Eliza: [00:00:01] You can’t really talk about violence without talking about disability, like it's very difficult to think about colonialism, transnationalism, environmental racism, neoliberalism, you know, without thinking about the debilitating effects of these systems of oppression had on, on the body.

Chloë: [00:00:26] Welcome to season three of Broadcastability: a podcast by, for, and about people with disabilities. 

Lark: [00:00:33] Broadcastability is a PROUD Project production based in Toronto, Canada. Visit thePROUDproject.ca to learn more.

This podcast was recorded and produced on the traditional and ancestral territories of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. This territory is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, a treaty made between the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, Haudenosaunee, and allied nations to protect the resources of the Great Lakes and the surrounding areas. This podcast was also partially produced on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We also wish to acknowledge the Indigenous nations across Turtle Island, also known as North America, where we conduct our research and record this podcast.

Chloë: [00:01:29] We’re very excited by the upcoming episodes, because this season we focus on research and disability. We highlight individuals who are undertaking research in disability at a variety of levels and in different locales. We interview students, advocates, academics, and professionals who offer distinct perspectives on composing and carrying out research on disability. 

In this episode, the second of our new season examining disability research, Lark Huska, The PROUD Project’s Social Media and Communications Officer, joins me as co-host. Lark, can you please introduce yourself?

Lark: [00:02:05] Hi, my name is Lark Huska and I’m finishing my undergraduate degree from the University of Toronto. Previous to The PROUD Project, I worked in an art gallery and became familiar with the commercial art world.

As part of our effort to highlight artists, researchers and thinkers investigating disability, we welcome Dr. Eliza Chandler, Associate Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University. She is also the Executive Director of the Office of Social Innovation at TMU.

Chloë: [00:02:33] In the next hour, we learn about Dr. Chandler’s professional journey, as well as her approach to the intersection of art and disability. It is a discussion which captures the fertile possibilities for art and disability. And, it is also a fascinating conversation about the juncture of theories of justice and the intersectionality of disability.  
Eliza: [00:02:56] My name's Eliza Chandler, and I'm the Executive Director of the Office of Social Innovation at Toronto Metropolitan University. I'm also an Associate Professor in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University.

Chloë: [00:03:16]  That's great. Can you tell me a little bit more about yourself? Like, how do you—how did you end up where you were… where were you brought up? Um, what did… what was your PhD in? How you ended up at TMU? Just sort of what was your path.

Eliza: [00:03:30]  Yeah, that's a good question. I grew up in Nova Scotia, and I went to NSCAD, which is an art college, here, um, for my undergrad degree, um, and there I, you know, learned a whole lot about being an artist. Um, this was in the early 2000s. We didn't talk about identity politics at all. Not even feminism was a theme that was sort of popular at the time, and certainly not disability arts, or anything to do with disabilities, um, identities. 

I very much, even though I'm noticeably disabled, I would say I was in the closet, so to speak, I didn't talk about disability and I certainly couldn't make artwork about disability. And then, you know, a number of years later, I discovered disability arts and disability studies while living in Toronto, and decided to do my masters and my PhD in Disability Studies. And at the time when I was studying disability studies, I was using phenomenology to think a lot about my own experience, my own experience, my own experience of disability community, what binds a community? These sort of, um…. The feeling of being in community, because that was very important to me as someone who you know, didn't know that I needed a crip community for so long, but I certainly did and my life sort of changed, once I discovered that, that community and the relationships and politics that are brought with it. 

Um, and then post-PhD, I sort of returned to the arts, so for a long time, I…. I didn't… yeah, think or practice art at all, even though, as I said, that was my initial studies. But the ways that I was introduced and pursued disability studies were very much driven by, as I said, phenomenology and theoretical engagement of disability—this was at U of T. Um, and then I graduated, and I became involved in an arts-based research project as a participant. Um, and the director of it, Dr. Carla Rice, and that project used artist space methods, predominantly digital storytelling, and I just went, sort of, because I'm, you know, I was curious. And what I discovered, and I think this was a surprise to everyone, including the research team, but that other disabled people were drawn to the project, um, out of interest in being able to use equipment and software and learning the skills of digital storytelling, or perhaps more specifically, just the opportunity to make, um, video art, sort of outside of the objects of the research project. So what I discovered in that room was I connected to a number of disability artists, um, and for the first time sort of imagined this as a connecting point, um, between disability studies and making art. And so that was a very transformative experience that led me to work at Tangled for a few years. Tangled Art + Disability, which is a disability-led art gallery in Toronto, for a few years, and then…. and then through that, I became…. um, I was hired by the School of Disability Studies at TMU, and my research program until today very much involves disability arts and works with Tangled as community partner.

Lark: [00:07:46] In my own experience, um, engaging with art, I think it's presented as a medium that, uh, is not become to all of these physical boundaries that we face in the real world, and it's something that can transcend boundaries. Um, and so I'm wondering if you could speak more about the connection between disability and art, and how you see that, you know, that physicality does come into play.

