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WEEK 11 / WITH CONSTANTINA ZAVITSANOS︎︎︎

The Ugly Laws




SEMINAR LEADER

Photograph by Allison Harris

[ Artist-provided IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A portrait against a white wall hosts a person tilting their head to the side and beginning to smile with lilted eyes. Their skin is white and their dark curly hair is pulled through a mesh ball cap; they're wearing overalls, a paisley bandana, and thick hoop earrings.︎︎ heart symbol ]

Constantina Zavitsanos works in sculpture, performance, text, and sound to elaborate what’s invaluable in the re/production of debt, dependency, and means beyond measure. Zavitsanos has exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, New Museum, Artists Space, The Kitchen, and Participant Inc. in New York; at Arika in Glasgow, Scotland; and at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany. With Park McArthur, they co-authored “Other Forms of Conviviality” in Women and Performance (Routledge, 2013) and “The Guild of the Brave Poor Things” in Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility (MIT Press, 2017). With others in cross-disability arts community, they co-organized “I Wanna Be With You Everywhere” at Performance Space New York and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Zavitsanos is a 2021 recipient of the Roy Lichtenstein Award in Visual Arts from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. They live in New York and teach at the New School.



[ IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Purple line drawing of a series of cocentric circles, with three smaller circular nodes encircling a central starburst. ︎ heart symbol ]


[ IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A video screenshot appears in the video player above. An image description of the screenshot can be found on page two of the transcription file here. ︎ heart symbol ].
READING & PRESENTATION MATERIALS



[ IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A rectangular book cover is titled in the upper third of the composition in large red text that reads, “FEMINIST QUEER CRIP” in all capital letters. Below that, in smaller brown text, the author’s name reads: “ALISON KAFER” in all capital letters. At the top of the rectangle is a solid brown bar that matches the color of the author’s name. Behind the text is an image of a painting. The painting is textually described on page xiii of Kafer’s book as follows: “The image on the front cover is of a mixed-media painting by Katherine Sherwood titled Vesalius’s Pump (2006, 36 x 36 inches). The painting takes up the bottom two thirds of the book’s cover and consists mostly of large, looping swirls of paint over an ivory-colored background. Some of the paint on the right edge of the painting is so thick that it has cracked, creating a branching network of brown lines. In the center of the painting, Sherwood has affixed several anatomical drawings of brains taken from Andreas Vesalius’s sixteenth-century anatomy text On the Structure of the Human Body. Rendered in oranges and yellows, the brains are placed alongside images of the arterial system from Sherwood’s own brain scans. The brains are jumbled together, with the loops of paint moving around and over them; the overall effect is of a slowmoving organic machine.” ︎︎ heart symbol ]


[ IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A screen capture of a digital slide reads, “UGLY LAWS (mid-1700s to 1974).” “UGLY LAWS” is in all capital letters. The text is white, and centered at the top of the slide. The background of the slide is solid black, and centered below the title is a still image of a video that reads: “WHY WAS IT ILLEGAL TO BE ‘UGLY’?” Behind the text is an image with a blue background, and various illustrations: On the left is a very tall person in a black suit with very long  limbs. In the front and center is an illustration of a person wearing a red British military uniform. The person’s head is covered in brown fur. On the right are two figures with human heads and animal bodies: a woman with a penguin body and a man with a frog body. In the bottom right corner, text reads: “PBS DIGITAL STUDIOS” in all capital letters. ︎ heart symbol ]

ASSIGNMENT

Reading
  • Kafer, Alison. “At the Same Time, Out of Time; Ashley X.” Feminist, Queer, Crip, 47-68. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2013.
    Please read 47-68.


Presentation MaterialsIn addition to the above, please review the presentation materials Constantina Zavitsanos prepared for Week Eleven. Links to captioned videos are contained in the PDF. Please watch, read or listen to each.

