Calling in Sick

Canariesis a network of women, femmes, and gender non-conforming people living and working with autoimmune conditions and other chronic illnesses. The group name references “canaries in the coal mine”—shorthand for those whose sensitivities are early indicators of adverse conditions in the environment. Canaries functions both as a support group with monthly meetings, a listserv of 90+ members, and an art collective. While not all of its members are artists, many are painters, actors, and writers whose somatic experiences exceed interpretation by biomedical discourse and come together to build shared language and exchange strategies for coping with and learning from their conditions.Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal BullyingisTaraneh Fazeli’s ongoing curatorial project brings together artists, disability activists, and other practitioners doing work on the body to consider the states of debility, rest, and disability (particularly their temporalities) as potentially resistive to capitalism and other forces of oppression. Grappling with the off-tempo body that won’t efficiently labor, “Sick Time” considers how the leaky and porous body in states of debility can provide new possibilities for collectivity, privileging interdependency while also negotiating and maintaining difference through radical kinship and forms of care. “Sick Time” is structured in multiple nodes including workshops, a study group, publications, performances, and exhibitions, the first of which is at Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts this coming March.

Taraneh Fazeli/Sick Time with Canaries

Calling in Sick, a workshop facilitated by Taraneh Fazeli/Sick Time with Canaries
This event requires registration (see below) and asks participants to be present for the first two hours.
WOUND is excited to invite you to "Calling in Sick," a bodily communication workshop. Grounded in acts of care and empathy, this workshop will ask participants to consider how we speak and feel about the body in states of debility through a series of partnered communication exercises.
Organized by curator and Canaries member Taraneh Fazeli, “Calling in Sick” is co-presented by WOUND and <A HREF="http://www.recessart.org/canaries/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Refuge in the Means,</A> a <A HREF="http://www.recessart.org/" TARGET="_blank" DATA-MSYS-CLICKTRACK="0" REL="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Recess</A> Session by Canaries collective that takes the form of a care center during the months of September and October. Participants in Calling in Sick will be invited to move through a consideration of the temporal shape of care in exercises, actions, and discussions that will prompt participants to consider the language we tend to use around illness in various contexts (personal, professional, and all the spaces in between). Asked to recollect experiences of calling in (and how you may have felt care in that moment), workshop participants will address how we do or do not feel comfortable addressing the social reproduction of our lives in work and public contexts.
Drawing from dialogic exercises structured to explore social group identity, artworks such as Dennis Oppenheim’s Two Stage Transfer Drawing and Jesse Cohen’s I is Another, as well as excerpts from illness memoirs and open letters to various communities, “Calling in Sick” will address what has become chronic through haptic encounters that invite intimacy. By doing do so, we will work towards building a new language around bodily impairment that does not see illness as the private property of one individual but a collective concern, and find ways to support each other as existence under capitalism becomes impossible.
Registration:
This event is free ($0) and open to all. Due to the intimate nature of this workshop, space is limited and registration is required by Tuesday October 11, 2016. 
To help shape this workshop around your needs, we ask that when registering you please share 150 words/a few sentences detailing your interest in this subject to help us customize the workshop. Also include any access needs not addressed below (special seating, language translation e.g. ASL or non-English). We will do our best to support you.
Access and Notes on the Space:
For the comfort of all attendees, this event will be capped at sixteen people and a RSVP is required. This event begins at 5PM and ends at 8 PM and we ask that you be present for the first two hours as the exercises require this.
WOUND is in a lower level gallery at Cooper Union’s 41 Cooper Square building. This building is ADA wheelchair accessible. After entry into 41 Cooper Square, there is an elevator that leads to the gallery on the lower level. There are all-gender ADA approved bathrooms. There is fluorescent and track lighting in the space. There will be seating that includes the exhibition furniture Caroline Woolard has designed, or folding chairs or meditation cushions are available upon advance request. Ample floor space is available for free movement within the space. The program is in English and there will be visuals, sound, and light movement exercises (can be done while seated).
Admission to the Cooper Union requires an ID but if this is a concern please let us know in advance and we can try to work with school security for ways you might gain access without one.
Limited street parking is available nearby. The closest MTA subway stations are the Astor Place 6 and the 8th St-NYU N train. These stations are not wheelchair accessible. The closest wheelchair accessible station is the Union Square 6 and, a bit further, the West 4th Street A, C, E.
**The space is not scent-free but we ask that attendees come fragrance-free to this event.** Information on how to reduce scent and be truly fragrance-free here: http://www.brownstargirl.org/blog/fragrance-free-femme-of-colour-realness-draft-15. 
We will document parts of the event photographically—the drawings and ephemera from the event will be archived and photographed. There will be a small number of photos taken, but you can request that you not be documented. Some of the issues we will be addressing are quite sensitive so we ask that you please respect one another and try to create the safest space possible. What is discussed in our workshop should not leave the space without the expressed permission of the speaker—while stories stay, we hope lessons will leave with us!
**We will be doing an exercise that involves drawing on fabric draped on top of your clothing with washable markers, so you may want to wear something you won’t be afraid of damaging.**

41 Cooper Gallery

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Calling in Sick

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