Andries Hiskes received a grant for research on disabilities and political action: ‘This is not a cute topic’
Lecturer and researcher Andries Hiskes was recently awarded a Veni grant by NWO to investigate how artists and activists with disabilities are developing new forms of political action. “My research isn’t necessarily about solving a problem or fixing something. I want to offer a different perspective and create space for an aesthetic language to discuss physical differences.”
You’re going to be conducting research into our views on disabled bodies and political activism. How did you come to choose this topic?
“In my PhD research, I investigated the emotional responses that bodies with disabilities evoke in us, using film and literature as my basis. For example, if you come across someone on the street who is having difficulty walking or moves differently, it can make you feel uncomfortable. You want to look, but you often don’t dare to. At the same time, many people feel a kind of imposed moral judgement on that very act of looking. It’s actually not allowed. That fascinated me. After all, we have relatively few words to talk about the aesthetic experience. If we set aside the moral aspect for a moment: what exactly happens to you in situations like that? How are you affected, and how do you put that into words? I explored this in films and novels because it is precisely through the arts that you can explore what is difficult to discuss in everyday, shared experiences. Disgust and wonder, for example, are often closer to one another than people realise. We often oscillate between the two.”
How did you make the connection to political activism?
“One of the conclusions of my thesis was that interpreting bodies is itself an ‘ability’. Here too, not every body is the same in this respect. Who is able to interpret and who is not, who can put their emotions into words and who cannot, helps to determine, in social interactions, who is heard. That also makes ‘ability’ and ‘disability’ political concepts. I wanted to find out more about this.”
That led you to mixed dance companies comprising dancers with and without disabilities.
“Following a blog post about my PhD thesis, I was invited by a choreographer from a mixed dance company to pop round. She recognised much of my research in her own practice. Her dance company consists of dancers with and without disabilities, with visible and invisible disabilities. When you bring all these different bodies and minds together in dance, what happens? How you interpret and understand one another, and the variety in how people do this or are able to do so, becomes important. Collaboration in such a company is not a given and is sometimes fraught with friction. Moreover, such companies do not automatically gain access to performance venues. In the art world, there are aesthetic norms: what does a cultural institution want to show on stage, and when? Who is allowed to appear where is also a political issue. Such aesthetic standards dictate how a body is supposed to move. What happens if you deviate from this? What happens if you expose people to bodies that move differently from what is expected? And if you are turned away somewhere, what do you do then?
What exactly will you be doing in your research?
When is a body’s movement recognised as an act or action, and when is it interpreted as a form of noise? How do we determine this? I wish to explore this using a three-step approach: how bodies can appear in public, how they come together and organise themselves, and how they are recognised and acknowledged as political actors.
In 1990, for example, the United States saw the famous Capitol Crawl, a political protest in which people with disabilities crawled up the steps of the Capitol to demand civil rights, which ultimately led to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). What fascinates me is the innovation within the movement itself. Before the Capitol Crawl, it was hard to imagine how an act such as crawling could constitute a political action. The activists who took part were therefore not only demanding civil rights, but also challenging the very definition of what could be considered a political act.
How are approaching this research?
I wish to carry out archival research into political activism in which people with various disabilities took part, specifically to explore what this can teach us about the act of activism itself. In addition, I also want to engage with a diverse range of artists and activists to interview them and explore how they view the relationship with political action, and to examine how this is reflected in art. I will also incorporate these insights into a podcast. I want to showcase different perspectives. Not everyone has to agree with one another. In fact, the struggle is central to what I’m studying. I’m interested in the tensions that arise when you bring together diverse groups and individuals, and how these can be productive. As far as I’m concerned, friction is productive too. It’s not a ‘feel-good’ topic.”
What motivates you to carry out this research?
“Firstly, because I have a disability myself and I find that we tend to talk about disabilities mainly in functional, medical terms. That often feels like a smokescreen to avoid talking about what disabilities do to us and the different feelings they can evoke.”
“My research isn’t necessarily intended to solve a problem or fix anything. I want to offer a different perspective. I want to create space for an aesthetic language through which we can talk about the way we perceive differences, and why we may or may not wish to discuss them. I hope that we can learn – when we are moved – to reflect on how it affects us personally in the first place.”