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From: Steve Brown
Date: 17 Oct 2000
Time: 09:34:31
Remote Name: spider-wd051.proxy.aol.com
A very good question, Dowdy! I turned to art to explore and explain disability culture for two reasons. First, since I'm a writer it made sense to me to share my writings and those of others. But I also realized that's how people most easily connected with the culture. So now every time I give a presentation I read from a long prose poem called "Out of Isolation" by a performance artist with CP in Berkeley named Frank Moore, and a couple of songs by a lady in Cananda, Jane Field (whose disabiilty I forget)who writes humorous songs about disability. In the early 1990s a friend asked me how I could believe there was a disability culture? I asked him what he considered culture. He responded: writing, music,art, humor, and several other things. For every thing he mentioned I gave him examples of people creating in those genres from the disability experience. And this was long before the arrival of the internet. Now, he's one of the staunchest supporters of the idea. Understanding what people are trying to say when they write (paint, joke, speak) about disability and focusing on the ones you like is how I think icons are found.
Steve