cassandra hartblay

Category: Public Anthropology

  • Installation Launch: Cripping Cyberspace

    I am absolutely thrilled to announce the launch of my new ethnographic installation in its digital incarnation this Friday, September 27th!!A screenshot from the home page of the installation website, showing the heading, the menu, two paragraphs of text, and three photos of unusable ramps in Russia

    The project, Do You Like This Installation?, is one of four commissioned works featured in a contemporary online art exhibition titled Cripping Cyberspace. The broader exhibition is curated by uber-talented Amanda Cachia, presented by the Canadian Journal for Disability Studies, and is debuting as part of the Common Pulse Arts & Disability Festival, taking place in Durham, Ontario, Canada.

    This week I’m also launch a beta version of the physical installation as an open studio work. It will premiere to the general public for viewing and interactive engagement later in the fall of 2013.

    Starting now, everyone is invited to visit the digital interface for the project, to view the installation photos and videos, and to VOTE for their preference!

    Additionally, Amanda has recorded an interview with me about the project, which you can watch below.

    Please take a few minutes to engage with the ground breaking work presented by the other artists & collectives in the exhibition. Katherine Araniello takes up a beat to break it down – I particularly like the moment when she hits us with “infectious, infectious, infectious”. Sarah Hendren, as usual, is out of the this world, pushing limits with an extension of her slope : intercept project that explores the possibilities for audio description as descriptive soundscape. The Montreal In/accessible Collective has created a phenomenal series of digital public service “posters” that sets out to crip the landscape, “to impair ableism and damage the structures of power that reinforce the ‘normalcy’ of ableist architecture.” I can’t quite get over being included in this badass-sophisticate collection of rad ruffian crip activists!

    It’s been a long road to this moment of seeing activism, art, and critical disability theory come together in such an exciting way. Preliminary feedback confirms the convictions that performance ethnography methodology & engaged scholarship have suggested – a public anthropology, a non-textocentric anthropology, a digital/visual/embodied ethnographic output provokes a dialogic engagement with audiences and collaborators in ways that text alone simply can’t.

     

  • New posts up on “Kto Kuda Kak?” Accessibility Blog

    You might remember a meme that got passed around the internet last fall, showing pictures of utterly inaccessible ramps from around Russia. Russian accessibility activists like to call these the “galochki” or check-mark ramps: Is there a ramp? Yes! Does it work? Who cares?! It’s there, put a check mark in the accessibility box!

    Last November, we launched a collaborative blog to collect photos of galochki ramps

    A screen shot of the website "Who? Where? How?: ability in the built environment of Karelia"
    http://ktokudakakkarelia.tumblr.com/

    around Petrozavodsk and surrounding regions. We hoped to get lots of submissions from the general public, and even tried announcing a contest as a way to spur people to action. But, responses have only trickled in. This is partly because so few people with mobility impairments travel or go for leisurely walks in Karelia in the winter anyway – the feet upon feet of snow the region receives is quickly compacted on walkways into the dark brown, slick and slippery substance known in Russian as “slyakat’” – which makes movement through the city difficult for everyone, regardless of mobility capacity.

    I am happy to say that by the third week of April, we are finally “slyakat’” free, and some new photos have started to trickle in. I’m taking the opportunity to post many photos that I’ve taken myself over the past few months. Russians may say that spring officially starts on March 1st, but I’m going to take it upon myself to say that today – the first day that it rained instead of snowed – it is finally, finally spring in Karelia.

    Check out the new photos, comment away, submit your own examples, and don’t forget to pass our website on! Now that the weather’s nice, we’re planning a “day of action” coming up to collect a whole lot of photos at once.

  • What happens at the museum…

    A recent visit to the State Biological Museum in Moscow was too quirky to keep to myself. I had to share the story. You can read it in full on the Russia! Magazine website.

    WARNING: not for those with weak stomachs!!! Extensive discussion of blood transfusions, strange experiments performed on dogs, and poisonous mushrooms. Not to mention the sex in the museum art happening.

    Maybe there’s a longer term project here, but for now, a popular audience piece.

  • Imag(in)ing Accessibility in Karelia, Russia

    A screen shot of the website "Who? Where? How?: ability in the built environment of Karelia"I’m excited to announce the launch of a collaborative project with several non-profit organizations in Karelia, Russia! It is a blog collecting images of accessibility in the North Western republic of the Russian Federation where I am living while conducting my dissertation fieldwork.

    You may remember a series of viral images that circulated on Facebook and Twitter in the early fall of 2012, collecting images of impassable ramps (ramp-fails) in Russia. This project seeks to gather images of both accessible and inaccessible space in the region, and to include images of accessibility that do not reduce disability or access to wheelchair-users only. A photo contest, and some special events open to area high school students, will help to spur participation for local citizens to submit photos to the blog.

    Special thanks to the co-organizers of this project, and read more in Russian on the webpage itself.

  • Call for Contributions

    HEY YOU! Contribute to my current project, UNDOING ABLEISM // A VIDEO ASSEMBLAGE!!

    The prompt: Capture a part of your body that does not have a name (e.g. that you can’t describe in two words or less). Submit your digital video to be a part of a larger assemblage, which will be presented as a video installation and shared online.

    How does *your* body fight against medicalized or partial views of itself?

    Read on HERE.

  • Sensory ethnography and Art-making

    “I think especially now that social science is becoming much more interested in communicating our research to public audiences, some of those methods are going to be much, much more effective than the kind of academic writing and report-type writing that has been the traditional method of communication. …

    “I don’t know if the researchers will actually become film-makers rather than thesis writers, but I think there is an increasing development in that area. One of the things I foresee is increasing amount of collaboration with artists. I think there are very exciting possibilities for work with participatory artists developing participatory art projects that help us to communicate social science research outside academia. But sensory ethnography findings in particular, because I think some very interesting possibilities could develop there.”

    -Sarah Pink

    What is sensory ethnography? 2011. United States of America: Professor of Social Sciences, Loughborough University