Disability Day 2021: Manifesto for Rest and Survival [on resistance and the power of collective - an Indigenous call to disability justice]

Friday, 3 December 2021 - 8:30am to 9:20am

Image description: A digital artwork that features large, circular dark pink blooms. They appear hanging alongside long, green and blue foliage against a sunset coloured sky. The text is as follows: Grounding Disability Justice 3CR Community Radio.

This is sick-form, blak-yarn, crip-space, deep-place. Elena (Paredarerme Nation) explores disability justice and its meaning when grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing. A decolonial approach to disability, and the collective networks of rest, care and resistance that underpin it. Also featuring Tabitha Lean and music by E Fishpool and Alice Skye.

Image credit: Renay Barker-Mulholland

Artist statement: Flowers grow, the world revolves, and we make it through another day. While the sun sets, the diminishing rays ignite our own introspection on the status quo and our part in that. As we take stock of where we are, intertwined is a wealth of knowledge and strength. This is the destination, and now is the journey.

This work was created in response to my first outing on Country with my new powered 4wd wheelchair, I was finally able to engage in something so integral to my culture. I came across a giant bush covered in spectacular flowers, and was awestruck by the beauty of it. I finally felt in that moment that I could see what true justice for everyone meant, while noting the solid and intricate branches that grew these magnificent specimens. We've had the world stop, and the looming of the unknown has forced us through space and time to reflect on the kind of world it is we're trying to save. Now is the time to be brave, the revolution is here. Just like that beautiful bush, we needed to make sure every branch supports a magnificent display of us.

Radical Radio

Friday

3CR has a number of special broadcasts each year to celebrate important community activist events. These broadcasts are staged at live events around Melbourne or in the studios of 3CR in Fitzroy.