The figure of Tiresias penetrates Greek drama - the hermaphroditic shape shifter who has lived both as a man, as Zeus's priest, and as a woman, as a prostitute of great renown. Tiresias was blinded for knowing the secrets of man and woman, but was given second sight. Since then, Tiresias wields his and her staff throughout Antigone, Oedipus Rex, The Bacchae and Ovid's Metamorphoses where his blindness, her cripdom, offers special status as advisor to the mighty. What is seen, what is known, what is spoken: these are the questions around photography and performance that fuel our exploration.
Tiresias is a disability culture event - and much more than that. In our workshop/performances, we take Tiresias out of the background fabric of history. Now Tiresias and his disability, her undecidable bodily status, the malleability of his body, the shimmer of hir gender, her tri-pedal step and his blind/seeing eyes become the focal point of disability cultural work. This is an erotic show: bodies and desire intermingle, and we open ourselves up to an exploration of boundaries, try to reclaim seduction for disability: not as a freak parade, but as sensuous bodies engaged sensuously with the world. At the heart of our show are images of seduction, an erotics of encounter with disability& rsquo;s non-binary difference which problematises conventional notions of disabled people as tragic, sexless or deficient. Through photographs, poetic memory and dance, we remember our future. In the Tiresias video, bodies touch and transform. Language becomes message and shape, and audio description and captioning become aesthetic elements of the film’s whole.
Petra Kuppers (US)
Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist, a community artist and she teaches in performance studies and disability studies at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. She is the Artistic Director of The Olimpias Performance Research Series, and Olimpias workshops, installations, performances and exhibitions have been created and shown in Europe, the US, New Zealand and Australia. All Olimpias work are community-based, and deal with disability culture issues, with the opportunities of collaborative practice, and with the celebration of difference.
Kuppers has written a number of books, including Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge (Routledge, 2003), The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art (Minnesota University Press, 2007) and Community Performance: An Introduction (Routledge, 2007). She has also co-edited with Gwen Robertson the companion text, Community Performance Reader (Routledge, 2007). Her current work addresses disability history, and includes a reassessment of the ancients myth that shape our thoughts about bodily, sensorily and mental difference. Tiresias is the latest Olimpias show.
petra@umich.edu
Sadie Wilcox (US)
Sadie Wilcox is an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan School of Art & Design. Her work in video was exhibited in a group show at the Cothenius Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Sadie has received visual arts funding from various sources, including the Center for International and Comparative Studies, the Center for European Studies, the Center for the Education of Women, and the Center for Research on Women and Gender at the University of Michigan.
Sadie’s interest in disability stems from her own experience as a burn survivor. Her work in disability studies seeks to highlight the continual and changing nature of chronic injury and the role of hidden burns.
smwilcox@umich.edu
