the pursuit/persistence of risk, post-potluck aporia

I am entering this discussion within the fibers of personal and professional desire/response/ community discourse.

On one hand, it delights me to know that notes for this discussion on disability/disablement were made during the Movement Research Festival Potluck, though also find admitted irony in the fact that I could not attend it due to my own chronic pain (as disability or from a physical disfiguration that is the disability, who can define which?).

Something that has been a little hard for me to enter in this blog is the technical apparatus of "disability" and its various functions...

I prefer more to find agency in a discussion of the mechanism of suffering, which is a very personal and continuous ____ for one who is disabled.

This ____ is my gift to you, reader to insert whatever word you think fits best.

I think of "place," "ground," "text," "momentum," "test," "dance," "funk," or "motherfucker." For me that is more interesting than this idea of re-invention that we seem to be fantastically splashing around in through this discourse.

I am not saying that it is beside the point to re-work this term, or to create perspectives or situations where this sense of the abled and disabled border is dismantled.

I think that the previous bloggers have done an excellent job of that on the nonsite,

but I AM saying that pain is pain,

discomfort is important information, and that can't be by-passed by a revision of terminology or code.

The most important art that I have witnessed or been a part of has emerged from or addressed

the artist's struggle to overcome suffering,

whether it is rooted in disfigurement,
addiction,
loss of many kinds,
and the awkward place
where a desire cannot be met
but persists in its strength of presence,
like the struggle for identity whether that is maintaining one or uncovering one.

A.Woo discusses the intersection between gender and disability on hir blog, TRANS/VERSE, which talks about the healing arts and performance.

I also want to share that my ability to persist in NY with the challenge of my disability came from the inner-strength of the artists around me,who

were not afraid to ask difficult questions of themselves, or society

and who were committed to taking risks with their work,
their bodies,
their abilities.

I think that this element of risk is coupled with the mechanism of suffering

because as a disabled person, risk is inevitable on a daily basis even in simple or necessary interaction with the world.

So, to live with risk not being a choice, but a way of life,

so to speak,

and to then meet artists who were working with risk out of their own needs to question boundary, vulnerability,
disclosure,
value,

instilled a value in me of my own risk taking - that it was going beyond more than transportation or food,

but into a realm where something can be made out of it.

It's easy to feel like a failure when you have to live slower than the people around you

and where that is generally completely disrespected or subtly manipulated,

where your participation in society cannot be validated by what you do.

You become the interruption, the confusion, the problem that seems to need to be somehow solved.

And in that void, gap, rupture - between what you know about you and what others expect from you - is that really insane place,
that aporia,
where you are continually falling and being witnessed, like it or not.

Does this look like your process?

Or your life?