In 2012, I made this film in Irvine, California as part of the Humanities Research Institute’s “Art Inclusion: Disability, Design, Curation” residency. Typically, the residencies are dedicated to a faculty cohort. That year, the group (Sue Schweik, Cathy Kudlick, Patrick Anderson, Georgina Kleege, Heather Love, Victoria Marks, Darrin Martin, Mara Mills, and Michele Stuckey) expanded the residency to convene several additional artists, designers, and grad students – and I was honored to be in the group. Sue and Cathy chronicle the brilliant work that led to and from the residency in their 2014 Disability Studies Quarterly article, “Collision and Collusion: Artists, Academics, and Activists in Dialogue with the University of California and Critical Disability Studies.”
I mark my entry into the field of Disability Studies at this residency. The people I met and the orientation to disability I began to discover there have changed my life several times since. This was my first go at access-oriented media production. And I made some choices – both in form and content – that kind of make me cringe now. (Truth be told, I haven’t brought myself to watch this film in years.) But here it is. Here was my start as a disability scholar and activist.