SHOW NOTES

  • The Ashley X story (mentioned by Tina around 4:48) is described in the assigned reading above “At the Same Time, Out of Time; Ashley X.” Feminist, Queer, Crip by Alison Kafer.
  • Pieces of You (mentioned by Tina around 9:36) is in reference to both Pieces and Hawk Swanson’s “All That is Left of You / Everything You Are Now.” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 23.3 (Nov. 2013): 374-413.
  • Tina’s use of the word “Organik” (around 9:43) is in reference to Davecat’s definition, which we use on The Harmony Show. A definition is available in the footnotes of the Table Of Contents of The Harmony Show’s Access Guide. Throughout this episode, the captions and transcription use Davecat’s preferred spelling for both Organik and Synthetik. The word Doll is also capitalized throughout this and every episode of The Harmony Show.
  • The Future song containing the lyric “I'm at Pluto I'm at Mars at the same damn time” (mentioned by Tina around 15:51) is Same Damn Time. Full lyrics available here.
  • Cheryl I. Harris’ Whiteness as Property (mentioned by Tina around 19:43) can be found here.
  • The website of TL Lewis (mentioned by Tina around 24:00) can be found here.
  • Tina’s mention of non-disabled people as “temporarily abled” (around 27:42) refers to Eva Feder Kittay’s “The Ethics of Care, Dependence, and Disability,”  which can be found here.
  • The Wikipedia entry on Schrödinger's cat (mentioned by Davecat around 29:28) can be found here.
  • “Other forms of conviviality” (mentioned by Amber around 33:57) refers to “Other forms of conviviality: The best and least of which is our daily care and the host of which is our collaborative work” by Tina and Park McArthur. It can be found here.
  • Not Dead Yet (mentioned by Tina around 38:14) has a website that can be found here.
  • More information about the work of Nick Dupree (mentioned by Tina around 39:09) can be found here. 
  • A conversation between Dupree and Zoë Wool titled “Life Support” can be found here.
  • Tina’s mention of an X as a either / both a kiss or hug finds context in “Other forms of conviviality: The best and least of which is our daily care and the host of which is our collaborative work” which can be found here.
  • More information on Dollpile (mentioned by Tina around 44:30) being very well composed can be found here. 
  • Tina’s mention of One Pan Chicken Thighs with Apples (around 46:12) is in reference to Week Three of The Harmony Show with guest Renato Velarde.
  • John Waters’ Odorama (mentioned by Davecat around 46:22) is described here.
  • The PBS Digital Studios video Why Was It Illegal to be “Ugly”? (mentioned in Tina’s slides around 48:21) can be found here.
  • More information on Leroy F. Moore’s Krip Hop (mentioned by Tina around 55:00) can be found here.
  • Frank Wilderson’s Afropessimism (mentioned by Tina around 1:05:25) can be found here.
  • Tina’s artwork involving dice, holograms, and sweepstakes (mentioned by them around 1:06:02) can be found here. 
  • The takeaways, and giveaways (mentioned by Tina around 1:10:15) can also be found at the link above. Writing by Emily Watlington on each of these directions in Zavitsanos’ work can be found here.
  • The work of Kimberlé Crenshaw defining intersectionality in 1989 (mentioned by Tina around 1:08:28) can be found here. Her 2016 Ted Talk The urgency of intersectionality can be found here.
  • The Eli Clare quote (mentioned by Tina around 1:17:10) can be found in Brilliant Imperfection.
  • A quote from Johanna Hedva’s “In Defence of De-persons” appears in Tina’s slides briefly (around 1:17:18). Hedva’s website can be found here.
  • Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals can be found here.
  • Denise Ferreira da Silva’s Toward a Global Idea of Race (mentioned by Tina around 1:18:55) can be found here.
  • Denise Ferreira da Silva’s, “No-Bodies: Law, Raciality and Violence” (mentioned by Tina around 1:21:18) can be found here.
  • More information about Jerry’s Orphans (mentioned by Tina around 1:26:22) can be found here.
  • Amber Doll rollerskating (mentioned by Tina around 1:25:56) is depicted in the scroll of still photographs here. However the videos and images at this link are not image described at the time of writing this show note. They will be described in August, 2021.
  • Tina’s Silvia Federici reference (around 1:28:58)  is to Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation.
  • The Kids Are Alright documentary (mentioned in Tina’s slides around 1:29:00) can be found here.
  • More information on Angela Davis and the Prison Industrial Complex (mentioned by Tina around 1:29:55) can be found here.
  • A trailer for The Great Fight for Disability Rights centering the 1990 Capitol Crawl (mentioned by Tina around 1:31:52) can be found here.
  • Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions Edited by Christopher Bell (mentioned by Tina around 1:33:51) can be found here.
  • An interview with Vilissa Thompson who started the #DisabilityTooWhite (mentioned with #DisabilitySoWhite by Tina around 1:33:51) can be found here.
  • The Harriet Tubman Collective (mentioned around 1:42:39) can be found here.
  • Stacey Park Milbern and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha on Disability Justice (mentioned by Tina around 1:43:14) can be found here.
  • Patty Berne (mentioned in the context of Disability Justice by Tina around 1:47:17) can be found here.
  • The work of Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha (mentioned by Tina around 1:47:00) can be found here.
  • A remembrance for Stacey Park Milbern (mentioned around 1:47:32) on Alice Wong’s Disability Visibility Project website can be found here.
  • The work of Carolyn Lazard (mentioned by Tina around 1:49:51) can be found here.
  • The work of Alice Sheppard (mentioned by Tina around 1:48:56) can be found here.
  • The work of Jerron Herman (mentioned by Amber around 1:50:10) can be found here.
  • The work of Jordan Lord (mentioned by Tina around 1:50:18) can be found here.
  • The work of Park McArthur (mentioned by Tina around 1:50:21) can be found here.

The Ugly Laws was recorded on April 17, 2021.