Eliza: [00:08:10] Yeah, that's a good question, thank you. I mean, first and foremost, I think disability art is a tremendous pathway to self-representation, and I…. I very much believe that representation is political, especially, as I said, you know, in my studies, I looked at my own experience, and my own experience is one of a white, cisgendered, um, physically disabled from birth, um, recognized as a Canadian citizen. So, a lot of markers are privileged, and you can see that in my position today, and I don't think that my story of disability is representative or emphatic of a lot of people's stories, and so I became, yeah, disengendered. You know, there's only so… so long that you can sort of tell your own story. 

I think a lot of disabled people begin there, because we've spent, uh, you know, depending on who we are—I’ve spent a lot of my life, um, not talking about disabilities, so when finally I was given the chance, and given the understanding that it was important to do so, I thought, there's something significant to the way that I understand it improving in the world. And then, you know, quickly that became, okay, but there's something really interesting about how other people experience the world and are understood by the world. And art, to me, is a vehicle to sort of access a multiplicity of self-expression, and representation which can change our understanding of disability. I think art almost acts as a public pedagogy: can be accessible, it can be available to the public, we can proliferate it, we can share it with our friends and our family. And when that art is created by a disabled person and about their own experience, their own life, their own, you know, um, community, um, and that representation is groomed in all kinds of elements, one total location, I think that can really necessarily disrupt, what Paur, like, calls “the single story of disability.” We can really start to understand disability as, yeah, multiplicitous. And I think the reason that this is important is because then as we expand our understanding of disability rights and justice, and what's needed to achieve full liberation for disabled people. 

So, I mean, that's… I've now gone really far out, but to come back to your question, but, I mean, the political potential of disability art is really what, what drew me into it. But I think I'm on a more personal level, as I said when I was at art school, I…. they didn't talk about disability, which meant that I didn't talk about accessibility. So, my creative pursuits were very much limited by what I could physically do independently. Nobody was talking to me about interdependence, or even assistance. And there was no other, other… I was never presented with even an opportunity to brainstorm about different ways of making art, right? So, I was a sculpture major, and, you know, I just so happen to enjoy working with textiles, or did I, or was I just too intimidated to work with more, heavier materials that required more skill, like, welding and these kinds of things. 

But I think the remarkable thing about disability art as well as the way that technology now is sort of integrated formally into making purposes, is that we can, yeah, come together as a community and work out different ways to…. to create work together that isn't limited by our physical ability, which is something that lots of artists have done for all kinds… over… throughout time, is what I'm saying. So why is it that somebody, like Andy Warhol can hire, you know, a factory of workers, or…. A great sculpture, Richard Sarah can hire, you know, a team of people to lift up his metal and his sculptures, but a disabled person asking for help to paint a canvas, or stretch a canvas, or role at spool of film, or what have you in a dark room, suddenly, that is an impossible boundary, like… like, that's ableism playing out, right? 

So I think disability art, as much as it disrupts our understanding of disability, it also, Lark, as you… as you're saying, sort of pushes back, and introduces different ways of physically and conceptually, but I'm interested in physically changing the ways that we can create work. Which, which, um…. which affects the aesthetics of work as well, and the thematic. And then, what I'm most interested in, in my current role, it affects the way we curate work, and we build accessibility into the creative process and make the work accessible, um, in all kinds of ways as part of the work's creative expression.

Lark: [00:14:12]  This is so wonderful hearing, like, I come from an academic art background as well, part of my undergrad is Visual Studies at the Daniels faculty at UofT. Um, and I feel like the way that you're talking about art in this representative manner as a way of building bonds and connections among the community and people who are related, but maybe perhaps don't yet know, is really awesome, because I feel like the way that it's presented in academia is that art is this… while simultaneously being this physically accessible thing, in that it's just presented to everyone in the same way, it's intellectually inaccessible. And there are certain aspects to it that, you know, you must understand art on a very fundamental level, and must know all of the top artists and all of the history of it, to understand the piece that is in front of you, and if you don't, well, maybe you're not, maybe this art isn't for you. So I'm wondering, like, you're talking about, like, how do you balance… where do you see the role of, like, the prestige of art and the intellect behind it, and how you can balance that accessibility for everyone to approach it, or do you not believe in the kind of pompousness of art to begin with? I also have a commercial art gallery background, so that influences this opinion as well.

