Episode 58: Conversation 2: Care with Teeth with Anthony Clarke and Jeff Kasper

Aimi:Welcome to the second podcast conversation where we explore the emerging intersections of accessibility, disability, culture, and design beyond the conventions of functional access. This time we will focus on care with respect to disability and design. 

Jos: In this episode, we'll explore different understandings and approaches to care from an interdisciplinary perspective that's both inside and outside architectural discourse and practice.

So today we have with us an artist and an architect, so we can draw out productive frictions around the concepts of access and care. 

Aimi: So what do we mean by productive frictions? We may often think about friction as something like a conflict that shuts down a discussion. A friction becomes productive when it generates further inquiry, curiosity, and collaboration in the context of disability, generative frictions have often resulted in new design practices as well as new coalitions, interdependencies, and forms of care.

I'm Aimi Hamraie. I'm a disabled designer and researcher, and I direct the Critical Design Lab, which does projects on accessibility through the framework of disability culture. I'm also a Canada Research chair in Technology, Society and Disability at York University in Toronto. 

Jos: And I'm Jos Boys I'm a design activist over many years.

I have a background in feminist and community architectural practices in the uk, including being part of Matrix Feminist Design Collective. In the 1970s and eighties. I co-founded and since 2007, have co-directed the DisOrdinary Architecture Project, which brings the creativity of disabled artists, designers, and architects into collaboration with built environment, education, and practice.

Aimi: Today we've invited Jeff Casper, a US-based artist, writer, and educator, working in public art design, cultural accessibility, and social engagement. To be in conversation with architect Anton Clark, based in Melbourne, Australia. Welcome Jeff and Antony.

Aimi: The aim is to foster a conversation between you both. So Jos and I will ask questions to help the audience better understand how your perspectives overlap and diverge, and we also encourage you to converse directly with one another as the conversation unfolds. So Jeff, could you please start us off by introducing yourself and telling us about your art practice and also what role disability plays in your work?

Jeff: Hi everyone. I am Jeff Kasper. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for this conversation with you all today. So as noted, I work in between different spaces of creative production as a visual artist, as a writer and as an educator. And I really find those, roles to be kind of porous for me.

I move in between them, depending on the day and the context. But I bring those skills to bear on my work. Primarily my work, is focused on concepts or, experiences of social support, , how we develop more, , trauma-informed cultures in our day-to-day lives, in our relationships.

I'm really very much so interested in sort of the politics of space and communication. In my creative work I use lots of, methodologies from fields such as like Proxemics and thinking about the way in which space is also a form of communication, the distance between us, tells us a lot.

I think I'm maybe most known often within the category of social practice or socially engaged are. So much of my work happens in collaboration with audiences and organizations, directly with the public. I always joke, I think I spend more time in workshops than I do in studio production.

And I wouldn't have it any other way. So that's a little bit about me just to start off. 

Jos: Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. That's a really great introduction. And now Anthony, it would be really great if you could also introduce yourself 

Anthony: Yes. Well, thank you again. Just to, echo Jeff's words. It's great to be here, i'm Anthony Clarke. I run an architecture practice called Blocks Us. also an educator as well.

From an architecture point of view, we have relatively standard project commissions, you could say in terms of we do houses or we do larger sort of institutional projects or installation projects, but they all come from a place where we work alongside those with complex lived experiences.

But for me, my interest is less in the architecture outcome itself and much more in the process of working alongside, not only the individuals, but their care teams.

So I spend a lot of time with neuroscientists and psychologists trying to understand more about those lived experiences and then apply my skills as an architect to work out what role architecture plays. So, when I teach these things, and I've just been a, a visiting professor over, at, at Columbia [University],

but really the role there was to lower the importance of an outcome and really try and think about how designers work and what questions they ask when working with diverse individuals with, as I said, diverse lived experiences.

Jos: Thank you. we are really excited to have you both with us. for myself as somebody with an architectural background, I think, that certainly the UK and in Europe care is becoming a really strongly emerging focus of discussion across the discipline. To me when I look at it is how little the kind of conversations going on around, disability, both as a concept and and a kind of constituency of very diverse people, that there's a sort of underlying conventional understandings of care that it's based on this artificial binary opposition between, you know, on the one hand there are caregivers.

