How do you throw a brick through the window...: Expanding Publics and Embodiments

“How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank if you can’t get out of bed?” is a radical yet non-rhetorical question posed by writer, artist, astrologer, and disabled non-binary Korean-American activist Johanna Hedva. Hedva’s 2016 essay continues, questioning Hannah Arendt’s assumption of the public street as the de-facto site for civic action and able-bodied action as the singular mode of protest. Writing from their bed, Hedva demands recognition of disabled advocacy from the margins of society—a state enforced under the U.S. capitalist medical industrial complex.

A current research initiative, occurring from 2024–2026, How do you throw a brick through the window... comprises a symposium, artist-led workshops, and exhibitions, co-organized by Tufts University Art Galleries and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center exploring forms of embodiment within sculpture, installation, new media, and performance informed by disabled, cripped, sick, mad, and healing frameworks. These methodologies consider expanded notions of public space and embodiment.

Building upon this research premise, this session calls arts workers, artists, archivists, organizers, curators, and academics to offer papers engaging disabled forms of protest within grass-roots Internet-based projects; circulating publishing initiatives; and care-giving collective work. “How do you throw a brick through the window... : Expanding Publics and Embodiments” ultimately posits questions such as: what public spaces remain unconsidered and how might reconsideration open new avenues of advocacy and protest? How might innovation or technological advancement help or hinder the development of cooperative and accessible space? How do disabled communities provide models for collective world-building?