Join us for an evening of disability culture as poet/dancer Stephanie Heit and interdisciplinary artist Chanika Svetvilas share work informed by their lived experience of mental health difference. Stephanie will read from her hybrid memoir poem, PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press, 2022), that takes you inside psychiatric wards and shock treatments toward new futures of care. Chanika will share her art, including drawing, sculpture, and performance video that utilizes an archive of medication guides, post-treatment workbooks, medical texts, and prescription bottles that are transformed with iconography and found materials to question medical treatment versus individualized care and healthcare access. A facilitated Q&A will follow.
Register in advance via Eventbrite to join. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about how to join.
This event is open to artists, creative writers, people with mental health difference, disability and social justice communities, social workers, therapists, mental health professionals, students, creative writing and art departments, psychology and social work departments, and the general public.
Donations
IDHA is a small organization that strives to meet the accessibility needs of our community to the best of our ability. Our events are by tiered suggested donation to ensure we can provide closed captions on our events and other programs, though we strive to never turn anyone away. The suggested donation for this event is $10, and we appreciate donations of any size for those who have capacity to give.
Access
ASL interpretation and automated closed captioning will be provided. The event will be recorded and shared with all registrants. If you have any questions about access, please email us at contact@idha-nyc.org.
Facilitators
Stephanie Heit
Stephanie Heit is a queer disabled poet, dancer, teacher, and codirector of Turtle Disco, a somatic writing space. She is a shock/psych system survivor, bipolar, a Zoeglossia Fellow, and a member of Olimpias, a disability performance collective. She lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, on Three Fires Confederacy territory and is the author of the hybrid memoir poem PSYCH MURDERS (Wayne State University Press, 2022) and The Color She Gave Gravity (Operating System, 2017). stephanie-heit.com
Chanika Svetvilas is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker whose practice focuses on mental health difference. Her work is an extension of her continued interest in using narratives as a way to challenge stereotypes in contemporary society and to create safe spaces. She has exhibited at the Denver International Airport, the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Asian Arts Initiative, and the Wexner Center for the Arts among others. Her work has been published in Disability Studies Quarterly, Studying Disability, Arts, and Culture: An Introduction by Petra Kuppers, and A Body You Can Talk To: An Anthology of Contemporary Disability, edited by Tennison S. Black (forthcoming). Svetvilas is the Ida B. Wells Just Data Lab Artist-in-Residence, 2022-23 at Princeton University. chanikasvetvilas.com