On the other hand there are care receivers. So we have concepts of care where there's this assumed division that the disabled person is the kind of passive person who's being cared for. And then the active non-disabled person is the one, doing the caring. And within architecture, that notion of putting architects in the position of being their caregiver as the one with agency is actually, I think.

It's not necessarily unraveled or unpicked in a way that I think disability studies scholarship and activism has really been showing us how this concept of care is much more complex. Anthony, can you, does any of that relate to you and your own practice? 

Anthony: I would definitely say what you're saying is correct.

Care is definitely a more used term in architecture. You know, I speak about, my circles, the architecture circles definitely popping up a lot more generally in a much more traditional sense architecture coming up in, in terms of, I don't think, generally architects think any differently than what you're saying, which is, you know, we, we have that role no matter who it is we are working with and it's our job to

produce an outcome for whoever that is. And generally when, care is applied to it these days, it's applied more to the outcome. It's how to deliver a more caring outcome, which is, very, very rarely anything to do with the process. Very rarely, asks the architect to act differently in any way.

They act the same, it's the same approach. It just has a more caring outcome, which is, you know, biophilic outlooks and whatever they may be. But they're still very basic and they don't question or ask, as you said the architect to move away from being the caregiver or think about their role at all.

Jos: Jeff, does some of that resonate with you, or do you think in the art world it's slightly different? 

Jeff: Well, I'll first start by saying, in the art world, care is a really big topic right now, especially among those who are, interested in socially engaged or community engaged or public practices.

And that bears out in different ways. I also want to say as a self pleasure of disclosure, I, was trained as, not only a graphic designer, but as an urban planner. So I think a lot about through or through different design disciplines in my work, even as an artist. So, I like to just say that 'cause a lot of my art practice actually informed by my training and thinking through, the design process to stay on the personal note for a moment, a lot of my, interests in care really came from my early education in design fields and my work within more marginalized design practices, more community-based design practices.

Working with organizations, , that, , advocated for, understanding the systems that are in place to produce the built environment and to produce, design outcomes. And part of my interest in becoming an artist, or I think a part of my sort of origin story of working as an artist with design methods came from division between, architectural practice, in the traditional sense and activist practice working with design tools directly with communities or communities developing their own design solutions, versus

folks with particular education or expertise, like expertise was coming from community, in developing solutions for their own lives. So a part of where I situate myself is within this practice of, , design as a caretaking mode. , Really using, skill sets of design and the techniques in order to sort of recreate one's world.

For me, my practice care it's not always soothing. It can definitely be disruptive or awkward or uncomfortable. Especially coming from experiences of disability, I have always thought that because care is negotiated between different people, it's negotiated within relationship, , it can be slow and imaginative and negotiated.

And I find that to be different than some of the bigger discourses around care, which seem to be like set up binaries of cared and cared for, or cared by. 

Aimi: Thank you both for that. I wanna pick up this thread about disability and care, and also accessibility. You know, very often the framework that defines disability access is the, accessibility standards and codes. And in some places that is a framework that is enforced by the state and offered by the state and other places.

It's a framework that's enforced by the profession. And within that framework, there is, a commitment to this idea of the architect as the purveyor of accessibility and as the expert. And, Antony, you were talking before about teaching students to decenter that notion of, the architect as the purveyor of care.

So I'm, curious to think about this more kind of like what can disability perspectives that you all are offering about care, help us think differently about accessibility. So, for example, Antony, on your website it says, Boxas's approach is led by research, experimentation, curiosity, and care.

These elements are inherent in their philosophy and drive their interrogative and empathetic response. So, one thing I'm wondering is how do things like curiosity and interrogation, or Jeff, you used the word negotiation play in designing for and with care, and this is really an open question for both of you.

Anthony: Yeah, I'm happy to start, I suppose that the way that I think about those things about curiosity and care and about, and how I might do that in my own work or how I educate or how I how I teach is that, you know, in terms of standards, I always think about something that, I ran a studio a few years ago with, Jess Thom [aka touretteshero]

It was Jess Tom who said something that still sticks in my mind about, , spaces, you know, and thinking about , the regulatory spaces that are set up and how as architects, we kind of , tend to use those as a base model and how she said it's so clear and obvious and what it feels like to live in a standard, what it feels like to kind of live and that, that the designer has thought about that size and scale as the process as opposed to probably anyone who's gonna use it actually.

