I am interested in Hannah Kemp-Welch’s project “The Right To Record.”
When applying for the disability benefit ‘PIP’ (personal independence payment), disabled people and those with long term health conditions are forced to go to a private company for assessment and validation of their own disability. They are forced to perform their disability in the presence of an assessor. A disability news network reported that that the assessors ‘lied, ignored written evidence and dishonestly reported the results of physical examinations’.
It is presumed that the assessors want to limit the access to PIP. Is this a prescription from higher forces; a government who performs social welfare for aesthetic purposes, but does not actually care about the wellbeing of citizens? And ideology. Within our systems there exists the stigma on disabled people who are deemed as a burden. It is a common inversion of responsibility; if anyone cares to witness a disabled person and their struggle, they might learn that the disability often arises from external limitations; a society, architecture and bureaucracy constructed for “able”-bodied, “legal” citizens.
My mother has MS and now mostly uses a mobility scooter to navigate Tramore, the small town in Ireland where she lives. The scooter has small wheels and it struggles to cross the many potholes and degraded sidewalks. When she first had the scooter, I was able to finally see the apathy and ableism present in the streets I had walked on for years previously. Her struggle is silent unless she can speak. Disabled people must be listened to.
Hannah started this project to give a voice to those silenced people. This is artist as community worker. How does one facilitate, and work with a community they are also estranged from by education, language and aesthetics? Hannah discusses the tensions of aesthetics between a white educated arts student and a working class community. She said that the art was not the final product, a 30 minute audio file, but instead it was the connection with the group.
Community work is a fascinating alternative to individual art projects; ethically they seem juxtapositioned. One can do both.