Access Intimacy







Access Intimacy with Mia Mingus, opening contribution by Not a Playground, ASL interpretation and CART, graphic recording by Radical Roadmaps, as part of Wxtch Craft spring cycle: The poisons, the remedies, co-curated with Leana Boven, presented by Studium Generale KABK and Casco Art Institute, 13 May 2021

Writer, community organizer, and disability justice activist Mia Mingus elaborates on “access intimacy” and shares what it can look like in our communities in this first online event. Initially coined on her blog Leaving Evidence in 2011, access intimacy is an “elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else gets your access needs” and a sense of “comfort that your disabled self feels.” This kind of intimacy, considered by Mingus and many from disability communities as “the missing link” across structural limitations of access and community building, paves way for interdependent connections as opposed to isolating, individual circumstances. Access intimacy can extend to class, race, and gender, and make space for the pain and trauma related to other forms and intersections of oppressive experience.

Not a Playground (NAP), a grassroots organization, activist research collective who focuses on collecting and reflecting on institutional critique in the (Dutch) arts/culture/design fields, participates in this session with an opening contribution. Initially formed in protest last September, NAP reflects on their organizing processes as it relates to transformative justice and envisioning for a future regenerated after the burn.

Radical Roadmaps is a graphic recording and illustration practice. It aims to create accessible and visual political education tools and offer live recording for organizations doing movement and liberation work. It primarily works digitally and is looking to collaborate with organizations, organizers, writers and artists to break down complex topics and frameworks in beautiful, meaningful and memorable graphics. Particularly focused on working with BIPOC led organizations and organizers, it has created graphics on topics such as base building, mental health stigma, sex work decriminalization, reproductive justice, prison abolition & more.