And I think for me, those things, although they, they might become part of projects later on, they're a very, very long way down the path for the things that, that I work on. So from a student perspective and from the work within the studio perspective, the very first thing that we do is to understand from, an individual perspective, but also

a care team perspective and also, independent research perspective as much as we possibly can about what it's like to have those lived experiences. And generally I think the projects that I work on, I would say are, extreme cases. So, there's an interest for me in trying to find what those extreme lived experiences are like, whether that be, Tourettes, and part of the interest in talking to Jess or schizophrenia or whatever.

The projects that we have in the office are related to trying to understand all of those complexities from as many different avenues as possible and speaking to as many different people as possible. Not as an architect, not as a designer, but simply as somebody who kind of wants to try and engage and learn about what those experiences are like in order to then produce a series of questions that we might ask that might kind of allow us to, tease moments out.

And then the process from there is to take that information, distill it down into what might be then relevant as an architecture proposition maybe, or just a design proposition in general. But again, before designing anything, trying to turn all of that language into a, a visual outcome. So that's, so we do quite a lot of emotive diagramming to try and work out what things like fear or independence or, whatever words that come up for those individuals. So the idea of having any preconceived notions of knowledge is just not a thing at all. So all of those biases or what we've seen before or what the standards say, really isn't something that is even talked about until an understanding about a the life and background and experiences of those people are understood as best they can.

Jos: it's really valuable because I think the approach you have which builds in reflection and kind of self, you know, review, , from the beginning, it's so unusual in a, in a profession that's very aimed at kind of outcomes and solutions, that's very solutions driven.

I mean Aimi mentioned that language that Anthony uses around empathy and interrogation and curiosity. I wondered what you felt about your work in relationship to those kinds of concepts. 

Jeff: Yeah, so I love this idea of curiosity. And I never really think about in this way, but,

often in my work, the maybe pretext or the sort of context perhaps is that, I like to, create situations for people to claim their, their expertise, claim their agency over their lived experiences. So I really do think a lot of times, even though I'm working with various, artistic media, whether that's graphic design, whether that's in public artwork, text, whether that's in the space of the classroom, I really want to create situations for people to rethink their relationship to each other and their relationship to the environment.

And that comes down to, an interest of mine. having to figure out how to live within systems that are, not necessarily built, for myself or not built for others. even when considering there are a number of considerations made for accessibility or, you know, as disabled people, we have to live within this sort of compliance culture of accessibility. And what would it look like to really define one's own relationship to one's emotions and mental space within spaces of relationships or the physical spaces that we encounter.

What would that look like? So I want people to be curious about that, that they have a say in that process and whether that looks like claiming slowness and slowing down for themselves in a particular moment, whether that's , being able to occupy a different perspective, on how their, lived experiences, are in conflict or are in harmony with others' experiences. I really want the public in my work to really be curious about what their power is in shaping their lived world. So, in many cases, a lot of my work provides a space for access rituals to be integrated into one's kind of everyday experience.

So that might look like, a moment of slowing down, a moment of opting out, checking in with, one's sort of emotional state. And really using art to sort of map that onto the environments where we're not really getting that out, in public space or in institutional settings.

And using art as this sort of, intervention into the standard ways of, occupying space. In that sense, I think that that really allows the public to sort of be curious about, oh, I could claim space here, I could negotiate what this environment looks like.

And I think that those are skill sets that, , designers are often, maybe more so trained to, work with. But I think the public, and in particular, disabled, public, deserves opportunities to also, , shape their day-to-day lives, and do it sort of in a playful way.

Aimi: Thank you so much. And picking up on that thread too, both of you have mentioned, the role of emotions, in your work. And Jeff, I know that a lot of your work focuses on trauma informed social practice. So if you, would like to say more about what it means to design interactions with people between people in a way that's trauma informed.

In much of my work, I am thinking about creating spaces of care. And I do that specifically through offering moments to give people aesthetic distance from their, lived experience. Um, and what I mean by that is giving people enough abstraction or symbolism that they can safely engage without the need of disclosing or reliving trauma, but that they can actually, and this is something that I think in theatrical practice, we have more literature on giving people enough distance where they can look at their experiences, they can navigate them, but from a sort of more safer space, if safety is possible.

