Episode 46: Contra* Remote Access Parties with moira williams

The podcast introductory segment is composed to evoke friction. It begins with the sound of an elevator crunching as it goes up. A robotic voice says “floor two.” Then music with a mysterious tone comes on. A series of voices define Contra. Layered voices say:

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Contra is friction… Contra is texture… Contra is questions…Nuanced…Collaborative…Contra* is world-changing…Contra is innovation, messy, solidarity, interdependence…Contra is thinking about design critically. Contra is a podcast.

 

Throughout, there are sounds of typing, texting and Zoom being opened. 

Then an electric guitar bass note fades into the sound of a digital call ringing and starting. The intro ends with the sound of a Facetime call ringing and then picked up.

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moira williams: 

So I think we need a way into celebratory resistance. I think that’s very important to all of us in many ways. And it is resistance. Because we’re creating, we’re co-creating this world together even if it’s just an hour or two hours. It’s like, we co-created, we mutually made this space together. With support for one another. 

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Welcome back to the Contra* podcast. I’m your host, Aimi Hamraie. On this season of Contra* we’re drawing on the Remote Access Archive, a free online archive that documents how disabled people and communities have used technology for remote participation both before and during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Today’s episode features an interview with indigenous disabled artist moira williams. It was recorded by me, Aimi Hamraie, on March 21st, 2023 via Zoom. moira and I discuss pre and post-pandemic forms of remote access, particularly the Remote Access Crip Nightlife Party, access doulaing, disability arts, visual protest and what it means to do a land acknowledgment in a remote, digital setting. 

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moira williams:

I am moira williams. I am a light-skinned, indigenous person. I have dark hair. It's longish right now. It's pretty much behind my shoulders, and pushed over to the right side of my face with kind of long bangs. I have a long face, I have black eyebrows, and they're a little arch-y, and I have almond-shaped-ish eyes that are hooded, and their color is a dark, dark blue, almost black. I have a long nose that has a bump in the middle that sometimes you can see, sometimes you can't, depending on which angle you see my face from. I have high cheeks, they're kind of rounded, and I have, I guess, medium size, lips and I'm wearing a red– bright red–hoodie. And behind me is what I call exploding disco balls, is a party background. It's very, very textural. And the colors are bright pinks, and some purples and lavenders, and hot like oranges and yellows, and almost look like they're glowing and shimmering disco balls with ribbons coming off of them and multiple handles and some parts of them are exploding in like soft, round kind of forms throughout.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Great! Thank you. And I'm an olive-skinned person. I have transmasculine presentation. I have short, dark, curly hair, visible facial hair, rectangular glasses, I'm wearing a kind of heathered red sweater today. And I'm in a yellow room with some plants and a whiteboard and apron behind me. 

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[Upbeat, jazzy chords]

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moira williams: 

I am an Indigenous person. And I am 60 years old! I can't believe it! And I currently live in Secatogue territory, which is Lenni Lenape, or Lenapehoking land, and currently known as Fire Island.

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Aimi Hamraie:

And you mentioned that you're Indigenous, so we ask, what words do you use to describe your race and gender?

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moira williams:

Well, I'm two-spirited, and I describe my race as a indigenous descendant of Lenni Lenape, and Sámi People.

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Aimi Hamaraie: 

Thank you. And do you identify as a disabled person?

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moira williams: 

Oh, absolutely! I am disabled. I have a constellation of disabilities.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Are there any that you wanna note? And this is more for like, how do you want future people reading this, or listening to this, to refer to you.

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moira williams:

I was born as a neurodivergent person and with sickle cell and with hemolytic anemia. I also have cerebral palsy. Then I had a traumatic brain injury due to a car accident when I was about 16. I’m for telling people that I have a traumatic brain injury, because that seems to be something that is not widely talked about, even in disability community, or even written about, you know. So that's always interesting to me, and always like, “Yeah, that's something”.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Yeah, thank you. And do you consider yourself to be part of disability communities or disability culture?

