1 December 2023
MELT: Ren Loren Britton & Iz Paehr

Welcome to Shapeshifting Time in Trans* Crip Praxis
























SHORT LINK: https://tinyurl.com/5dvbz34j
https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/Uni-Marburg-Shifting-Temporality_Day-1 

Introduction
Names, Pronouns, Visual Description, Your interest in the course & your study program
Access Round

We will briefly introduce ourselves with our names, pronouns, and a visual description. In disability and queer communities we always share our names, pronouns and visual descriptions because our names and pronouns might change from day to day as do our appearances. By sharing these as a way of saying hello we create more access for trans*/nonbinary/blind/low vision and other disabled people. You can share visual information, information about your gender or disability, or other information about you that you find relevant. You do not have to share anything you are not comfortable with sharing.

We will begin so that there is an example in the room: Iz is .. Ren is ..

Candela - she/her - interest in the course - study psychology, a good opportunity to take the class - not a topic she has a lot of knowledge on - important for psychologists to be knowledgable for these topics - interested in gender identity, sexual orientation, issues that are prevelant in therapy and psychology - as therapists need to be formed, have knowledge and well prepared in these topics - can help and better adapt to the needs of everyone

Hugo - he/him - more in the part of the art - interest in the class - the LGBTQ community in general has.  a great sense of seeing and percieving art - find out more things like that -- visual description: i'm white, I have medium hair - used to be a mullet - wearing a tshirt 

Doro - no pronouns - i would say I'm a white privlidged person, non binary - today i'm wearing a green turtleneck sweater and my winter boots - I'm wering glasses and have medium brown hair - also studying psychology - getting new perspectives, as this is omething that is not in my curriculum, and its a personal matter to me

Elena - she/her - interested in this course, the same also from psychology, very important for our future - and the rest of the people we will meet in therapy, important to know the most of these things, visual description - white person with blond curly hair, wearing a sweater

Noelia - she/her - student from Spain, also studying psychology, first of all I chose this course because there was not enough English courses for psychology people, also because I found this interesting, not sure what to expect, I think I'll learn important things for my career - visual description: long curls, wearing glasses, usually wear contact lenses, wearing also a jumper/sweater

Laura - she/her - wearing a winter hat, and a scarf and a white sweater - in my case I want to be a teacher, so I want to know about the topics we'll speak about here, because I want to know about how to be with all peopl ein school, not sure what to expect

Zaira - she/her - wearing a white sweater, use glasses - studying pedagogy! here because its an interesting seminar, this topic is super important for pedagogy, in my future, when I work with adults & children, important to know about these thinkings

Laura - she/her - a sweater, and boots, and cargo pants, I study for being a primary teacher as well - topic is very important to a lot of careers 

Christian - he/him - study pedagogy - I choose this course because no German, this is the most interesting that speaks English -- I'm wearing black pants and a black shirt 



Access needs describe what you might need to be fully in the space -- this can include a pillow to rest more comfortably, automated captions on a screen, a light to be turned off etc. Let's take some time to adjust the space that allows everyone to better participate and show up with our bodyminds.

A little collective infrastructure:
**note about our pads, from Constant **
If you don't understand a word put it here: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/unknown-words

Your Emails
Please add your email address here, so we can write you

hugotez03@gmail.com - Hugo González González
laholguin@alumnos.unex.es - Laura Holguín Berrocal
revillacandela@gmail.com - Candela Revilla Otranto
lacasilla@alumnos.unex.es - Laura Casillas Hierro
zairaglezcurbelo@gmail.com- Zaira González Curbelo
crisportelas4@gmail.com Christian Medina Diaz
elenahdt@gmail.com - Elena Hernández Díaz-Toledo 
Noeliagquismondo@gmail.com => Noelia García-Quismondo Isasis
nowotny@students.uni-marburg.de -> Dorothée Nowotny


Please do check your emails for this course before coming to the course (just in case something changes).


a little introduction
First we wanted to read the abstract from this course: Much of Trans* and disability theorising and making relates to temporal experiences and temporal shifts, loops, and discontinuities that gendered, neurological and embodied nonconformity bring about.