Jeff: You know, that would look like sort of engagement tools. I create sort of engagement tools or tools for teaching that allow sort of calibrate distance between, an experience and the actual moment. That can look like signage and public works that invite sort of self-identification. I use a lot, play a lot to, create kind of opportunities for people to authentically connect with experiences that are probably mostly very difficult to ever speak about out loud. To give some examples of a particular project,

one would be perhaps the Project Wrestling Embrace, it's actually a sort of a conversation deck or a card game, that's paired with exercise match, which has a number of sort of that text and diagrams embedded in the mats. And this project actually was, created as sort of in through my own, healing process after, uh, extremely traumatic event,

wanting to think about how could I use, the language of wrestling to, actually work through personally and with others, questions of consent and power dynamics, between, individuals. There's this wrestling mat and it's for two players and people don't really wrestle by the way, usually, I mean, sometimes, but there are different, , cards and they have different kinds of prompts which really ask for each user to establish a distance between each other.

And we are, primarily using the distance of intimate space and of personal space. So quite close, but different varying calibrations of closeness. And it asks people to occupy each other's perspective, to share, an experience that they have perhaps not ever shared with that person.

Establishes a container for practicing support. It's a container that we don't often get in sort of everyday life. This is to bring it back to this idea of aesthetic distance. This is, an object.

This is a series of objects. This creates an environment where people can suspend their reality for a moment. It offers that kind of scaffold of bridging from reality to extraordinary reality to a space of play where they can look at, , what does care look like for them?

How do they negotiate what makes them feel safe in relation to another person? And have those conversations in a way where, it's kind of funny. It's playful. Often in wrestling embrace when I do workshops around it or bring it to different spaces, or exhibitions,

I ask participants to come to the project with another person who they trust, but who they never have talked about what makes them feel safe. , That's my specific invitation and, that kind of prompt, I think, oh, maybe that's gonna be like your neighbor, or you're, you're gonna bring your neighbor or your cousin or some, someone sort of maybe a little bit distanced from you.

And often the people that people bring are really close to them, and they never have sort of a communication about what safety looks like to them in even within such a close, intimate relationship. So maybe sometimes this borders on the therapeutic.

But, I like to create situations where people can look at, and explore access intimacy, really, tangibly, but at slightly a distant space so that doesn't feel so threatening. 

Jos: thank you both for sharing with us some of the ways that you work and the different ways that you work.

Anthony: Aimi and I we're both quite curious to know what each of you thinks about the work of care in one another's work. I have a lot of questions for Jeff now.

Because obviously looking at Jeff's website, it's so diverse. There's such a broad, amount of projects and things and different ways of outputting it, it kind of makes me feel more traditional, not that I would say that my outcomes are traditional, or my processes are traditional architecture processes, but the project scales might fall into a similar size, but also there's kind of, there's strong overlap in the things that you are saying, you know, even the things that you are talking about, the access rituals and, I'd be super interested to know what shape those take and how you develop those mappings or how you obtain that information and then how you kind of use that information.

And then I think, the language of, the container for practicing support. That's something I'm constantly thinking about is, you know, and I think potentially I should be bringing more of this idea of play generally. They're all really heavy topics. It's hard to find the lightness in a lot of , the lives of the individuals, that I work with. And so I kind of get absorbed in those worlds and find, maybe the lightness comes when the people that I'm working with feel as though I'm engaging on the right level, that I'm understanding as much as I can about what's going on so that they're not naive.

And then the plainness can come back in where you then understand, where you can tread safely for yourself and for everyone else. The things like the wrestling embrace, which just sound amazing and the idea of thinking about, consent and power dynamics and distance establishments, like I think those are the words that I love working with, but I'd love to know then what you do with them? you know, are you taking notes or are you photographing or you're not doing those things or you turn it into a, visual diagram afterwards and then talk to everybody about it?

Jeff: I love that question. So I do have a really kind of strict policy about around documentation of my work. I, I generally keep things quite confidential or I redact information or I don't show full likenesses of those who are participating in projects because it's a really vulnerable space for people to be in.