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moira williams: 

Oh, yeah, I definitely feel like I'm part of disability communities, multiple communities. And probably multiple cultures as well. That span from HIV-positive, to neurodivergent communities, to the communities that I engage with on regular basis as friends, and family and loved ones, which is cross-disability and very, very interested in– beyond interested– I really try my best to always be aware of cross-disability and work with that, you know, with that way of being and with people, you know, across disabilities, in mixed ability, kind of situations. Because that's when we're in communities with disabled communities it's always communitie-s, right? Because we all have these different disabilities. And even if you know people I'm hanging out with are neurodivergent, they might not be neurodivergent in the same way I am, you know? So I always like to think about those things and work with people.

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[Upbeat jazzy chords]

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Aimi Hamraie: 

What were your experiences of remote access before the pandemic?

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moira williams: 

Disabled communities have always worked. And they both worked, and we have both worked, and communicated and expressed ourselves virtually, and organized virtually. And I, before the pandemic I did a lot of organizing virtually, particularly for marches. Black Lives Matter marches, and protests and gatherings. And one of the roles that I figured out I could contribute is by going into different maps of different cities and contacting bigger public buildings and finding out if they had accessible bathrooms, or not. And then seeing if they would be open to the public you know, since they're public buildings, they would have to be, but not every place, not every city do they have to be public but usually they do have to be, and if I called up and I asked them or emailed them and asked them about that, they'd be like, “Oh, yeah, yeah”. So I would always have that information. And then, when people started to be able to find out about different kinds of different surveillance techniques – like DIY surveillance techniques to find out, you know, where the police were gathering and whatnot, I would help people to navigate away from those kinds of situations. And also, you know, be ready to be on the phone to contact the people that would be on the ground.

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I also have always done some kind of eco-somatic movement kind of thing online, whether it's online, or through Instagram, or Youtube, or Skype. Remember Skype? The Skype gatherings and whatnot. And also I have been pretty active helping an elders HIV terminal house with a bunch of different activities that we could do online for rest and relaxation, like meditative things, or create rituals together, just hang out, write letters, those kinds of things. Which I also did a lot of hanging out, let's write letters to different congress people and whatnot with a lot of the HIV folks that I've worked with, but also during protest times, too.

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[Upbeat jazzy chords]

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Do you remember anything from earlier in your life? We can really go back as far as you want, so it could be pre-digital times, childhood, young adulthood, any ways that you connected with other disabled people remotely?

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moira williams:

Yeah, through telephone… and also in letter writing is still a remote way of doing that, like doing postcards. So everyone in my family has a disability. And so my mom was pretty proactive in healthcare. She was a surgical nurse, and she was also pretty proactive with community grassroots, community stuff. She was an American Indian, in the AIM group, and so I think I learned a lot of ways of connecting from her in that way too. 

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So we did–we would do a lot of letter writing to different disabled people that we became friends with, and making postcards, like homemade postcards. Also, something I continue to do when I have the time, which sadly, I don't seem to have that much time, but may want to send you a care package like sending care packages as a way of caring for people, you know whether it's just like – yeah, thanks Aimi! I hadn't thought about that for a long time. I've done a lot of care packages throughout my lifetime. Wow! That's just about like, particularly for friends and family, and who just can't get outdoors because of their disability or illness, right? And that's something I love so much, and is so much a part of me. I love sharing like shells that I would find or like weird shaped acorns, or you know, like dried plants for people — I grew up foraging. So, of course, and learning about medicinal plants and all sorts of things. So gathering different things that most people really like. I usually would ask people if they're interested in mushrooms because not everyone does is. So, you know, putting together marinated mushrooms, or dried mushrooms, or chopping them up for tea. So a lot of food making that has been really passed down from my mom, but also from my grandma and my grandpa. So thank you for that beautiful memory.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Yeah, yeah I hadn't thought about care packages before as a form of access, that totally makes sense. Are there any other pre-pandemic forms of remote access that you can remember and share? Maybe early digital age or…?.

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moira williams:

I was gonna say, cell phone, like a lot of like organizing things, I do arts organizing- a lot of texting, and then pre-texting, like, you know, phone calls and what were the beeper devices called? Like even using those like, we would have the beepers right? And particularly, and this might sound weird, but I grew up in New York City, and I did a lot of feral cat care. And there are a lot of cat colonies, feral cat colonies, in New York City, and we always had to keep them really secret because people just, some people just don't like cats. They didn't want them around. So we would always have to be very covert about feeding, or, you know, getting them all spayed or neutered, and things like that. So we used a lot of – that was a big beeper device time.