Considering theories of time such as crip time (Samuels 2017, Kafer 2013) and Trans*time (Amin 2014, Carter 2017), thinking through personal and collective (non)gender(ed) timelines, and learning about concepts such as spoon theory, pacing, and stimming, this course will time-travel through different Trans*crip hirstories, presents and futures. Experimenting with representations of time, students will develop spatial settings that shift an exhibition visitor's experience of time. Learning outcomes will include an introduction to critical disability studies and its relations to time, working with less immediately perceptible time-based media (what often comes up is video, but what about plastic, latex, waste or other materials around us as recording tools), and political orientations towards time that unmake temporal normativities against what Taraneh Fazeli has termed capitalism's temporal bullying. In this block seminar we will work with sensory practices that shift our experience of time like experimenting with heat, weight, movement and sound. All activities will work with access practices like starting with our access needs, establishing collective conditions and planning for changes in our naming practices. We practice with an experimental methodological framework that privileges trans* and disabled people and borrows from trans* and crip theory to reconsider temporal relations, for example through spoon theory. Let's break time to make time that fits our bodyminds!

Stimming: repetitive moments that feel joyful for autistic people
Bodyminds: Margaret Price, body and mind as connected

And for today we will set the conditions of our work together. We will establish some collective conditions and work with online and offline practices of being together. In this class we are working with hybridity as our normal way of engagement. That means sometimes we will all be online in our various timelines, other times some of us will be online and some of us will be in a room together. We will experiment throughout our course with ways of being together that make space for different modes: spoken, textual, visual, tactile and otherwise.

Today as a plan for the day, we will do a warm up first, and will then work together on some Collective Conditions for how we wish to be together in the space. We will then read together aloud a text by Ellen Samuels called 6 ways of looking at crip time, and learn about spoon theory in small groups. We will take regular breaks. We will share some tasks for the next time and at the end of the course we will go on a silent walk - tuning into our sensory feelings of time before coming back to do a little group work to get people thinking together about what artwork you will make for your final timely intervention in this course.


WARM UP
http://meltionary.com/access/RitualsAgainstBarriers_MELT.pdf
We will first read through all of the rituals on the poster aloud and then everyone is invited to choose a ritual that speaks to you most.
Everyone performs the ritual.
Everyone to share 1-3 sentences on what they found out by performing the ritual.

Ritual of abolition
- Education
- Harm reduction
- Early prevention
- Welfare state
- Better support from society
- Better social systems to avoid areas with concentrated poverty 
- Destigmatization, awareness

Ritual for bad listening:
- Silence
- Soft voices.
- Sounds of the movements of the people of the class.
- Computer keyboards.
- Breathing.
- Yawning.
- Steps in the hallway.
- Sounds od chairs.
In the room there is a soft light, along with soft and relaxing voices that make you feel comfortable and in a peaceful atmosphere. Having talked about individual needs for being in class makes you feel safe and comfortable. I am positioned looking at everyone's faces and in a U shape that also helps to be able to open up better in the classroom. Right now I don't have any barriers that make me feel uncomfortable where I am. 
Also, yes, I'm more and more relaxed by what I listen more deeply. Every time that something stresses me out, I will try to follow this ritual, I think it will help.

Ritual of questioning institutions:
- white, privileged, able-bodied, cis-gender-people are the majority of people I meet in german institutions
- These people are there because institutions don't exclude or discriminate them and see them as the constructed norm of "healthy", "smart" etc. 
- If people out of this constructed norm would be there (for example: disabled, non binary person) institutions wouldn't be places that support a oppressive system
- I don't know if there would really exist places such as institutions, because if all people would have access than we probably wouldn't have a system build on colonialism, patriarchy and capitalism --> It would maybe be a different system behind
- System change --> like the poster says: Transforming institutions 

Ritual for tending to the "not perceivable":
-„What becomes possible when we are immersed in the queerness of forms of life that dominant systems cannot chart, reward or even understand?“
+It can make an statement for yourself, proving just to you that you don't need to be classified by the common eye in a way that you don't want or like. 
If you are in the right place, it can also create a space for you or for people to begin learning different ways of thinking and being understanding.