I will say that like my sort of primary intent is to create experiences for folks. So, often, that will use a design process, but the process isn't necessarily aimed at a particular outcome. This actually frustrates a lot of researchers and designers because there's so much learned in that process that, I could imagine from a social scientist point of view is like, whoa, we want to see that.

Like, and I don't allow that, because it's not really native to my work. But for me it's so important , that people have authentic experiences of connection with themselves and with others, and that I kind of let a lot of the potential outcomes go.

But what I will say is how do I, what do I do with that information? I create learning tools from them. So I am always looking at, at observing, documenting, speaking with, interviewing, those who I work with, sometimes, you know, explicitly in explicit ways where, you know, I, I say, oh, I, you know, I'd like to sit for sort of an exit interview, or I'd like to have sort of your testimony and other ways, which are more sort of me observing from a distance and, documenting in a sort of discreet way.

I like to translate what I learn into curricula, into workbooks, into learning materials in the future that can be used in the future, I would say. And that's probably what happens the most in my practice as a way of translating what happens within the space of engagement.

But yeah, to your question, I, I create learning tools and that's why the educator in me, is really a big, uh, a big thing. 

Anthony: That's great. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Jeff: I have a question for you. I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more, about when or where in a collaboration with a client or a participant your process was reshaped or your understanding of sort of the scope of a project or, what your outcome or impact was going to be sort of shifted within that sort of engagement with a client or participant.

Anthony: Every one honestly, I think that's what I find so fascinating is, it's generally when the relationships, like anything. I suppose it's when the relationships get stronger and there's more trust there. That's when they always shift. A lot of the projects that I do , they're so far removed , from my life, really. Some of the spaces that I designed, and this is why I was interested about your access rituals, because routine and ritual mapping is something that I do a lot of.

And, of course, in a lot of my projects, they then directly engage or directly have some sort of outcome, whether I'm trying to replicate a ritual or tease it out and change it. 

when you really, really realize the patterns that people have and how long they've had them and why they have them, they always change my perspective of someone, that I'm working with or working alongside, they're always an amazing, opportunity to really getbelow any surface level and into a really kind of vulnerable space in order for me to do that, it has to be, a reciprocal process. So I have to be as open and vulnerable with whoever it is that I'm working alongside as I'm hoping that they will be with me.

So it's definitely not a kind of one way thing. to your question, maybe it's more about what I learn about myself to be honest. And, I'm forever grateful at the opportunity that I have for people to ask me questions that challenge me to be more vulnerable 

 I find myself sharing a lot more than I ever used to. Because it helps me invest and it helps the people that I work with in invest and

maybe I don't, understand where that line is. That's something, that I always think about is, you know, talking about care, self-care. And I suppose when I spend a lot more time with forensic psychologists and neuroscientists and things, they seem to have those lines,

they're a little more defined. My line doesn't seem to be so defined and, I think it's good, but it also is challenging. 

Jeff: I can totally, relate to that, the lines being blurred. Mm-hmm. For sure. On the, topics of sort of access rituals. I love what you're describing around, building that into the process of understanding how a client or participant is, you know, what their sort of rituals are.

how do they occupy the world? And learning from that as a way to, um, shape architecture. That is something that, I can definitely relate to in my own work. And also because it comes from my training also as a designer. One thing that I learned working, with community groups sort of earlier in my practice, which I think, sort of wanna draw out as linked to my current practice, is that often when we're engaging with the public around

this sort of learning about how they occupy the world. Perhaps like how they create or negotiate access for themselves, with others. , Talking about that process, bringing that process to the center can be one of the first times that that happens for individuals.

And I've had many, occasions in my training and in my early sort of career where, I noticed that I was the only person that ever really asked them that. How do you occupy a space? Or what do you think about this particular tool? How would you adapt it? What is confusing?

It brings up a lot of questions for a participant. It allows them to sort of articulate for themselves sometimes for the first time really publicly or with another person, these really important aspects, of everyday life, right?

And I think that for me, that's what I try to do in my artistic work is actually really provide those moments for people so they're may be even more prepared to, claim that, that knowledge as important. And I think that's something that, yeah, it really always inspires me about design practice, which I think we don't really talk a lot about is like especially within participatory practices of design, that this is a moment where people are claiming their power around their world.