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And also just like protesting like, gathering people and making sure everyone's, you know, everyone who joined us is still with us. All about safety stuff. About, you know, again, like, Where are the police? Where are the blockades? What's going on?

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[Upbeat jazzy chords]

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Aimi Hamraie: 

So what are types of remote access that you have engaged in since March of 2020?

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moira williams: 

Well on an attendee/participation side, I was really so excited to see so much of that happening, but then, very disappointed as a disabled people, saying how it was happening. I really started saying it during the events, you know, like, “Hey, I'm disabled, and you know, like you said you were gonna have ASL, and you don’t have that here”, and, like just starting to say that to the organizers. 

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And then, oftentimes they got back to me, which was great. I know that doesn't happen to everyone, but then we would talk about it, and several of the places have really gotten better. And I've actually worked with them to get to improve. So that was a really cool thing that happened for me, and I know that's not true, for a bunch of people.

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But definitely being– that kind of became my activism is by, you know, saying, talking out about that regularly. You know, when we would have Zoom rooms where we would go into breakout rooms and, or, the ways that people were expecting people to show up, you know, you know, with their screens on, you know, all appearing, and people would talk about how they would just cancel people if they didn't show their face. And I, you know, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who's like “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Wait!”. Someone may be in bed and they don't want you to see them in bed, you know, like just pointing out the reality is that in disability communities most of us know that you know that like “oh, you know, like you might be having a IV treatment, you might be not able to get out of bed for days, you know? But you want to attend this thing that's a conversational thing. And then people demand that you show your face, right? And that's like, just not cool. I don't think it's not being generous on any level, or inviting any kind of conversation, you know, or creating a safe space for anyone. Those kind of became my “things” during the pandemic. Also during the pandemic, I also held Glitch Realm, I DJ’d a couple of times just get together to hang out and write letters, or just you know, DJ music in the background. And I set up templates for people to be able to like “Oh, just copy and add to them”, and do those kind of things. I would look up their congressperson, you know, and just be there together just so you weren't writing alone, or if you needed help with stuff. 

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And again, always doing some kind of movement, light movement meditation, just as, just an open thing. And the one time we did it together for many hours fermenting sourdough, working with backgrounds, you know, starting to work with backgrounds and moving with them which became– really that's become part of my work now, you know, like movement with backgrounds.

 

Aimi Hamraie: 

You want to say a little bit more about that?

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moira williams: 

Oh, yeah. So working with virtual backgrounds, as something that you can become part of or hide in. And I specifically have been working with like– So when we did, me and Aimi and a bunch of other folks that I invited to a sourdough-making kind of get-together, we moved with the microscopic blowup of a photo of fermenting bacteria, you know, in the sourdough. And just played with that, and moved with that, and kept that all is our background. It’s super fun, I mean, I think it's fun. It seems like other people think it's fun, but it's cool to be able to co-witness one another doing that. And you know, just being, just doing some kind of movement because during the pandemic, people were not doing as much movement, whether it was spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, dreaming, or anything. And that's what I mean by movement, you don’t necessarily have to be “moving”, and often the kind of eco-somatic scores that I work with, with the backgrounds, don't talk about the body in that way. It's about bodymind, spirits, and about moving your eyelashes or moving other parts of the body, that you may not think about. And may not, you know, bring on trauma, and then moving outward from the body. 

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So the backgrounds are a way to get us out of our bodies too. And into other forms and other ways, and investigate things. Like, I have a whole series of wetlands backgrounds that I use for invoking aqueous ancestors, eco monster ancestors, to play with those. And you can disappear in them if you like, which is part of that kind of movement exercise or gathering, is that you become embedded in that by putting on the green screen which is super fun and playful. And it's about being playful, too, in community and co-witnessing that there's this joy that you can be in community just playing and goofing around together, you know, and exploring things.