Eliza: [00:15:32]  It's a very interesting question, in regards to disability art, because I think… I mean, well, there's so many ways to approach it. I was going to say disabled people have been excluded from the canonical understandings of art throughout history, but of course, that's not true. I mean, you look at a sculpture like the Venus de Milo and that sculpture’s interesting, because the statue is disabled, it's missing arms, right? Um, and, you know, you have lots of Mad and disabled artists, um, in the cannon environment as well. But disability as an identity and as a form or a bit of content has never been celebrated as such. And has never been connected to broader political ambitions, right? So… so the success, or the popularity of Venus de Milo, has not equaled—it has not equated to a growth in public sentiment around the achievement of disability arts, right? So if… if I had that photo of that in my—of that sculpture in my living room, it doesn't mean that I'll necessarily vote with a disability agenda in my mind, right? Somehow we've detached disability from what makes art, um, important, um, in our minds, even though disability very much is what adds intrigue, um, to the content, and you know, and we could perform a similar analysis around artist’s identities as well. 

But… but the way that disability artists have been included in art history has been through this category of “the outsider art,’” right? So, curators like somebody, like Jean Dubuffet, have gone into institutions in France, where he was, and collected artwork from folks who were incarcerated in that space. And sort of understood their artistic value as being beyond the intention, or even the awareness of the artist who produced the work, right? So that… just that, again, that ableist understanding justified how someone like Dubuffet or countless other artists could show this work, sometimes even without the artist’s name attached, and certainly not inviting the artistic talk on the—on their intention behind the work, but sell the work without, you know, delivering payment to the artist. And the artists themselves would rarely be supported to develop their artistic career with further training or, um, or, you know, material things like that. And, you know, I think we, this is sort of, um, developed into understanding through art therapy, which might be more contemporary—at least in Canada is—this is an understanding that, that artist like Judith Scott who was a textile artist and lived for many years in an institution in California would make these um, big, sort of, sculptures made of wrapped and fabric that you would find in the laundry room, where her—where she was living as someone who is institutionalized. And only after death were these works of art picked up. And now they're shown all over the world. Again, not really connecting her work to disability arts, but at the time of her creation, it was very much understood that her wrapping process was therapeutic, it um, it helped her with her mobility, and it helped her, sort of, it was an exercise in kind of—it was a cathartic exercise which would help her more to, mental trauma.

Chloë: [00:19:52] As you're talking, what I think of often is, uh, Vincent van Gogh, who is just revered, uh, now. But he—it sounds strange, but I often think of him in the context of poverty and disability. Because here was an individual who was largely supported by his brother because of his own mental health issues, and never sold a painting, really, other than to his brother. You know, that he's revered, and yet I see him as much like an ODSP individual now, living in their own apartment by themselves, creating art, that he really was, in many ways, although he did have companions at times and other sort of colleagues, he worked by himself, and he was quite isolated. And I was wondering what you think about that?

Eliza: [00:20:36] Yeah, I mean, I think that they're a really interesting example as well. And when we tell the story of van Gogh, we often talk about his isolation, or, like, the spectacular element of his story. But we don't locate him as evidence of disabled people, not people making culturally significant art for millenia, right? So, I think all of that combined, um, means that disabled people—or maybe this individual disabled person, but I do see it across the sector—might be a bit hesitant to sort of join up with something that has routinely excluded us for, you know, centuries, right? Um, and even van Gogh, right? Like, he of course is very successful, but not within his lifetime, and… and it would be, it would be so interesting—if Frida Kahlo, right—it would be so interesting to think about the support that these artists had. The barriers and ableism and insaneism and, you know, abuse that artists sustained throughout their career, which, of course, could impact their career, and impact their success within their lifetime. And so, and I think, you know, too, like, I think disability arts as a cultural project is a critical one. It critiques the status quo in all kinds of directions. And so they're critiquing this notion of a canon, I think, is something that is embedded within the movement. 

And then to address your question more specifically, Lark: I think, so, in my own curatorial practice, to me, it's very important to create plain language artistic statements, and curatorial statements. That, you know, they may refer to other moments in art history and other sort of artistic legacies, or main players, in art history, but not with an explanation, right? So it's this fundamental—I think disability arts holds its fundamental belief that people arrive in the gallery, arrive at the art from all kinds of positions, and so we can't assume a common experience or a common basis of knowledge, right? And that goes for how people interact with video and sculpture, that goes to how people engage in an artist talk, whether it's in person or online, or through an ASL interpreter, or by sit sitting on the floor, or, you know, what have you, but it also extends to how we we write about art. Um, and so at Tangled they will always work with the artist to make sure that the artist statement is a plain language statement. And by doing so, it makes it accessible, but it also creates distance from how we might traditionally position art within sort of a cannon of art history, which again, as I said, is because we don't assume that folks have, like, a particular pedigree, right?

I think we all have the experience of going to a larger arts institution, and reading an artist statement whose references, um, don't land for us. We don't understand those references. And that sends a pretty clear signal that this art isn’t for you, and that's sort of the antithesis of the political project of disability arts.

