Access Artistry Manifesto: Hook&Loop Artist Collective

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Access Artistry ManifestoHook&Loop Artist Collective¹

The Access Artistry Manifesto was created as a creative access statement for UNDUE BURDEN's residency at The Painted Bride in Fall 2024. UNDUE BURDEN is an ongoing digital community archiving project led by members of Hook&Loop and Disabled, Chronically Ill, Sick, Mad,² Neurodivergent+ people in Philadelphia. Hook&Loop is an accessible artist collective and network that builds accessible creative practices and interdisciplinary events.

We wrote the Access Artistry Manifesto to name our intentions and grounding philosophy around accessibility. It is incomplete, imperfect, and in process, just like us, and aims to present accessibility as art rather than as a legalistic task as it is often considered in art and cultural spaces. The Manifesto presents access as a generative, creative force and even its own artistic genre. We consider accessibility as art and access labor as work.

Hook&Loop's digital archive project UNDUE BURDEN was in residence at The Painted Bride in Philadelphia from October 19 to November 23, 2024, with the installation of a "living archive" and five sensorial programs that invited the public to expand and engage with our living archive. The living archive installation was created by Maggie Mills with fabrication assistance from B. H. Mills. It consists of seven 6' x 12' fabric loops printed with hand-drawn motifs and archive photographs on unprimed parachute cloth suspended from wood and metal armatures. The archive installation fabric motifs are composed of hand-drawn images that are woven together to represent Hook&Loop's vision for an accessible future. Three of the fabric loop motifs host images from the UNDUE BURDEN digital archive. Some of these images are accompanied by QR codes for audio descriptions and archive notes. The remaining four fabric loop motifs serve as frameworks for our living archive, which visitors were invited to contribute to during our residency workshops. Multiple other installations were set up across the space to invite in the fullness of Sick, Mad, and Disabled embodied experience, including a cozy library with handmade soft cushions, quilts, and rugs created by collective members, a low-stim lounge with sensory tools and low lighting, a space for naming and expressing disability rage, and an access altar to honor our disabled ancestors and reclaim spirituality. The events incorporated poetry, music, dance, a touch-based gallery, and an ILL-legal wedding party,³ each encouraging immersion, artistic collaboration, interdisciplinarity, audience [End Page E-17] engagement, and the valuation of Sick, Mad, Neurodivergent, and Disabled artmaking beyond nondisabled aesthetic constraints. Join our mailing list or find us on instagram at @hookandloopphl to learn more about upcoming events. Our meetings are virtual and open to all who identify as Sick, Mad, Chronically Ill, Disabled, or Neurodivergent+! Email Hook&Loop for more information at hookandloopphl@gmail.com.

Manifesto compiled, collaged, edited, and beautified by the Hook&Loop Access Artistry Team: Miranda Blas, Shannon Brooks, Rafi Ruffino Darrow, Aubrey Donisch, Julia Havard, CJ Jasen, Kai Kornegay, and Maggie Mills. Text, intention, and concept by Hook&Loop collective members and program leads for residency: Ernest Bing, Miranda Blas, Shannon Brooks, Nat DiFrank, Phoebe Dilworth, Julia Havard, Cris Iacoponi, Aalaya Jones, And Keller, Vinetta Miller, Maggie Mills, Jenna Powers, Pam Price, Miriam Saperstein, George Shands, and many other collective members who shaped Hook&Loop's approach to access, along with the creators of the book documenting UNDUE BURDEN's residency by This Must Be The Place: Samantha Mitchell and Virginia Fleming. This Manifesto is meant to be used, circulated, improved upon, and implemented as a tool, a spell, an invitation, a demand to build radical access.

This is an Access Portal.

We are access artists.

Beyond legal mandates, compliance, afterthoughts,

Access is Art!

Access space.

Many millions of people are newly disabled.

We meet this emergency with emergence.

We build ramps over stairs. We bust through doors of rooms that were not built for us (or crawl through back windows!).

We make art from bed and make being in bed our art. We dissolve boundaries between the physical and the virtual.

We shift tables, chairs, and paradigms to reclaim our space.

Allow your needs to expand and contract like bodies and...