And then, of course, with the remote access party events that we've been doing, the parties that we do, I made virtual backgrounds that people could use as ways, you know, talk about how engaged they wanna be with other people. And they're based on participation cards that the neurodivergent community uses that they typically wear, like at conferences mostly. But it's – there's a red one for “not really into talking right now”, and for the remote access parties it's like, “Oh, no, I'm not feeling it right now” kind of thing and has a very textural background, and it's red and big, and you can sit in front of it. And then a yellow, “Oh, only if I know you, I wanna interact with you” image that's all yellow, and there's like greens really textural, too. The green one is really bright, bright, green, and very textural and like, “Oh, yeah! I'm ready to chat and hang out” kind of thing. So to express those kinds of ways to connect with one another. So we’ve been doing those kind of “mini hacks”, those “crip hacks”, with the virtual backgrounds that aren't moving, and that distracting, but can note different things.

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And then also there's the black and white one that I made for Access Doula, that really focuses on being able to sight, if you're sighted, being able to sight something, a spot really quickly, like an access doula. Or someone who's going to help out, or just another, you know, another person you're speaking with. And it's also– I work on that to support people who are colorblind too, just making black and white with a little bit of gray, and I try to wear red whenever access doulaing with that, because red can still be seen from what I understand. Not as red. But you know I can describe it as like the darker, like almost purple color or blue color, but the red is across the color line scale, where people can be able to see and recognize them a different color than black and white.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Cool. 

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[Upbeat jazzy chords]

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So how did you get involved with the remote access party?

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Moira Williams: 

Well, you and Kevin started it, which was fantastic, and so called for, and needed, and people really love that. But you all had started it like, and Kevin just invited me for the witches and glitches to do a ritual, which we continue essentially with the land acknowledgement. You know, with the grounding ourselves in and acknowledging the lands that we're on, or indigenous lands, and this is just the beginning. The acknowledgement is just a beginning. Also doing a movement to break the screen, you know, because that was one of the things– I think I was always really interested in doing with events and meetings with people online was breaking the 2-dimensional screen. You know, like causing, like inviting some kind of movement, whether it's your eyes tracing something you can do that, or just like thinking about the corner over there and clearing out the dust in that corner. So I did that, as one of the rituals for the witches and glitches, and since then I was like, “ah, let's do access-knowing!”, which we were talking about in Kevin's boot camp. We had been talking about what you know like, “what would an access doula do?”. And I think the second version of the boot camp that Kevin and Simi Linton ran…

Aimi Hamraie: 

Oh, so this is Disability Arts NYC?

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moira williams: 

Yeah.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

So you’d been kind of thinking about the concept of access doulaing from that. And then you presented at the party, and then you became part of the team. And if I'm not mistaken, you also presented or were part of the very first party in March of 2020 right? Because I remember you had that gel…?

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moira williams: 

Yeah, mhmm. That was where I did like a whole super ritual, with the gelatin. And then we made it into– like we would do the land acknowledgment.

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Yeah, so that you showing the gelatin, that kind of practice, gave way to the land acknowledgement that's part of the the parties now. You joined the access doula team.

And what do you remember from the last, you know, three years of planning this party? What are some of the, you know, practices, innovations, events that stand out to you?

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moira williams: 

Oh, well, first of all, I can't believe it's been three years like, “what are you talking about, it's been three years now, really? I can't believe it!”. Well, the thing that always stands out for me is just how much, how much fun it is, and how, now that we've been doing this for three years, and I think it was pretty quickly that people really, really, really looked forward to this. So that's one of the big things, cause I think we need to have a way into celebratory, like resistance. So I think that's very, very important for all of us in many ways. And it is a form of resistance, right? Because we're creating, we're co-creating this world together, even if it's just like an hour or two hours. It's like we co-created, mutually made this base, together with support with one another, and it doesn't matter who's giving the most support, or, you know, like there's no qualitative thing about it. It's just that we're just doing it, you know, and making this whole world for and with each other. And you know, saying that the thing that does also stand out, like some of the innovations that we've come up with is that we do– there's a huge backside of that, right? A lot of organizing and getting things together. And you know, like with all disabled folks, some of us can't always make it, and some can. We've been really super flexible where people can be like, “okay, I'll help out” or “I can help out for this amount of time”, and you know, that crip-time happens, you know, and health things happen. 