And it may be within, really strict structures around like something is gonna get built um, or that there's a particular intention. Sometimes it's more structure than others. But yeah, where people really can be like, oh, you're asking me about something that I know intimately about.

I think that has the potential to be a space for developing agency, and that's something that I felt as a sort of designer or student of design that I didn't have a lot of space for as, just continuing in more standard design practice. So I'm so inspired by your work that you really hold space for that kind of work.

So it's a sort of gratitude. 

Anthony: Well, equally, and I think there's definitely a lot of overlaps and a lot in common, I'm sure.

Aimi: So I wanna draw out some of the themes that I've been hearing and invite you all to maybe say a little bit more about some things. So it seems like there's this overarching theme of relationality and, creating relationships between, artists, designers and users, clients, publics.

And within that they're kind of like all these different textures to what I'm hearing. Like the part of it is that, about facilitating encounters where people can deepen their intimacy and be more vulnerable. Some of it is about creating intimacy, at different scales.

So, I think both of you're talking about the idea of the public and private in, in different ways. And of course like I would imagine some of those sort of like feminist pushback to the division between the public and private is operative here. So I wonder if we could talk more about the relationship between the public and private and then the relational aspects of design and art practice and, what happens when you make space relational and you're encouraging people to think about intimacy or practice intimacy.

And that's where care is taking place. Is it easy? Do people just fall into it? Is there ever pushback? Is there friction? Has there ever been conflict around it? This is the kind of thing that I'm wondering about and I'm really curious, especially like an Anthony with your clients

is it easy to fall into these kind of relations of, vulnerability? Or is there something that has to happen in order to even get there? And is that part of the practice? 

Anthony: There's so many different ways. I mean, so many different examples that come up where yes, there's, I mean, I would say it depends on the project.

You know, the difference for me between doing,, a more public project is very different. Just simply from doing a private project, and I mean that in terms of a public installation or a more public building as opposed to like a private house.

So as opposed to education, which I would put education-public project-installation project in one category, which has a lot more conflict for very different reasons. And then the private project, which has internal conflict, not so much external conflict, you know, a lot of, the private projects, it's a long process of, vulnerability on both sides.

It's a lot of time spent. I mean, look, there is a lot of conflict in all of them. I mean, an example recently, and again, this is just a private residential project, but of course on every project you have to deal with external things like councils and authorities and stuff like that.

And a project that I'm working on now and have been working on for quite a long time is, is for a young woman, and her family with a very, very complex lived experience. And, you know, the council follows strict rules that they have for themselves. And we tried really hard to make them see that, that there was a difference with someone who needed a particular house to live a certain way.

And if it didn't meet these rules and regulations, she was going to lose funding. So there needed to be a certain timeframe. All these government policies were changing in the background. So we all met on site, lots of people from the council as a way of getting them to understand what was going on because they were keeping a distance from who it was we were working with, and I spent a lot of time with my clients to write what they feel comfortable sharing because sadly, people keep a distance from complex realities.

And it wasn't until they're, even when they're on site, to be honest, there was a lot of tears going on about, do, do you actually understand what's going on and that you are actually stopping this thing from moving forward because of stuff that has no bearing other than just a checklist.

Even then it was really hard and I get really emotional and I get really invested and I get quite worked up trying to say, can't you see what's actually going on here? Get out of the office, get out of the spreadsheets, get outta the thing, and actually look at the impact that you're having.

So, you know, those conflicts happen. And of course I've had issues with even, um, you know, teaching at universities where the complexity of the topics they're not used to and they don't necessarily like, sometimes having deeper conversations that bring up personal, stories for students becomes sometimes an issue for the university.

So, quite often they come to me and say, you know, I hope you know, you steer them in the right direction and, and don't unlock anything that's gonna create an issue for the university if it does. To tell them they have to go and see a counselor. Do you know if they're seeing it? there's a risk for, for university business to, to be anything other than churning out design students.

They don't want them to unravel why they're on their, so, you know, so you've got a, well, I don't, but the university wants me to, and I actually found, different universities have different levels of tolerance, but generally what I find is the students are very, very open and they really enjoy it.

Again, maybe like what Jeff's saying, there's a, there's an opportunity to talk about experiences that they know and apply their design hats at the same time. There's a difference I think in maybe a different generation where there's not so much distance keeping. They actually know that the experiences they have are incredibly valuable to their role as a designer.