Chloë: [00:24:034] Okay, I had a list of questions, but you're being fascinating, so I want to ask a couple of more about art and I’m the non-artist in the group at some level! I was thinking as you were talking around, um, the Jungian principles or ideas of archetypes, that they're these images, circles, there are certain images and symbols that reoccur across cultures, etc. And then, in my brain, I was also thinking, there is this, I would call it a trope, but there is this power of image of the—particularly of disabled children, or of… in the popular culture, of, um, in the popular mind, and how that sort of penetrates, even… you were talking about Frida Kahlo, just… there is this… there is this, um… I don't know how to describe it, but yeah, it is a trope. There's this stereotype of what is a good disabled person, a sympathetic disabled that's meant to drive us, and it's not just… it's not just in written form like Charles Dickens put, but it's also in visual form, you see it all the time. And I was wondering what you think about that, the image that, of disability and how that might… that interacts with art and the public imagination, and so… and even social justice. Maybe that's not even… you can’t answer it, but, I wonder whether you've thought about it.

Eliza: [00:25:48] Yeah, I… that's a great question, and I think that goes back to this idea that art is a public pedagogy. So, when we, you know, when we see the little disabled boy in the wooden wheelchair as in a poster for charity in the 1950s, I mean, that… that's a politicized representation, because it teaches the public that disabled people are young, we're helpless, and we need to be helped by the good graces of benevolent strangers, right? Disability is not—is a private concern. We need to fundraise through individual donations, rather than build a robust social security system that supports disabled people, right? And just as you are talking, Chloë, I also thought about the artist Diane Arbus, who, you know, I don't think that I'm ready to sort of take a position on her work and her life, but, you know… disabled people figure all over her art work, disabled, um, children in photographs, and, you know, I think it's… it's a bit controversial—if we can use that word—or up for debate what her relationship was with these folks, and what her intentionality was behind representing them in particular with. But what's indisputable is that she did represent them in particular ways, right? And, um, you know, I can think of, like, lots of photographs, the one that's coming to my mind is about a little person—a man—sort of, in his 50s, or whatever, he's wearing a fedora, and he's in bed, and he's naked—or he has the sheets pulled up to his chest, and, and he’s nude from what we can see. And he’s like smoking a cigarette, right? So the implication is he’s just had sex, and—well, I don't know, I think that's probably the implication. So there's something very subversive about that representation. But I don't know his name, like, I don't know his story. Um, all I can do is speculate about his relationship with Arbus, right? So, it would be a much different photograph if he were the artist, and had an artist statement. I mean, that would tell us all kinds of things about disability, and desirability, sexuality, you know, masculinity. Um, but because the artist is, is someone else, it doesn't quite achieve everything that it might if it were positioned differently. So, yeah, so, and that gets back to why I'm so interested in disability art because we have access to—and not that all disability art is self-representation but a lot of it is, and in those cases we have—we can interview those folks. We can read up about them, and they teach us so much about disability. Like, that Arbus image is a much different image than two, you know, kids who are little people that have dressed up in white dresses outside the county fair, you see what I'm saying, so…. yeah.

Chloë: [00:29:33] Wow, um, God, this is interesting. I'm wondering… I actually think that disability, in a sense, really works well with interdisciplinarity, just because of its deep variation from person to person, and it kind of embodies um, the approach that you have to take in interdisciplinarity. Um, but I'm wondering what you think about it as someone who's—now I'm talking to your scholarly self a bit—and what you think about that, and a little bit to your social activism.

Eliza: [00:30:05] I think it's—as necessary as it is to think about disability through an intersectional lens, it's equally as necessary to think about it as an interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary project, and I think it's an invitation for all scholars to think about the way that disability attenuates when, like, how we—how we study and write about particular phenomena, I would say. Um, and unfortunately, in my opinion not enough critical scholars take up disability as that opportunity. I think someone like Jasbir Puar shows us how rich it can be to sort of include disability in our analysis, and in their analysis of, um, the debilitated or the maimed Palestinian, for example, in their right maim. They use disability as an intraocular to think about, um, the intention behind colonial violence, and the result of colonial violence. So, in my opinion, you can't really talk about violence without talking about disability, like it's very difficult to think about colonialism, transnationalism, environmental racism, neoliberalism, you know, without thinking about the debilitating effects of these systems of oppression had on, on the body: police violence, state violence, these kinds of things.

And when we're…. I'm like, you know, when Puar picks up disability in such a rigorous way, they also give us a different way of understanding disability, right? So they've given us this language of the debilitated body who—very specifically, is a body who’s maimed or debilitated by neoliberal and colonial processes. Which, again, is a very different experience than somebody who's born disabled, right? So…. so, in my—as I was saying, in my PhD work, I was very concerned with, um, community and disability pride. That concept, um, means so much to me as someone who's been—who was ashamed of disability for so long and experiencing the limiting effects of that shame. So this is a very important concept of my life and of my work. But then when I open my work up a little bit wider through engaging in interdisciplinary scholarship, and I discovered people, like, Puar, or lots of folks who were talking of disability as part of an interdisciplinary project, thinking about colonial violence, for example then I began to understand, okay, I have such experiential knowledge or crip wisdom on disability, um, but this is not the end of the story, right? For Palestinian mother who watches her child be, you know, maimed at a checkpoint, and that child becomes disabled, maybe disability pride isn’t as accessible as it is for me, right? So, without engaging in interdisciplinary scholarship—and we can be led by others who thankfully bring in disability as an interocular in their interdisciplinary scholarship—then I think I, for one, would just sort of default to white supremacist, um scholarship. So, it's much more interesting, it's much more culturally relevant, it's much more, it's—has the entire ethics we need to bring… bring things together, and as you were saying, Chloë, like, to think of our disability and not think about access to work, or, um, economic justice is… I mean… perhaps is irrelevant, right? And—