Ritual for bad listening 
  Sounds: people tipping,also people speaking out loud, how they breathe, i can feel some subtle breeze, someone cracking their fingers, walking in the hallway, I hear the fan which I think is responsible for the heating. 
Answering the question  When and where do i feel comfortable with listening/sensing, i would say that this room is quite good, i don´t feel any type of streess and it is so relaxing. For the question about if my listen /sense are deeper with time, yes they are. The sounds from the class are not a barrier for me and i don´t think that they are a barrier for my classmates.  


Ritual for tending to the 'not perceivable'
What becomes possible when we are immersed in the queerness of forms of life that dominant systems cannot chart, reward or even understand?
- I think there can be quite a bit of friction in this place, like what kind of spaces are set up as normal and then to need to ask for different or otherwise space. When you're immersed in communities that uphold ways of being that are otherwise, there can also be the need for unlearning ways of relating to each other that are ingrained, I've been thinking a lot about Max Liborion's CLEAR lab recently, and they speak about how there are so many colonial and extractive ways of doing science, when their lab researchers come back - a big part of the work that Max does is holding the space to unlearn again and again the extractive things that are normalised in everyday life. How do we in trans & disabled communities hold space to unlearn the violences of the everyday that happen to us and with us? How can we hold space so that we can rinse off the awfulness of the structures around us that we're immersed in? How to develop the internal resistance so strongly so that the flag for problematic situations always come up internally.

Ritual for bad listening:
- I'm listening to people typing on their computers, how they move, the sound of the heating air (not sure about that), someone's footsteps in the hallway, chairs moving upstairs, some breathing, the sound of classmates while drinking water...
This environment makes me feel confident and relaxed, as the lights are not to much intense and there is not so crowded. Another important point is that it is not too cold.
- I would also say that when I have been in the place I have chosen to listen for a long time, I concentrate more on the sounds around me, which perhaps others cannot hear.
- Finishing, at this time of year, I would like to try this ritual in the snowy forest, to hear the sound of falling snow, birds or another animals. I think I would feel quite different, I would feel the cold and loneliness, but it would be an experience that would give me a lot of peace. 

Ritual for Bad Listening
People touching the Pc keys´. The breathe of the people in the room, some chairs doing loud in other rooms, people talking softly, there is a afable light, and it´s a bit of cold. Yes, if I listen for a long time I am more concentrate and listen morºe things


RITUAL FOR BAD LISTENING:
- Write down every sound that you hear:
the heating
zaira's breathing
computer keys
Elena's feet moving
the noises outside the class
hugo blowing his snot
Zaira scratching her arm
- When and where are you comfortable with listening?:
Maybe if I do it in the countryside, listening to the birds, the river, the tranquility. Here I feel comfortable, relax, and peaceful.
- Do you listen deeper with time?:
Yes, I concentrate more and more
-  Are any of the things you hear an access barrier for you or for someone you know?:
I don´t think, in this case, the sounds barrier anyone.

Ritual for abolition
- Awareness raising
- Education
- Pay attention to people at risk of social exclusion
- Introduce social improvement plans in every city
- Introduce leisure activities among the different people in society, for a dignified integration.
- Encouraging equality

Collective Conditions
-- let's invent some collective conditions together for a hybrid teaching space -- we have some that we generally use, however we want to bring our knowledges together and craft our own, after some time we can see if we are missing some -- so, how do we want to be together in this space?