They're not separate things. more emotion in designers I think is amazing. Absolutely amazing.

Jeff: Wow. Love all of that. What I would say is that, there's a big public element to the work I do.

I work in public art, I work , with groups of individuals. I work in public institutional settings, literally out in public spaces. , But at the same time I'm looking to sort of bridge the private with the public and what that looks like, is, creating situations where people have to confront the fact that they're private.

Lives, their private intentions, their private relationships impact their public selves. And their public selves also impact their private, you know, the sort of private space. So I think that bears out in lots of different ways. In public project, like Soft Spots, for example, which was in New York City in two different, public parks.

It's a public space, like thousands of people walk by a day. And this was a series of really colorful signage and had, a audio component which facilitated the public to have private moments in that space with the center on themselves, reflect on relationships with others, not things we usually get in or explicitly in a public park.

I mean, we do this, we live out life in public, but we don't sort of claim space for that in that way, or, or make visual that those things that are happening all the time.

I agree, that's challenged institutionally. I think designers are often taught to be almost detached from the situation. Right? Empathy from a detached point of view, like that there's sort of an objective, view of something. And I personally and in my design pedagogy, like really push against that.

I think design is always a subjective practice. And think we should lean into that. And sometimes we can design for particular, and I think you do this also to design for particular context and particular needs. We don't always have to move to a universal as the solution.

And I think that we're taught that in design education that, okay, yes, there's this thing that an individual or a sub community needs, but like what's the benefit for everybody? I would love if my design students like were able to work at a community scale where they could impact and develop unique solutions for individuals because I think in many cases that's what's needed. And that's you know, some of why I create learning tools, to help people sort of practice that, relationality so they can move to sort of unique design solutions for either their own lives or for others' lives.

That kind of resists sort of a universal sort of mapping of what should be.

Jos: Oh, thank you. yeah, this thing about relationality has come a lot and I, I feel like we've talked a lot about process, that care is a process. It's not like a, a thing or an output. And that, when we get into it really deeply, which I think we've begun to do here, , it's so complex and it's completely intersected with these things around intimacy and vulnerability and trust. And I suppose I just wondered if both of you could say, maybe we end on a little bit more around, how you deal with that level of exposure, we've talked about safety and the importance of making safe spaces for that.

And I think that's important for everybody, but it's particularly important for disabled people who are often not listened to anyway anywhere. But it does mean there is a kind of potential for harm. The other side of care is this kind of opening up. So I guess I'm interested in anything else you wanted to say about procedures you put in place, really that, that enable that safe space, that enable some sort of resistance to external forces. And I guess for you, Anthony, that might be harder 'cause you can't ignore those external forces. 

Anthony: Yeah. You can't ignore those external forces, unfortunately. But, it's a good question. Jos. I don't know if I've got the answer to that.

The sad thing is, and this is a kind of sad thing, that example that I gave before, 'cause it was just the one I thought of, my reaction becomes, quite often more frustrated and more than the people I work with does.

And they often say things like we're used to it and that's heartbreaking. Of course, you know, when, when I say I'm really, really sorry this has taken so long, and I'm really sorry that we have to keep going through these hoops and keep doing this. and they say it's totally fine.

We're used to it. You know, I find that incredibly challenging, , within my own industry, within the kind of external, disciplines attached. I think that's why, you know, personally I spend a lot more time in other professional worlds than I do my own now actually, because, it feels a lot more connected to what's going on.

Other professions I find don't as much as my own profession does. So I find them a lot more comforting. I find them a lot more relational. I find them a lot more kind of aware of what's, of what's actually happening. And you know, the institutions is a kind of interesting one, but it seems to be what institution, they're not necessarily all the same.

Some seem quite different. And others I'm embarrassed by, to be honest. Some, some of them I'm ashamed that, they're so stuck in a place of tradition. It's amazes me. But anyway, I mean, all those words, intimacy, vulnerability, trust, they take time.

That's the other thing. These professions that want to follow quite a rigid structure that are linked with, you know, and I'm talking about my profession. They're linked with builders and permits and money. Everyone's trying to make money and so things need to move at a certain pace. And the reality of, these things, the reality of intimacy and vulnerability and trust, it takes time.