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So I love that– that we're very supportive of one another, and in that way–but also in the ways that we create and that it's space where it's open for us to create and co-create and collective organizing. You know it's not just one person, it's shaping more and more into like becoming more and more horizontal. Right? And being able to do other things, which is, which is really beautiful to do? And having discussions, deeper discussions about how do we want to do this? Do we always want to be connected with an institution, like how do we do this to make it sustainable for us, and still make it very joyful, right? 

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But some of the innovations, I think definitely the participation cards have been fun, super fun, and easy, you know, like people understand them, they get it. I see them popping up all [over]-- like I go to other events I'm like, “Hey, that's so fun. I love that!” you know, so people are using them. I love that. I love the background I have right now, I never thought of it as a background before, but,  DJ Queer Shoulders, had, just like, “Yeah! I'm gonna use it as a background. That'd be great!” and  I was like, “oh, that's fun! I don't know why I didn't think of that”.

It's kind of a thing that I do as, I like get images of disco balls, cause it's, you know, just such a party icon, and you know, the queer icon and everything, it's so fun, that people understand. And just like– blob them out, make them different shapes and forms, and just like play with them. I was like, oh, this one has no one seen? The innovations that Kevin has come up with, you know, and that we've also kind of co-worked out on with Zoom because Zoom is ever-changing, to be able to do audio description in the “other language” area is really great.

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Aimi Hamraie:

How does the audio description work during the party?

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moira williams: 

Well, the audio description during the party we were doing it in–initially– we just use the chat to audio describe and we would, you know, take turns describing the music, because the party had DJ sets. So we would do that, and then slowly we would get this set from Kevin or DJ Queer Shoulders, and we could write our own descriptions and be able to copy and paste them in, which was a little easier to do. And that still happens. And it's something that we do as a way to invite people into describing and into, you know, doing collective access and people participate in that and enjoy that. And we know people are reading them because they make all these great comments, and then oftentimes people are really commenting and we'll hop in and start to do it, too, which is super super fun. And great to see all that imagination going and creativity going.

But the audio description is usually used for if it's a like English speaking event going on where the interpreter, perhaps a Spanish speaker, or you know Arabic speaker, or any kind of other language speaker can be there and the participant can hit the button, which is at the bottom of zoom panel on a desktop, and there's a globe that appears in between, like the reactions button, and I think the apps button, and you can click on that and then all of a sudden, you're hearing the interpreter right through there. So we've been using that to do audio description and also visual description when there isn't audio.

Also, just like trying also, just using multiple screens, right? Because I– several times I've done visual description by doing drawings as things are happening. So you know, working with multiple screens, that's been an innovative thing, I think. And I had been playing with that for some of my own art-making too, so for Practicing the Social with Tangled-Arts, I used three different screens at the same time. Which I was so happy that worked out. I couldn’t believe it. And I think back to like the celebratory joy, too; that people really, really enjoy co-witnessing and hanging out together, and the fact that there really are no expectations, because so much much of the Zoom stuff – And that's what I always focused on offering and inviting, like if I was doing any kind of Zoom event, there's no expectations. Like you don't have to – I'm not gonna ask you to write something, not gonna ask you to do anything except to be here. And if you wanna move, you move, or if you wanna dance you dance, we just wanna watch people dancing, you know, or just feel the energy of being in a space. You know, that's really a space, you know, that we're all co-creating and holding together.

[Upbeat jazzy chords]

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Aimi Hamraie: 

You also hosted a hybrid version of the party…do you want to talk about that?

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moira williams: 

Oh, yes, I did, host a hybrid version of the party, which was a lot of work… and it worked out! It worked out well. So the hybrid event was celebrating… I had– I was working with Works on Water and Culture Push, and the New York City Comprehensive Waterfront Plan. So the New York City Planning Office. They commissioned me to do a couple of events which I did several online with the movement, with virtual backgrounds, but I also did an Instagram call and response. And that was really fun and funny - it coincided with the mayoral… mayor's election? I can never say that; the mayor's election, and at that time in New York City, the 2020 election, I think we had 27 mayors, or 27  candidates, you know, attempting to be the mayor of New York City. And so I did a call and response with the disability community on Instagram, where I got all these different photos of the different Mayor candidates and put them together and took out some of the phrases from the comprehensive water plan, which did not include any disability people, no disabled communities, not even the disability, the department – I forget what it's called… MOPD? The Mayors Office of Disability. And that's not to say that the waterfront planning people, didn't try to get in touch with people cause they did – I know for fact that they did, it's just that things didn't work out. And I learned so much about government from that, which was really cool.

