“Because of”; Not “Despite of”: Difference as Generative Embodiment

Wednesday, October 7, 2015, 4:30-6pm

A program of The Flesh of the World

The 20th Annual Janet E. Hutchison Lecture with Dr. Carrie Sandahl, Associate Professor, Disability and Human Development, University of Illinois

Dr. Sandahl’s lecture focuses on artworks in the exhibition, in which differences in embodiment (physical, sensory, mental) generate new aesthetic possibilities in visual arts and performance, including sports. The comingling of disability art and culture, performance art, and adaptive sport raises important—and perplexing—questions. With the usual contexts and comforts of genre eroding, where do these works find common ground? Where do they contradict one another? Does the particularity of disability art “spread” to the exhibition’s other works about embodiment in general? Dr. Sandahl will explore these questions as part of her broader interest in how general audiences, arts critics, and arts scholars understand and interpret disability art.