Chloë: [00:34:35] Yeah, it's impossible not to—for me at least—not to think of the economic sort of straits that disabled people are placed in. And the surveillance, to be honest, that disabled people are—it's constant. I'm gonna ask you—sorry, I'm finding this fascinating, um, but—so I'm going to talk a little bit, I was thinking about, as you were, as you were chatting about it. I think… I came late to the party with disability. I have a disease that was probably there from birth, but one that really activated by the time I was 19. And I really—it took me a very long time to say, okay, I'm disabled, and I'm going—and our organization is called The PROUD Project for a reason, um, at some level. Uh, but yeah, I was late to the party just because of the great social approbation around—I felt it, you know, the dislike, the disgust, and I think, to some extent, you know, even I… I have a disability, I have one that varies from being a total quad to looking normal, and I… even I, when I confront people who are, let's say, quadriplegic, I….I hesitate, do they want me to touch them and shake their hand? Like, I don't have an ease, just because it's different, everybody's different, so it's not like my own access to disability has freed me to totally understand it all. I don't. So that leaves me in a space, I think disabled people—feminists dealt with this, which is: “are you defined by your body, or are you not?” Like, so, a disability—there is no doubt that my life is, has been, deeply determined by the chronic illness and disability that I have. There's no doubt. And yet, I, at some level, am more than that, and how to navigate—like, how do you navigate—at one level, you don't want to be just seen as a cripple, you know, a crip—I mean, I like the crip bond—but, do you know what I mean? How do you… how do you navigate that? Because women in feminism had trouble navigating it, whether you're more than your body or not. And how do you think a disabled person navigates that a bit?

Eliza: [00:36:[00:36:28] Oh, wow, that's a great question. I think I would have to, think about that, um….

Chloë: [00:36:34] That's fine, it's a huge question!

Eliza: [00:36:38] What comes immediately to mind, I think, um, well, a couple things. I think, first of all, as disability scholars and activists, we can thankfully look towards, um, other, um…. feminist scholars, critical race scholars, folks like Audre Lorde, folks like, Julia Kristeva, and Dunn Heroine, and, I mean, I think… think about… we—you know, we do live our lives in our body, and I guess it comes back to phenomenology for me, is, it really does shape our experience. Like, my experience of a handshake is different than your experience of a staircase, is different than your experience of a dark room, or what have you, right? Like, it really does mediate how we meet the world, and how the world meets us, and I think that's—I'm endlessly fascinated that—in the way that our body, our mind, our senses, our emotions mediates for us the world, and, and for that reason, I really I love stories. I really know that not two people in this world experience the world in the same way. um, and I guess, you know, I—you know, continuing along that train of thought: this is why I'm so compelled towards theory and art, because we can make—we can make different meanings, manifest of the material reality, right? Of the body, of this way that we engage the world. People always, you know, sometimes they'll say to me, but why do you use the word disability? It's such an ugly word, and—I think my response is, “because you can make it mean whatever you want it to mean!” Like, it’s a word, it’s a language, I mean, I guess we could shift our language altogether, but I think the more interesting point is, like, what do they mean to you? Why are you perturbed by it? And how could it make it different kind of meaning? So… so that's why I think theory and art are so—I’m so drawn to theory and art, because, you know, I am in this body. For me, I'm, you know, I'm like lots of people, I'm very noticeably disabled, I show up to—in the world through disability, right? And there's no changing that, and so what I can change is how the world meets me, and how the world understands me, and how the world is accessible. So I think in some ways, you know, we have to hang on to the body, because that brings us to questions of access. But at the same time, it doesn't—I don't think hanging on to the body or materiality, as feminist have shown us, is a limiting feature to our understanding of the world, because the way that we're in—that we are in our bodies can mean so many things, and…. and those meetings are constructive, and therefore they're malleable, they're open for interpretation, and I think that’s what we all kind of do. 

Chloë: [00:40:06] Can you tell us a little bit about the Office of Social Innovation and your role there, and what you do? It's… it's been around for a while, but still you have a possibility of sort of taking it in a certain direction as director, so I'm just…. Can you explain what it is for our audience? And what you do. 