But yeah, so that was an Instagram call and response where I paired mayors images on water with some of the phrases from the Comprehensive Waterfront Plan about accessibility, and – it was never a phrase about accessibility. It was always about access and access points which didn't have anything to do with accessibility. It was just like where, where you can get a boat into the water. So doing this call and response to get the New York City disability communities into voting or coming to speak at the Town Hall that I also helped, organized, and that was online. About like, why disabled people want to be able to have access to the water, you know, like, we also need to have a safety thing – the ferries and all, you know, and how do we evacuate on an island. So like, that was one– the project, the underlying project for this party. Because with this party I had planned that we're gonna have a party, no matter what, because we accomplished so much, and the things that we accomplished were that we had we had the deadlines extended for comments by three weeks for disabled people, and we also had an online town hall two times where people could call in or Zoom in and speak out, or even just send in a text. And people could read it out for you. That had never happened before in New York City within government kind of town halls and speaking out. The thing that I wanted to accomplish was to have one bathroom at least that was accessible. ‘Cause there are no accessible bathrooms. 

So we accomplished getting an accessible bathroom, and it was right by this park that was public-private. And also hosts the Waterfront Museum, and we had a party on a boat, on an accessible boat. That was an whole barge from 1850, and it was super fun, and it was hybrid. It was both online and in person, and it was a dance party and a cabaret. Kind of the same format that we first started with and do from time to time with the remote access parties. But it was all disabled performers. We shared videos, we had several people do performance work, someone sang, it was someone with poetry, and someone sang along with another song which was really great. And the people– everyone was disabled, and it was Simone Johnson who participated, the people who do Hyp mobility access [Hyp-Access], and just some people come up and do some things like, do some improv things which is really fun and cool like, and like spontaneous open mic, which is super cool. And we had a whole area that we had created to be like a photo shoot area where we can get photos taken with the banners I had commissioned with Arie Ruvinsky. And what else– and we had all sorts of food, like light food and drinks that were all like allergen free and no alcohol. And the online folks who walked around – we had multiple access doulas – and several of the access doulas walked around throughout the entire event and outside, and people could be on the boat, or off the boat and still be part of the party. Because it was just on this big wide dock that people could come in and out. And the doors were old barge doors, so they're all ten feet wide, maybe twelve feet wide, and eight feet tall, so it was very much like an indoor-outdoor kind of event. So you weren't really missing out on much. And Kevin, DJ who girl, DJ’d. 

We had access doulas hanging out by the drinks and the snacks to be able to help people there with “Oh, what's in this? I can't read the ingredients”, you know, help read them, and just like find the bathroom, and just had access doulas in designated areas. We also had what I call the crip cringe-stim-joy-area which is like a stim area, which is lower lighting and has all tactile things to be able to play with and hang out. And it was pretty spacious, which was nice and beautiful rugs and pillows that you could play around on.

Aimi Hamraie:

So what was the hybrid part like, or how are you facilitating access to those things for people remotely?

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moira williams: 

So several of the access doulas, I think three of them, were walking around with an ipad or an iphone and slowly moving around and would talk to people, and that would be live fed onto the screen. And so people online could see that as well. And we were inviting people to like me as an MC, I was inviting people to come up and talk with people so people could talk with one another via their own phone if they wanted to.

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Because that's what did start to happen as people would zoom in on their own phone and start to talk and like, go up to the screen and talk to people. And so we had two cameras, so people could see the artists, the performers. And Kevin was in one spot set up, so people could see Kevin. And then we also had people perform online. So it wasn't just this one-way kind of thing. And so Von Wilson performed online and Jimena read their poetry online.

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So it was this really nice combination flow, that, of course, was glitchy. But overall we had a pretty good show for people online. People really enjoyed it, and people were having their own lively conversations. And I was connected there, too, and would chat back and forth through the chat, but also like speak to people directly, and be like, “Hey, how are you doing?”, and make sure that I was speaking to people and saying, “We're good”, our next person, you know, presenting to both the live audience and the online audience. I practiced that little bit before, because that's tricky, but I think it can be done really successfully.

