DIS/ORDINARY POSSIBILITIES
In conversation with Jos Boys
What if embodied dis/abilities are explored as possibilities, instead of simply framed as a problem to be solved by universal spatial solutions? Activist and educator Jos Boys and her collaborators, positions disability as a transformative place to design and educate from. For the built environment to become more responsive and inclusive, we must not only acknowledge but also conceptualize differently the relationship between heterogeneous bodies and space as complex and intersectional. Refusing to think of disability as an obvious and straightforward category or as a design problem demanding a particular set of solutions, makes visible under-examined spatial potentials. Critically, starting from the many diverse perspectives and experiences of disability and impairment offers dis/ordinary possibilities.
DIS/ORDINARY POSSIBILITIES: In conversation with Jos Boys is an afternoon gathering part of the program for the exhibition Chronos: health, access and intimacy at Tensta Konsthall in collaboration with IASPIS and Reconstructions at Kungl. Konsthögskolan. The exhibition asks: What body standards have shaped the society in which we live? And what can we learn from the disability rights struggle that requires access to the city and the built environment? Guided by these questions, artist and the exhibitions curator Olivia Plender, Cecilia Widenheim, director of Tensta Konsthall and architect Marie-Louise Richards, founder and leader of the experimental research-course and platform Reconstructions at the Royal Institute of Art, invites architects, spatial practitioners, artists, and others who are invested in understanding the potentials of beginning with differences, rather than assumptions that we are the same, reimagining spatial practices and the built environment––to gather and be in conversation with activist and educator Jos Boys, co-founder of the pioneering Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative, and also, the co-founder of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project in London. Goldin+Senneby will share the process behind ANTI-HANDIKAPP Collection of disabling stones Royal Dramatic Theatre (1918-2023) showing in the exhibition.
THE STRUCTURE
The exhibition
The afternoon begins with an introduction and guided tour of the exhibition, followed by three sessions reflecting on dis/ordinary possibilities in the built environment.
The prompts
The afternoon will revolve around the following fundamental questions: What is your embodied practice: what is it that you bring to your practice for the sort of embodiment that you have and from your position? What is it we need to do, to challenge the architecture discipline (or other disciplines) in order to explore where it might center dis/ordinary possibilities, and for it to become more equitable? What kinds of tools and methodologies, creative critical tactics might be used to move things forward?
The sessions
The seminar will be divided into three parts: Session I.) An introduction with Jos Boys. Session II.) The artist-duo Goldin+Senneby participating in the exhibition share their practice. Session III.) A moderated conversation on dis/ordinary possibilities. We invite all participants to engage with the recommended readings (find readings below) prior to the seminar and reflect in response to the question above, taking their own experiences, practices and reflections as a point of departure. In the third and final sessions participants will be invited to share their reflections and/or questions in response to the promts.
The background
Jos Boys explores how everyday social, spatial and material practices come to frame what is ‘normal’ and ‘ordinary.’ As a non-disabled person Jos is particularly interested in how architects and other built environment professionals can act creatively and responsively as designers and policy-makers without misrepresenting or marginalizing disabled people. Jos co-founded The DisOrdinary Architecture Project, bringing disabled artists into architectural education and practice to critically and creatively re-think access and inclusion. She works with others on design interventions that question our assumptions about who gets valued and who doesn’t. Originally trained in architecture, Jos was co-founder of Matrix feminist architecture and research collective in the 1980s and one of the authors of Making Space: Women and the Man-made Environment (Pluto 1984). Jos has worked as a journalist, researcher, consultant, educator and photographer and has published several books: Doing Disability Differently: An Alternative Handbook on Architecture, Dis/ability and Designing for Everyday Life (Routledge 2014), which grew out of a series of collaborations between disabled artists and architects, through a group she co-founded called Architecture-Inside Out. She was also the editor of Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader (Routledge 2017). She is also co-editor (with Anthony Clarke and John Gardner) of Neurodivergence and Architecture (Elsevier 2022). Jos is currently a Guest Professor at the Royal Danish Academy in Copenhagen, an Honorary Associate Professor at the Knowledge Lab UCL, and works as an independent scholar and consultant.
The DisOrdinary Architecture Project believes that thinking differently about disability (and ability) can open up the design of our built surroundings to new forms of creativity and critique. Instead of treating disabled people as merely a ‘technical’ or ‘legal’ problem for architecture and urban design, we show how starting from disability – from the rich differences that biodiversity and neuro-divergence bring – is a powerful creative force for design. We want to start from difference to challenge assumptions about ‘what is normal’ in the design of our built surroundings. Founded by Zoe Partington and Jos Boys it is a not-for-profit platform that starts from the experiences, expertise and creativity of disabled artists. They work through co-partnering and co-design to bring together artists and built environment specialists on an equal footing.
Goldin+Senneby is a Stockholm-based artist-duo working jointly since 2004. Over the years, their practice has focused on inhabiting contemporary abstractions, from virtual worlds to offshore jurisdictions to financial algorithms. Experiences with disease, vulnerability, and caregiving have also shaped their artistic and personal lives; and living with an autoimmune condition has formed their shared subjectivity. Currently they are collaborating with American fiction writer Katie Kitamura on a novel about an autoimmune tree.
The readings:
Alison Kafer, Imagined Futures, Feminist, Queer, Crip. Indiana University Press (2013) pp. 1—24
Carolyn Lazard, The World is Unknown, Triple Canopy. Issue 24. April (2019)
Jos Boys, Introduction, Disability, Space, Architecture: A Reader. (ed) Jos Boys. Routledge (2017) pp. 1–5
THE AFTERNOON
13:30–14:00
Gathering
Settling in, spend time with the exhibition.
14:00—14:15
Welcome
Cecilia Widenheim welcomes to Tensta konsthall.
14:15—14:45
Introduction
Olivia Plender introduces the exhibition and gives a small tour.
14:45—15:30
Session I
Marie-Louise Richards introduces guests and the afternoon
Jos Boys gives talk sharing reflections,
questions and urgencies of dis/ordinary possibilities
15:30—16:00
Break
16:00—17:00
Session II
Goldin + Senneby
17:00—17:15
Break
17:15—18:00
Session III
Moderated conversation
Inviting participants to offer reflections, and the questions and urgencies that guide their understanding of dis/ordinary possibilities in response to the prompts of the invitation. See above.