You cannot try to rush trust and vulnerability. Just, this just doesn't happen. So I think that's what, I've come to terms with, I definitely get a lot more out of it, but, but these things just take a lot of time. But every single person that I've worked with, in recent times, you know, the last 10 years, I, I most amazing people I've ever met that they're my closest friends.

And I think that is because of the vulnerability and trust side of things. Like I've changed a lot, that's for sure.

Jos: Jeff, is there anything you wanted to say about that? 

Jeff: Oh my gosh. So many things like are, are swirling to, to the front here.

I love this idea of that, you know, relationships take time and very much so believe it as an artist or often working with institutions in a different kind of way through perhaps grant funding timelines, through commissioning opportunities, through those kinds of things.

I'm often, advocating for a slowing down of the process, which, institutions are very rarely prepared for. Artists have a lot of power, have a lot of social and cultural capital and I definitely leverage that privilege , in my work where I resist through sort of making sure or mandating, within the creative process to slow down, as a

necessity to make the work. And that is met with a range of different responses by institutions. , working, in nonprofit space, often had conversations with funders, around, okay, this is the timeline we have. We need to triple it. And really figuring out ways to, leverage the intent and the objectives of, particular projects or institution's objective for doing a project. Leverage that, against a project in order to expand time. So if we want to do the things we say we are going to do, this is what it requires. And often that's me putting myself on the line as an artist to really make sure that happens and throw weight behind that.

There have been many times where I would work with an institution on doing programming and they would say, okay, well wait, what do you mean , that this is a closed group that you need to know who's there? And people need to have a particular sort of protocols around safety?

I will often say, you know, this is not something that the general public can interact with that, that we need to have these individuals here for safety support. We need to have particular protocols around what we share, what we don't, who's in the room, making sure people feel that they're supported in that way.

So in many cases it comes down to really throwing - I'm not trying to sort of sound like I'm making myself a martyr or something - but throwing my capacity as an artist on the line, throwing my, privilege on the line in order to slow down this way in which institutions run in order to show really what's needed in order to do this work, in an institutional setting.

I may meet cultural institutions or arts institutions or spaces of government. And that maybe sounds extreme, I'm saying throwing myself on the line. But also it can be, it could come in playful ways where the project itself, through the artistry of the work actually, produces that, that creates friction in order to slow down, in order to reframe on the relationships themselves.

So I think that artists, especially disabled artists, we do this all the time. That access becomes part of our artistry and we're able to really twist, time and protect and to center people through the art making. Itself. So, a lot of times when I'm talking to my students, they, they will often come to me with questions around what happens if, my, boss or my company or my firm has different intent than, than what a project requires?

Or what happens then, right when these other constraints come to bear and I often, you know, respond in a way similar to my response to this question is really finding ways to leverage your positionality in a situation in order to create a a productive friction, to make sure that care is always present in the design process.

And that's going to be challenging to do. But I feel like sort of a responsibility as a designer , to utilize one's sort of position in the process as a sort of safety valve in some way. And I think that's a wildly different way of practicing design than I think that's certainly than I was taught in design school.

But maybe that's the activist work speaking.

Jos: I think that the kind of conversations you might expect to have around care - that we've had different kind of conversation, really, and it's all been about care, but it's not in the way certainly that when I hear it articulated within architecture, it's like none of it's got anywhere near what we've talked about.

So for me, that's really productive to be able to talk about it in in a way that's, more intimate. It's actually about the, what, it's like what care actually means in this relational way in different types of art and architectural practice.

Outro music

Aimi: you've been listening to Disability Meets Architecture, a series of episodes of the Contra Podcast focused on the productive frictions within critical access theory.

Disability meets Architecture was created by Jos Boys from The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, and Aimi Hamraie from the Critical Design Lab and the Contra Podcast with support from Scar Barlay and Paul DeFazio, and funding from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. Our editor is Ilana Nevins.

You can find out more about this project and our respective organizations on Instagram at Ordinary Architecture, at Critical Design Lab, and at Labs for liberation. The Contra Podcast is licensed under a creative commons attribution, non-commercial share, like International 3.0 license. That means you can remix, repost, or recycle any of the content.

As long as you cite the original source, aren't making money, you don't change the credits and you share it under the same license.

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