-- One diva one mic --> don‘t interrupt.
-- Privacy --> personal stories stay within the room.
-- Movement is good and taking care of your own needs is good. Leaving space for silence is good. Leaving the room and coming back in is good.
-- Be mindful of speaking times. Please make an effort to communicate. Comunicate in all forms, not only orally.
-- No-isms --> this is a space that welcomes all genders, is decidedly anti-racist and anti-ableist, there is no room for -isms such as: classism, misogyny, ageism, religious discrimination or any other form of discrimination and oppression.
-- Not all disabilities are apparent, please don't assume what is normal for other people.
-- There is as many teachers in this room as there are people in this space.
-- This is a multi lingual space. Please ask for clarification or translation.
-- Caretaking is a responsibility shared by everyone --> please feel free to check in with your neighbor, and neighbors feel free to say yes I need something or no I don't.
-- If you bring material into the space that might have an emotional impact on the people in the space, please share a content warning.
-- When someone accidentally breaks one of these rules (e. g. interrupting): Please kindly point out to us if a collective condition is not respected. Let's then take a moment to address and care for the space together.
-- When structural violence is replicated (e. g. ableist slurs): Let us make sure that people affected by this receive the care they need first. Let us set further conditions to make sure that this is not repeated. Moving from a harm reduction framework, we will try to address the harm done and share resources. As facilitators we may ban someone from this space if need be.
-- Please say, sign or write "STOP" when a topic comes up that would need a CW. If you would like to leave the space at any time to take a break, please do. We will let you know once we have moved on from the topic.
--- As moderators we work with frames of taking responsibility for caring for the space. We are not the only ones who do this work – everyone here does at times too, however we focus on taking responsibility for what comes up.
-- A pad for the group where non-apparent topics or words that would need a content warning are shared: https://pad.constantvzw.org/p/contentwarnings




Introduction to Accessibility, Anti-Assimilationist Disability Justice Politics & Ableism // non normative ways of being in time
Movements in trans* and crip time are often positioned as movements against and despite normative time. The concept of chrononormativity describes an understanding of time in which certain life milestones are tied to strict and binary gender expectations. For example, the only way to have kinship and understand futurity is to make children through a nuclear family.

Crip theory brings up ideas about how time is experienced differently by disabled people. Capitalism demands a certain productivity and timelines that disabled people can often not fulfill. At the same time, we may experience the flow of time differently: more slow, sped up, moving between different embodied states, moving between attention spans and brain fog moving us against what Taraneh Fazeli calls capitalism's temporal bullying.

As a visual way to enter questions around Crip Time, we thought we'd take some time to look through this exhibition together: https://www.mmk.art/en/whats-on/crip-time/

-- Could everyone take 10 min and choose one work from the exhibiton and answer these four questions about it:

    It is a video screen (flat screen) . The video is divided in two fields left and right (both parts take the same amount of space). The left side is purple colored background and the other one is blue. On the left side there is a white hand holding a parfum and on the other side there is a white hand holding a clementine
The image provides a clock with spoons, showing the passage of time in a curious way, as it introduces the pills to reflect the help they can give us in the passage of time.
We can see a blue sofa in a white room. On it is written the phrase " it was hard to get here. Rest here if you agree."

-- Moment of sharing --
-- Image Description Intro --
https://alt-text-as-poetry.net/

------
Break?
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We can't talk about crip time without talking about access! In this next section our our course, we will lay some definitional groundwork. We invite us all to think with some terms such as "disability", "technology" and "intersectionality". We will also discuss why moving against a charity model of accessibility is necessary and what anti-assimilationist access means for us. To start we would like to screen two of these short videos that approach topics of disability, accessibility, intersectionality, access, language and play.

Removing Barriers -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUk6r-62a5I
What is Neurodiversity? -- https://youtu.be/GcpgPrYsapM (with English subtitles)

Does anyone have any reactions to these videos? What is good and what is problematic about them both?

We understand access as the conditions under which people can approach or fully be in a space. When you can fully be in a space, it means the space is accessible to you. Making accessibility is something that we all can do in more structural, and in more everyday ways, for example by repouring concrete to make sidewalks more accessible for wheelchair users, or by having scent-free spaces.