Eliza: [00:40:21] The Office of Social Innovation, or the OSI, you’re right it’s been around for a long time, I think it was established in 2016 by the Ashoka Institute, which is a social innovation institute, which gifted TMU with the money to establish this office. And the way that the office has served—taken on a, um, a mandate has been to, um, increase and connect students with the opportunity to engage in socially innovative work. Um, and our approach to social innovation is as a distinctly social justice project. So, as a field of social innovation, um, innovative new solutions to systemic or within social problems, and you can do that in all kinds of ways: capitalist way, fascist ways. But not to say that that's representative of the field in general, but… but we… we take up a socially innovative—sorry—we think about sort of addressing these problems through the lens of social innovation. So, if I were to describe that using my disability studies framework, as I often do, I would say we're not interested only in inclusion, but transformation. Recognizing that inclusion into a university, in art gallery, etc, is inclusion into a white supremacist colonial system. Um, and so, do we want that, or do we want to transform that system all together by way of our inclusion? Um, do we want our inclusion to incite change, is what I'm trying to say. Um, and so, um, my predecessor, Dr. Melanie Panitch, she, I would say, one of her legacy projects of the OSI which she brought was Sanctuary Scholars Program, which is—occupies a tremendous amount of our work at this point. So, um, Sanctuary Scholars, so in, um, in Canada, um, if you are someone with precarious immigration status, so if you're a refugee, if you're someone waiting for your immigration status to be resolved, etc, you're not allowed to, um, enter into post-secondary education. You’re allowed to enter into secondary education, but not post-secondary education. So that’s another form of—way that, you know, immigration works and all of this stuff. You know, a family could arrive in Canada when a child was two, and they, they sort of lived their whole life in Toronto, um, and for whatever reason, never fully, um, get—acquired their citizenship. And then when it's time to come to university, they realize they can't attend university, um, unless they were to attend as an international student, which would be ridiculous, right? So, um, Sanctuary Scholars, provides an access pathway for students with precarious immigration status to enter the university. So TMU’s one of, um, two universities that has this access pathway, York being the second. So it's—Sanctuary Scholars, um, is for—we're into our third years, but it's a, it's a relatively new program? But it's highly impactful, it's highly popular, and I think it's, you know, it's pretty incredible. And it's definitely, you know, I—so, so, um, I think one of your other questions is… is to sort of talk about the strategic mandate of, um, the OSI, the Office of Social Innovation. And I would say the interesting point between my research, the OSI, and Sanctuary Scholars, is accessibility, right?  Like Sanctuary Scholars is thinking to access to education, um, and as we were talking about earlier, migration is not a—it's the process wherein one often meets traumatizing experiences, debilitating experiences. So, disability is certainly not divorced from the—experiencing, um, precarity or precarious status. And so, so I… I've used…. Sanctuary Scholars to develop a mandate, an overall mandate of thinking about social justice approaches to accessing education in Canada and campus space. And as you say, Chloë sort of, using an interdisciplinary lens, or even using, perhaps, a disability studies lens to think about a broader social phenomena. And, who is—you know, TMU is one of those universities who has an executive plan a commitment to providing access to education for all, right? And so I often think of the OSI's position in the university as one of holding the university to task on that commitment, right? Like, what is this thing? If you're saying that it's accessible to all, are you working towards free education? Are you working towards providing access to incarcerated people so they can obtain their degrees while imprisoned? You know, what does it mean to have a Sanctuary Scholars program? How do we develop our campus as a sanctuary space? What does that mean for the relationship between security and the police, if you're having undocumented students on your campus? Like, like, what does it fully mean to make education accessible? And so, alongside running the Sanctuary Scholars program, we're also looking at things like, um, the universities, or, like, harm reduction policies, or lack thereof. TMU is located right in the downtown core. We had a safe consumption site on our campus for a long time, and part of [Doug] Ford’s, um, Safer Street’s a Act, which closed, you know, 95% of the safe consumption sites, um, our university bought the building where the safe consumption site was on our campus, kick them out, right? And so now, we have all kinds of drug users—community members and, you know, students who people always forget are drug users as well—using drugs in what's essentially an unregulated or an unsupervised safe injection, or an unsafe injection site, I would say, right? Just because you close a resource doesn't mean people magically disappear, but you can imagine that this was, you know, a point of contention when parents would, you know, bring their kids to campus tours, and they'd encounter needles and what have you, right? It was a big promise of the university to “clean this up,” and to, um, yeah, so to make a safer space, um, for… for all, but… but we would say, “how in the world does closing a safe consumption site doing anything for the safety of our community members and our students?” Thinking about, like, access to campus space, like…. people, like, we're on Indigenous land, we're in the downtown core, like, we can't just displace people who have to be able to access our campus space and do so in a hospitable way, like, and receive hospitality, receive services. And so, yeah, thinking about that, access in that way, too, just, um…. Just trying to work toward harm reduction policies. 

