Disability Nightlife Project

New vibes — **Image Description:** Animated GIF. Above a drawing of a fancy sofa en-suite, black letters spell out 'new vibes.' The words dance like alternative shoulders bopping on a dance floor: first ‘new,' askew, then ‘vibes,' tilted the other way. Then, a disco ball hangs from a forklift in the daylight, reflecting out what we could say are a thousand points of light. The drawing of the sofa has been donated to the public domain from the archives of Pearson Scott Foresman, an educational textbook company founded in the late 19th century. The disco ball photo is by photographer Lance Anderson on Unsplash.com.

Kevin Gotkin’s Disability Nightlife Project uses the club as a site for prefigurative world-making. The project, helmed by a collective of NYC-based disabled artists and activists, will launch a monthly disability-centric party in the summer of 2019. The party will be designed according to the beauty of the booming disability arts scene in New York, featuring an array of disabled DJs, drag queens, performers, choreographers, and more. The project will publish access protocols and guidelines divined from the party community, reporting on insights that can be taken up elsewhere to grow a nightlife ecosystem that centers and celebrates disability culture. The project is being incubated by the Moving Toward Justice program at Gibney, a hub for performance and community action in Manhattan.

For more information about the project, email Kevin at kevin@DisabilityArts.nyc.