Positionality in relation to disability: Able-bodied white male 50 years old living in london.
Christine Sun Kim is a Korean American deaf artist living in Berlin. We see her walking through a busy city on her way to her cool and stylish loft style artists studio. The film reminds me of a music video or lifestyle fashion magazine shoot. Christine Sun Kim is asking us to ‘listen with our eyes and not just our ears. That would be the ideal.’. Christine Sun Kim discusses her frustration at not being able communicate as she wants to using sign language. She mentions the struggle her parents had trying to learn sign language and English at the same time and then teach her both languages. In terms of intersectionality the artist and her parents face two disadvantages.
This film makes me consider style and coolness. Is the message for me, you can be cool, attractive and successful with a disability? or you can be cool attractive and successful even though you have a disability? It is making me consider are some disabilities cooler, more socially acceptable, than others? Is the film aspirational and inspirational for other disabled artists or would they think ‘I don’t look like that or live that life she has no relevance to me?
My students are very interested in what is and what isn’t cool and edgy, but there is a triviality to these ideas. Is disability too serious a topic to try to make cool?
Although the film and its subject are undoubtedly appealing there is something unsettling for me about the stereotypical artists world the artist is showing us in the film.
Hi Michael, I really enjoyed reading your blog on the film by Christine Sun Kim. I like the way you considered the idea of it being cool and stylish and the way it can be portrayed as a fashion shoot. I really want to dig deep in to this in my practice and find out what students conception would be as I am sure so much would come out of this. Thank you!