Chloë: [00:49:10] I was thinking as you were talking, um, I think refugee claimants are the only immigrant class—I could be wrong, I could be talking out of my head—that actually can bring disabled members into the country. Um, so I'm thinking of about probably five or six years ago, there was a chosen candidate for, uh, who had accepted a posting at the University of Toronto, and was coming from the U.S., and had a childhood with Down Syndrome, and in the end, um, Immigration Canada did not allow him to take the position because he had a disabled member of the family. And I find most members of Canadian society are unaware of these sort of barriers that people have, that they're actually health and disability refugees where people are blocked, either because they have to get care in a certain environment, or they only have insurance in a certain environment, and they can't move, uh, or better, you know, better themselves. And I often think that, um, that refugees could almost be applied to some groups of people who have disabilities, because they are excluded so often from permission to take part. I mean, that happened with CERB, which was—everybody else was allowed $2,000 a month, um, during the pandemic emergency, um, but individuals with disabilities were to remain on their $1,100 a month, and they finally got, I think, $600 or $700 as a little boost over the two-year period or something. So, as you were talking, and you were talking about how, um, disability and…. and, um, being a sanctuary sort of intermingle, I think they really do, and I think there's room for thinking about even more about how, um, you know, disability, I argue it's almost like as soon as you become disabled, you get shuttled into a different ramp and a different space in the social imagination, and actually in the social and economic policies of the state. And so you're unwanted, right? So you can't be brought in, and the only way a disabled individual is brought in is actually if the family is a refugee claimant. Anyway, it's an aside, but I was just thinking about it as you, as you talked about how appalling it was that this individual was not allowed—couldn't take up the post because couldn't get, you know, couldn't get approval from Immigration Canada to take the post, even though they were qualified because they had a disabled member of their family. But that's a nice depressing thing to talk about! 

Uh, where do you think, um, I'm interested, where do you think disability and social justice, social—and perhaps social innovation is going to go, or where do you think you would like it to go? What would your ideal, uh, be?

Eliza: [00:51:59] I think those are two very different, um, predictions, um. I think with the rise of fascism and authoritarianism, I think we're already seeing Mark Carney implement all—dismantle disability accessibility advisory boards, and implement all kinds of, uh, pretty radical border security measures, uh, workplace security measures, you know, there's a—we're experiencing in Canada, I think, the erosion of, um, human rights and disability rights, and… one… sort of…. um, you know, it used to be that, um,we would think about—we want disability justice beyond disability rights. Let us, I think, not achieve liberation—liberation is not achieved through legislation alone. And as we’re seeing legislation dissolve, and I'm not even talking about America, but, like, of course, there's heinous examples of the widespread version of disability rights, accessibility legislation: Medicaid and Medicare for folks who aren't working, which—surprise, surprise—is disabled people and their caregivers. Um, you know, I… so I wonder about what we're going to do about that, right? We've spent a long time, rightfully, speaking back against rights and legislation frameworks and thinking beyond that, to different kinds of horizons. You know, thinking about collective care, over state care, these kinds of things. What happens when state care is no longer there, right? Like, what does that do to politics? Um, and, uh, you know, I don't know we’re just sort of at the beginning of these discussions. You know, it's things like pandemics, continue to come around, um, the climate crisis, smoke, you know, the kinds of environmental concerns; migration, you know, facism, all kinds of things. More and more people are going to become disabled, and disabled people are going to experience increased vulnerability, and precarity, and necropolitics, I think, in general are just going to, going to be—yeah, going to be ever more, um, permanent. Things like—I mean, this is a whole can of worms—but Medical Assistance In Dying legislation which is going to become more and more accessible at the same time as our culture becomes less and less accessible. We're already seeing people who have been kicked out of their affordable housing unit because the ventilation is inadequate enough to keep the smoke out, or they don't have air conditioning so, you know, they're—it's too hot to live there, these kinds of things. And then they're not able to find adequate housing, and they're being offered MAID as an alternative to accessible housing by caseworkers, social workers, doctors, right? People in authority. Because it's far quicker to receive MAID by—this is, sorry, I’m now on a whole different thing—but it's much quicker to receive MAID, it’s 90 days, and what accessible housing unit has a 90-day wait period, right? So, this is what I'm saying, right? Like, this—like, necropolitics politics is on the rise, fascism is on the rise, and…. and our rights are being eroded, um…. and so I think the next frontier of disability rights and justice work is gonna be using our creative ingenuity and our collective, um, activism to think about what it means to be a crip, to be precarious in these particular times. I think, you know, if we're to think more, hopefully, and, you know, and…. I recently attended a talk by Jasbir Puar, who is still doing a lot of work in Palestine. And they were sort of suggesting that, um—I can't quite do their complex, um, argument justice—but this does seem like the end times. And after the end, is a new beginning, right? So, like, if it's the end of capitalism—I mean, something else is going to come up, and that could be facism it could be democratic socialism, or it could be socialism in general, or something else that we don’t even know about. So, I think that as scary as these times are, like, there's also hopefulness, I think, like, disabled people know how to take care of people, of each other during—when we can't breathe the air. Like, we have that worked out. We know how to get respirators, we know how to stay indoors, we know how to take care of people virtually, these kinds of things, and those—that crip wisdom, you know, is gonna become more and more necessary as we all move into whatever comes next. And so I'm really—maybe hopeful is not the right word—but I'm very, sort of, thankful for disabled people in this moment, because I know that—that, yeah, that the end of something doesn't mean the end of life, right? Like, disabled people that you—you become disabled, you think it's the end of the world, but it's not. Like, there’s lots of love and creativity, and compassion, and laughter, and joy beyond the end. 
And so yeah, so we'll see what that looks like, I guess.