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Thinking about how you're going to position yourself. You know it's not– for me it wasn't so different than thinking about, like, “Okay, so my friends who use wheelchairs, how are they gonna be able to move around here?”, you know?

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Yeah, there seems like there's so many logistics that go into having these events and figuring out accessibility. And, you know, prior to the pandemic, the logistical issues often used to say, “Oh, we can't do remote access”, and then, you know, people kind of figured it out and even use it as like a space of artistic experimentation and stuff. And so I'm wondering, do you have any thoughts about futures of remote access going forward from here? You know, the pandemic is very much ongoing. What are some of the ways that either this party or other kinds of spaces may further innovate and shift and change as we figure out how to navigate all of this and make access possible?

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moira williams: 

Well, I have noticed that more art spaces trying to do hybrid kind of online things. So there are more arts places, and others, like schools, and whatnot, doing hybrid things. But they're not really thinking it out.

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I've been invited to talk, and people kind of leave it up to me, meaning that it's like, “Oh, you're gonna do all the labor for that”. And I have to like have these conversations, or try to have these conversations like “No, this has to be two way, you know? Like how, where is the screen gonna be, like  where are the students gonna be? Where's the audience gonna be? You know, how am I going to be able to interact with them? You know, are there ways to interact? Will I be able to see them? And that I'm a sighted person, but it doesn't necessarily mean that is like I can see people, because the camera, several times, the camera was so far away from the audience that people had their hands raised and wanted to talk, and I couldn't see that. So that makes it a little uncomfortable, but so like working on that I think it's something that I'm interested in doing. ‘Cause I'm currently working with Culture Push as an access doula and disability cultural activist. And we're working on those kind of things really slowly, like, they're really great, they want to move slowly and learn, and are really excited, and have been bringing disability into their everyday culture, into Culture Push. Which was the reason I wanted to work with them, and we discussed that.

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So I think, with some of the things that we're gonna be doing, that we hope to be doing online in the future will really work with those kind of things. And there are other people who are working on that. And of course, I mean, there's gonna be failures, because it's trial and error, we just don't know, right? And it's really hard from being on the screen side - you know, like a lot of disabled people can't go to places ever. It's just the way it is, right? So, you know, having communication with people about that. And working it out just like any relationship you have to work on it right? You have to ask questions. But for, I think, for us, even with remote access, how do we ask these questions too, like how do we get the information that we need to improve without just us being on the one side, right? But also without being like, we don't want to be invasive either right? So how do we work around data collecting? 

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Some people have more of an embodied kind of spatial attunement to like what things work and what things don't work. But I think also, it's because that's about trying again, going back to trying things like failing or succeeding.

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I'm gonna be starting a performance-like get together, that's not dance because Kinetic Light does that already, but that's just about performance, you know, and just doing performance meetups that are for people who do performance online. Or people who are thinking about that, and just as causal kind of like, “Hey, what are the things you've tried or what are the things you want to try? Do you want to try it here with us”. Get those kind of conversations going about what works and what doesn't.

[rippling music and rhythmic pops underneath]

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Aimi Hamraie: 

Well, great! Thank you so much, for this has been wonderful, and it's really nice to hear all your memories.

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moira williams: 

I'm so grateful that you invited me in that you brought back memories of care packages and things like that, you know, and also just like talking about the three years that we've been doing remote access. Wow! 

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Aimi Hamraie:

You’ve been listening to Contra*, a podcast about disability, design justice and the lifeworld. Contra* is a production of the Critical Design Lab. This season’s episodes draw on our recent project the Remote Access Archive, created by a team of disabled researchers collaborating remotely. Learn more about our projects, including the Remote Access Archive at www.criticaldesignlab.com. 

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If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe on Spotify. Rate and leave a review. 

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This season of Contra* is edited by Ilana Nevins. Kelsie Acton and Aimi Hamraie developed the episodes.

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The Contra* podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution, non-commercial, share alike international 3.0 license. That means you can remix, repost or recycle any of the content as long as you cite the original source, you aren’t making money, you don’t change the credits and you share it under the same license.

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[Music fades out]

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