‘We must call upon disenfranchised bodies to gather in joyful assemblies revelling in dissidence, celebrating the vulnerable body, and practising affective belongings beyond identity politics’.
Paul B Preciado, ‘Parliament of Bodies’
‘Migrants, but also neurominorities and people with physical disabilities also have silenced bodies. Being very aware of the ways in which our communities are different, our collaboration made a key point about the similarity of oppressions they face.’
Martin Swan (Project Art Works), Essay notes to A. K. P.
‘The State is a generator of categories, such as trans, disabled or refugee. These categories are performative: they make you into a specific type of person, a type of identity. However, many of us question this binarism of identity, especially in terms of ability/disability. Instead, I am much more interested in how the state generates a structural weakening of the people it categorises, from the asylum system to the disability system. We need to work on these categories from an intersectional perspective: which are the problems faced by these identities when they are administered by the State? In many ways, they are similar, in the sense that a court of law must recognise them'.
Melania Moscoso, conversation during the book launch of the Spanish translation of Jasbir K. Puar ‘The Right to Maim’.
‘As Carlota Mir has explained, [the collaboration] also enabled [Trampoline House and Project Art Works] to realise that, despite considerable differences between the needs of refugees/asylum seekers and those of neurominorities, there were many similarities in regard to the systemic suppression and obstacles they had to tackle; and this insight made possible a coalitional moment. By sharing their knowledge and methods while working together, i.e. by ‘living out a politics of lumbung’, and by acknowledging the similarities as well as the uniqueness of their members’ needs and aspirations, Trampoline House and Project Art Works were able to forge ‘a temporary coalition of people who have been othered’ while also recognizing that such a coalition is not devoid of inner conflicts and tensions (Alberani et al., 2022, 46:00-50:00 min.).
Anne K. Petersen, ‘The Art of Prefiguration: Building a Future Collectivity at documenta fifteen’
‘Let us remember Wendy Brown when she states that ‘identity requires difference in order to be, and it converts difference into Otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty’. I am interested in speaking from ‘perspective’ - i.e. speaking from somewhere - as opposed to ‘identity’ - who I am. Perspective is contingent; identity is essential. Identities are always idealizations; whereas alliances are always more vulnerable towards mistakes, but they also have the capacity to reinvent themselves. Following Brown, this would be like speaking from an embodied position, as opposed to an abstract position. Speaking from identity politics, the disabled movement has also generated its own brand of oppression, and we need to take responsibility for that. Hierarchies have always been present in the disabled activist movement.
Melania Moscoso, conversation during the book launch of the Spanish translation of Jasbir K. Puar ‘The Right to Maim’.
‘Through picturing freedom, depicting the documenta trustee board and its censorship tactics, imagining a better asylum system, putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes, finding your way around, or channelling your rage at a system that claims to help you, yet barely works to keep your body alive and fed while your soul is taken away from you, these exercises of collective consciousness [cosmologies] can lead to the realisation that you may have never met the Other. In meeting the Other, they become just another, the threat of difference dissolving into a calm space and a possibility for friendship’.
Carlota Mir, ‘Living Forces: A Letter to Kate Adams and Sara Alberani’, in Alberani and Mir (eds), Massaging the Asylum System: Creative Strategies of Care, visÀvis special issue.