Access does not mean 'integration into the status quo'
Anti-assimilationist access moves from a position that disability is a desirable part of the world. This is how Aimi Hamraie and Kelly Fritsch describe access in their text Crip Technoscience Manifesto (https://catalystjournal.org/index.php/catalyst/article/view/29607).
Anti-assimilationist access means that you do not have to hide your disabilities or assimilate into nondisabled space in order to gain access. In fact, your access does not depend on anything that you do or do not do.

Anti-assimilationist access is against technoableism! Ashley Shew writes: "Ableism (discrimination in favor of nondisabled people and against disabled people) impacts technological imagination. Like sexism, racism, and other types of bigotry, ableism works in insidious ways: by shaping our expectations, it shapes how and what we design (given these expectations), and therefore the infrastructure all around us.", and "Technoableism is a term I have coined to describe a rhetoric of disability that at once talks about empowering disabled people through technologies while at the same time reinforcing ableist tropes about what body-minds are good to have and who counts as worthy. Technoableists usually think they have the good of disabled people in mind. They do not see how their work reinscribes ableist tropes and ideas on disabled bodies and minds." https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielaam/44/9035512/9035527-aam.pdf

One example of technoableism [CW, it's ableist] is a Google Glasses application that "helps" and "trains" autistic children to read facial expressions. This is ableist, because it places autistic people's ways of socializing as less valuable. It sets a standard for autistic children to become like their nonautistic peers. An anti-assimilationist approach to access in this example could mean that everyone communicates their feelings in ways that everyone else around them can understand: For example by using also voice, or signs, to make the same information available to everyone. 

Technology can also be engaged as frictional and dissident against inaccessible environments of our constructed world, in the built and social sense.

Access is intersectional
Because access always involves people coming from situated perspectives who may live with multiple marginalizations, anti-assimilationist access is conceptualized as an intersectional process that accounts for different bodyminds. Anti-assimilationist access works with politics like "we can't mend it, we have to end it" - which is talked about in the Abolition and Disability Justice Collective zine (https://abolitionanddisabilityjustice.com)!

Access is a technology
Anti-assimilationist access centers disabled people and our access needs. In this way anti-assimilationist access works with practices like "interdependence as a social technology", which is also mentioned in the Crip Technoscience Manifesto and which also broadens our understanding of what technology is and can be. Moving against a charity model means that our tech-projects are not interested in framing disability as something to pity. We also refuse frameworks in which nondisabled people build technology for disabled people, and instead are interested in the technologies, hacks and knowledges that disabled people – some of which are designers, some of which are programmers – have invented and are inventing.

One example of the kind of tools that we are interested in is the work of a disabled woman called Cindy in collaboration with designers Sara Hendren and Caitrin Lynch called Engineering at Home: http://engineeringathome.org. Cindy's hacks are for example a zip tie attached to a zipper that allows her to open and close objects.

Because disabled people often navigate inaccessible worlds, we have unique knowledge and hacks to exist in that world and to adapt it. This means that instead of charity or pity, disabled people need more access and space to make the worlds we dream of.

One example from our practice as an anti-assimilationist tech project: ACCESS SERVER
One of our projects is called ACCESS SERVER. ACCESS SERVER is an email server that anonymizes, collects and financially compensates access requests that disabled people send towards cultural institutions. Access requests explain what a disabled person needs to attend spaces, be they online or physical. The project is currently in the conceptual and prototyping stage.