Lark: [00:58:30] Yeah, this is, like… thank you, this has been a really phenomenal conversation. I think the things that you're speaking to are just, like, nail on the head of, like, what I and everyone in this Zoom meeting and everyone in the world is kind of experiencing today. And so I'm wondering how this intersectionality, this new future that we're perhaps looking at, how you bring that into your curatorial practice, your professional practice as an academic, like, how do you hold—hold space for all of these aspects of the world and experiences?

Eliza: [00:59:05] Yeah, that's a really great question. Yeah, that's really interesting to think about. How do I hold space… it's almost like… how do we hold space for the collective possibility of something different? Um, I think we encourage people to engage in speculative thinking about the near future. I think, you know, to give people prompts about, you know, what… what does freedom look like, and… and how do we tentatively achieve that? Okay, now let's introduce gen AI into the mix, so let's introduce smoke into the mix, and let's introduce Trump into the mix, and…. And sort of… and really grapple with those questions. Like, we want liberation, and now we have to think about AI, and… and, like, how did that impact our work, our ability to get work, our, you know, all kinds of things, and how do we move through that? And what lessons from the past can we draw on to move through that? You know, the is climate changing, the climate has changed before, and we've moved through that, and for a lot of disabled, the climate irreversibly changed during COVID, and they moved through that. So how can we, sort of take those lessons, and…. and that ingenuity to move through whatever's coming next, and I think this—there's creative writing prompts, speculative thinking prompts, artistic prompts, um, that facilitate that kind of speculative thinking that is rooted in the material conditions of the everyday, and I think now's the time to do that. We unfortunately can't just, in my opinion, sort of—maybe we can—but we can't stop with imagining otherwise. We need to think about, “okay, if that's what we want, how did we get there within the current conditions? How do we keep each other safe? For policy reform and legislative reform” and all that stuff. But to get real about, um, to get real about the threats that are coming our way, and to not sort of bury our heads in the sand about it, but actually think about “what are the implications of MAID,” and, you know, all of these things, and how do we keep each other safe and sort of, sort of…. beyond it. 

Chloë: [01:01:52] Well, that was a real delight. Dr. Chandler expresses a deep and subtle grasp of political, social, and cultural theories—and, all of these as they relate to the experience of being disabled in our society.

Lark: [01:02:03] During our conversation, we touch on a number of really interesting philosophers and artists such as: Julia Kristeva, Judith Scott, and Vincent van Gogh. We will leave a list of all of the names mentioned by Dr. Chandler in the show notes accompanying this episode for anyone who’s interested.

Chloë: [01:02:21] My doctorate is in political theory and so I really enjoyed that we all explored so many big and small philosophical questions. It’s a privilege to be part of an exchange of ideas about disability with someone like Dr. Chandler. 
 
Lark: [01:02:32] Yeah, as someone whose professional art experience is limited to the commodification of works, I found Dr. Chandler’s approach to art as an outlet for people with disabilities to express themselves, rather than a mode for revenue, extremely refreshing. Dr. Chandler’s inclusive approach allows us to imagine a collective, hopeful future. 
 
Chloë: [01:02:52] Well, it is a podcast experience that I think introduces listeners to a remarkably thoughtful individual who shares suppositions and ideas from which we could all benefit. Dr. Chandler concludes our conversation with a surprisingly hopeful perspective about the rise of facism, and worldwide politico-socio-economic instability. And, as far as I’m concerned, Eliza Chandler concludes this exchange with a “bang” when she conjectures about the future.
 
 Lark: [01:03:20] This episode of Broadcastability was hosted by Chloë Atkins, a professor at the University of Toronto and an anti-ableist researcher, and Lark Huska, an undergraduate researcher at the University of Toronto and Communications Officer for The PROUD Project. This episode was also edited by Lark Huska. Isabelle Avakumovic-Pointon created the artwork and Justin Laurie composed the music. Broadcastability can be found on Apple Music and Spotify and at Broadcastability.ca. Broadcastability is a PROUD Project production, based in Toronto, Canada. Visit thePROUDproject.ca to learn more.