On Crip Time

Whether it’s the tenure track, exhibition record, or time-to-degree, we are all racing against a clock, scrambling to meet goals that we did not set ourselves. With one in four adults in the United States living with a disability, these expectations of productivity, rooted in ableism and capitalism, disregard at least a quarter of the population. Disability justice activists and scholars of critical disability studies offer a countermeasure to these ticking clocks: the notion of crip time. “Rather than bend disabled bodies and minds to meet the clock,” writes Alison Kafer in her book Feminist, Queer, Crip, “crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds.” Crip time calls for radical slowness and nonlinear thinking that centers disabled bodyminds.

This panel invites contributions from scholars, artists, educators, and activists who work on crip time, in the pace they set for their work and/or as a framework for understanding artworks, creative and research practices, and normative ideals of “professional development.” Papers might consider, for example, (re)readings of time-based artworks, artist talks from makers whose practices are informed by disability or crip theory, curatorial projects that consider crip time in exhibition spaces, or presentations about confronting and subverting ableist timelines in art and educational institutions. Intersectional, non-Eurocentric perspectives are especially welcome.