Keynote by Cindy Baker

When: September 25, 2020      
Where: Online
Website, https://alterityofaffliction.com/

Resisting productivity: good bodies, bad bodies, and other(ed) bodies: 

Contemporary cultural imperatives of productivity conflate beauty with health, and frame heath as a moral issue. Othered (disabled, fat, racialized, queer, etc) bodies are therefore understood to be less valuable in very concrete and measurable ways, their lack of productivity making them less deserving of resources and support. This talk will focus on how, through my own work, I’ve harnessed several theories of resisting representation to develop generative ways of subverting productivity and contesting the status quo.

About Cindy Baker: 

Cindy Baker is a contemporary artist based in Western Canada whose work engages with queer, gender, race, disability, fat, and art discourses. Committed to ethical community engagement and critical social enquiry, Baker’s interdisciplinary research-based practice draws upon 25 years working, volunteering, and organizing in the communities of which she is part. She moves fluidly between the arts, humanities, and social sciences, emphasizing the theoretical and conceptual over material concerns. Baker holds an MFA from the University of Lethbridge where she received a SSHRC grant for her research in performance in the absence of the artist’s body; she has exhibited and performed across Canada and internationally. Helping found important community and advocacy organizations over the course of her career, Baker continues to maintain volunteer leadership roles across her communities.