
Then we can become different people.
Then we can understand each other better.
We see the world differently.