http://meltionary.com/accessserver.html

- pause for questions & discussion -
- break -

Please everyone, take 5 minutes to do some thinking or writing on the following question:
What was your last experience with access? What happened, how did it feel, how did access unfold or did not happen or partially happen?
Being able to read signs (all in german) and get groceries, find the right train, order a coffee. Ordering something with broken german/english and getting bad looks and sighs. Sometimes the situation gets resolved because someone is helpful or google translator is available but a lot of times access doesn't happen. ☕️🥴
Being able to enter the building (open the door, find the right building because of signs in german, taking the stairs, reading the schedule infront of the room) and than find a place and sit down in the seminar room.
When I was looking for a room to live in, there were only 3 options that were possible because the other ones didn't put "queer friendly" in their describtions so I was uncomfortable to ask them for a casting. 🏳️‍🌈🌈​🫶
I'm not sure if I could put this example, but a few weeks ago, I went with my friends to a club, and because of being girls we paid less for access than our boy friends.it is not something that surprised me much because in Madrid it is very common but it is true that my friends both boys and girls from other parts of Spain were surprised and personally it seems very unfair💰💎​🫠😔
The culture shock of not being in your country. I feel that i'm being kind of watched or judged sometimes by the people that live here even though they don't really care so sometimes in the street (mostly when i recently came) i didn't stand out a lot even tough i usually did in Spain just because of this complex. Also the other day me and a friend were being stared for talking Spanish at the bus by an old guy for half of the bus ride. In the stadtburo they were mad at me for talking in english even when they talked perfect english 🧌🧌🧌🚍​
A few weeks ago, a university professor recommended me watching a documentary. He offered me a DVD with the movie, but the first problem that I had was that I could not open the compartment in the computer to put the DVD in. Next I thought I could find the documentary online, but all platforms I saw had limmited access as I had to pay for see the documentary or they had computer viruses. Finally, I continue now searching for a good platform, but I still feel frustrated because I really liked the idea of watching that documentary, as I could not yet.💻​📽️​☹️​
I went to see an nba game in Miami, and in the queue, the security passed other people, and i had to wait a long time because I had a jersey of Los Angeles Lakers, the opposite team.🏀
The other day I wanted to register at the Marburg town hall, so I made a reservation for the day I wanted but everything on the website was in German, I didn't understand anything, so I went on the day I had reserved, but they told me it wasn't on the list because I did not accept an email that was sent to me in German. I felt very confused and frustrated.🤯🗣️
My last experience with access was yesterday when I gave a lecture in Braunschweig. In this experience I was made aware of all the extra work that had been done by a colleague of the person who had invited me to make the access that I had requested. It was nice-ish that they made it happen, and it also was exhausting to be made aware again and again of the extra labor that had been done to make what I wanted to do possible. They kept bring it up as all the extra work that they had done to make it possible for me to be there. I think they were trying to be nice in getting this done, and it also felt rude to be reminded of how much extra work I was.😓
When in a group work everyone starts speaking German. Not knowing how to speak or understand it, at first it was a bit shocking as I didn't understand anything and felt a bit out of place, but later they ended up speaking English so I could understand them too and was nice:) Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming not being able to understand or communicate well in the place where you live.🗣️😐
Usually on the bus when we spoke Spanish, all the people looked at us strangely, as we didn't speak the same language (German). Usually they say a word or phrase in German and you don't understand it, and they get annoyed.🗣️😿😐

BREAK

Reading Aloud Together
Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time, Ellen Samuels, Disability Studies Quarterly, Vol. 37 No. 3 (2017): Summer 2017
https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/5824/4684

Group Work
In your group, please introduce yourself again with your name, pronoun and any access information.

To begin we would like each group to read together the article, Spoon Theory by Cristine Miserando: https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/ 

Take some time to think about the following questions on your own (20 minutes (more or less)):
    1) During which activities do you feel fully in time or like time is lining up with your experience?
    
    3) When has your experience of time been different than what was expected of you?




If you feel comfortable with it, please share some of your replies. What are some similarities or differences between your responses?

Take some notes on key words that come up amidst your sharing.
Choose one (or more) timeline(s) that you would like to build a clock for.

Protoype a clock for Time Travel.
1) decide how your timeline(s) moves: fast, slow, changing, sticky, flowing, breaking, not determinable
2) experiemnt with making some drawings, consider what materials you would need to prototype your clock
3) make a doodle plan for your clock