User:Kyrafisherl/Sins Invalid (Draft)

Sins Invalid

Sins Invalid is a disability justice-based performance project that incubates artists with disabilities, centralizing artists of color and LGBTQ / gender-variant artists. Led by disabled people of color, Sins Invalid’s performance work explores the themes of sexuality, embodiment and the disabled body. In addition to multidisciplinary performances by people with disabilities, Sins Invalid organizes visual art exhibits, readings, and a bi-monthly educational video series. Sins Invalid collaborates with other movement-building projects and provides disability justice trainings.

Founding and Organizational History:

Sins Invalid was founded in 2005 by Patricia Berne and Leroy F. Moore Jr. The organization, which Berne has described as "a hybrid between a community-based organization and a performance," originated in the San Francisco Bay Area and tours nationally. Berne and Moore, have both had disabilities since birth, and they started the project upon realizing the paucity of venues dedicated to celebration of their work and their bodies. In the documentary, Patricia Berne explains that “there was no place where [they] could celebrate [their] bodies, as beautiful, and disabled and hot.” so Berne and Moore Jr. decided to start Sins Invalid. Berne serves as Director of the organization and has been involved in work surrounding asylum claims, youth incarceration alternatives, the LGBTQIA community, and mental health support for survivors of violence, among other fields. Moore is Sins Invalid's Community Relations Director. His work extends to writing, poetry, lecture series, and hip-hop/music. He has worked, studied, and lectured internationally and is considered a "leading voice" regarding police brutality toward and wrongful incarceration of people with disabilities.

According to a Huffington Post interview conducted by Cory Silverburg with Berne and Moore, Sins Invalid's (pronounced as in "not valid") name came from the idea that a disabled child is a manifestation of "the sins of the father being cast upon the son". As Berne articulates, there is a pervasive societal norm that validates bodies according to beauty, hygienic, health, and other sets of standards. The Sins Invalid framework asserts that humans have a wide variety of embodiments, and all bodies are valid and worthy of celebration. It is also a play on words, since people with disabilities have historically been referred to as "invalids".

Since its creation, Sins Invalid has held annual major theater performances and an artist-in-residence performance, which have all received critical acclaim. In 2012, the project launched a Kickstarter campaign, culminating in the 2013 release of a 32-minute documentary titled Sins Invalid: An Unshamed Claim to Beauty, directed by Berne, which details its disability justice efforts and the value of artistic expression. The documentary explains the thought processes behind performers, directors, writers, and co-founders. The documentary also elucidates the need for inclusion of sex and sexuality in disability rights discourse and every day discourse. Since the Covid-19 Pandemic in 2022 the artwork and performances of Sins Invalid have moved to a more accessible, online platform. The blog on the Sins Invalid website has become more of a source of artwork and conversation. Further, a podcast has been created that is listed on the website.

Vision

A review by Terry Rowden states, "Moving decisively beyond any simple ‘shock’ or ‘transgressive’ aesthetic…challenges the politics that systematically disables our ability to recognize beauty." Berne has described the project as, "an erotic event featuring people with disabilities". Sins Invalid harnesses the power of the erotic, using it as a force in politicizing the disabled body. According to Audre Lorde, the erotic is a means to assert power for people who have historically been denied agency. She writes, "The erotic is a measure between our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings." Sins Invalid's invocation of the erotic is a means to empower those who have been denied a space for expression in the public sphere.

Berne writes on the move from individual legal rights toward a collective human rights framework. Berne's writing speaks to both types of change. She uses herself as an example, discussing the fact that her wheelchair does not climb stairs and asking the reader if this is a problem with the wheelchair or a problem with the stairs.[7] Berne encourages her audience to think critically about our surroundings and the barriers that exist for various members of society due to identity. Berne and Moore both view the oppression of the non-normative body as something to move beyond, toward opportunities for liberation and beauty and a new vision of embodiment.[7]

Disability Justice

In the Cory Silverberg interview, Berne said, "I can experience my sexuality as a crip, as someone who fully occupies a non-normative physical space. And part of that movement to fully living in one's own experience is naming and resisting dehumanization." Acknowledging the full history of disability in the United States requires a deconstruction of the dehumanizing practices that have plagued the community. All types of experiences are included in the show, and the denial of sexuality is part of that dehumanization. In the same interview, Moore said, "…we’re sharing these stories in a way that hopefully connects us to our past and also allows us to change our future." The medicalized framing of disability has framed it as a problem to be cured, a pathology that decides, alongside doctors, the future of its host. Sins Invalid explains that many disabled people are often told what their futures will look like so Sins Invalid aims to reinforce this agency and choice in the futures of people with disabilities, including an audience in order to expand the message and so that people with and without disabilities might internalize it.  

