Being in Relationship: Reflections on Dis-Performing, Hospitality, and Accessibility

This article is from online and personal conversations between members of the Dis-Performing: Disability and Performance Working Group following the graduate student initiative Convergence: Unsettling the Americas: Radical Hospitalities and Intimate Geographies, in Toronto, Ontario, the territory of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. As members, allies, artists, researchers, and advocates of Deaf and disability communities, we all experience hospitality and accessibility in many different ways—whether hosting or guesting. This article explores our stories and perspectives on this during and since the Convergence event on 5–7 October 2017. As artists and individuals passionate about creating accessiblefor all, we discovered the importance of being in relationship with one another to create meaningful conditions of accessibility, beyond concepts of accommodation that put the labour on those needing to advocate for themselves. This article shares the complexities of these relationships through considerations of hosting failures, ethics of creating protocols, interanimation, micro-protections, care, slowness, and the process of invitation. We share strategies we took as a group, and as individuals, to find meaningful spaces and time to host and guest ourselves, both within and outside our working groupFor us, disability generates different ways of understanding the world, experiencing hospitality, and how to (be) both guest and host.