Sins Invalid's celebration of the multiplicity and diversity of identities is an iteration of intersectionality in practice. The performances are working to demonstrate that the human body is not permanent and unchanging; rather, it is a non-static being that can change based on nature, the environment, or perception. Since disability does not discriminate, it is useful as a category of analysis in terms of its potential to create, as disability studies scholar Simi Linton puts it, "a prism through which one can gain a broader understanding of society and human experience". Since Sins Invalid includes performers with disabilities who are also people of color, queer, etc., intersectionality is woven into its performances and guiding ideology. In the documentary, Sins Invalid documentary member Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha comments on the freedom that the space provides for various manifestations of difference, such as queerness. She says, "No one has to closet themselves," and this applies to any identity. This ties into Berne's idea of being able to "orient the gaze," or the position the audience occupies as consumers of the performance. Since the project is conscious of so many diverse lenses and does not limit the frame to disability, performers and audience members alike have the opportunity to feel empowered by the acknowledgement of identities.

In order to understand the idea of embodiment, of occupying the body, Berne states, one must have an understanding of the body as situated within a historical, political, cultural, and social context. Feminist disability studies scholar Rosemarie Garland-Thomson argues that, "integrating disability as a category of analysis and a system of representation deepens, expands, and challenges feminist theory". For Garland-Thomson, the "shared human experience of embodiment" provides a framework in which all individuals should be able to understand the way systems affect or do not affect them based on their bodies.

Programs

The Sins Invalid company has different programs related to performance and education for the community. This includes heading and producing different performances, podcasts, books, a documentary, and other educational and community based programs.

Production

Sins Invalid has started producing different performances that support disabled artist's visions. One of the first ones was "We Love Like Barnacles: Crip Lives in Climate Chaos" which was "a show focusing on the ways that climate change is disproportionately affecting disabled people and other marginalized communities". This began as a performance done live online and now is part of their other educational programming under Sins Invalid's podcasts.

Books

Under education, Sins Invalid has included the two editions of "Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement in Our People". This is known as a Disability Justice Primer that is based on the work of Patty Berne and Sins Invalid. The website explains that "Skin, Tooth, and Bone: The Basis of Movement in Our People" “offers concrete suggestions for moving beyond the socialization of ableism, such as mobilizing against police violence, how to commit to mixed ability organizing, and access suggestions for events.” Further, Sandra Allan explains that the book "gives an overview of what disability justice is, and more importantly, what it can become". Similarly, Sins Invalid has a coloring book titled Disability Justice from A to Z where “twenty-six crip, trans, queer, and BIPOC artists offer their interpretations of Disability Justice concepts” while also offering a creative and self-soothing outlet.

Documentary

The documentary also offers an educational outlet for people in the community and others interested in learning more about Sins Invalid and people with disabilities. Sins Invalid also provides other resources to educate people more on disabilities such as the 10 Principles of Disability Justice and Disability Justice, which are both by Patty Berne and collaborated on with Sins Invalid.

Podcast

The Sins Invalid company has also created a podcast that has 3 episodes that came out in 2020.The first one is titled “We Love Like Barnacles”, where Patty Bernes considers how disabled people have the potential to be treated in comparison to non-disabled people during the climate crisis. The second episode “Crip Resilience is Nature’s Brilliance” which is hosted by Rafi Ruffino Darrow and hosts Sofia Webster while they explore environmental racism and ableism and how this impacts marginalized communities. The last episode is hosted by Rafi Ruffino Darrow and Mordecai Cohen Ettinger was the guest. In this episode, Mordecai Cohen Ettinger explains that people who have been harmed or disabled by environmental injury/illness are “planetary whistle blowers” for the state of the climate crisis.