Project Description:
The Institute on Disabilities is engaged in a creative exploration of the arts as an extension of our advocacy with and for people with disabilities. Our recent acquisition of the Pennhurst State School and Hospital archives (1930 -1988) provides a rare opportunity to consider how our collective memory of institutionalization is shaped and shared. In Pennsylvania, the experience of institutionalization of people with intellectual disabilities is ongoing. Where and how people with intellectual disabilities live informs every aspect of their lives, yet the complicated discussion around public and private institutions what was, what is, and what might be continues to create deep divisions.
At the heart of these tensions lies the stories of real people who - as evidenced in the Pennhurst archives - have long been forgotten. These archival documents provide important historical information, but the medicalized, third person points of view often raise more questions about institutional life than they answer. Pennsylvanias four remaining institutions offer living stories missed by traditional archiving processes. The Institute will embark on an artistic discovery to illuminate the historical trajectory of institutionalization through the perspectives and experiences of those who continue to live it.
This work requires artistic interpretation. We want to learn how to deploy arts power as a synapse, bridging time, place, language, and difference to create something new and shared. Our belief in the power of art to realize this goal, and our commitment to listening to and learning from people with intellectual disabilities, will fuel our pursuit of the question at the heart of our work: how can art radically shift who is included in our understanding of the past and contribute to a shared vision for the future?
The setting for our discovery process will be the Selinsgrove Center. In 2015, the Institute conducted oral history interviews with nine residents; interviews and companion portraits became the basis of a photo/audio installation entitled Here. Stories from Selinsgrove State Center and KenCrest Services. That experience showed us the limitations of traditional audio interviews, but also helped us imagine what might be possible, with the time and resources to develop different approaches to first-person accounts. We plan to further our work with Selinsgrove residents by creating an artists residency on the Centers campus. We want to learn how artists and historians can work with residents and staff to artistically interpret the past, present and future through personal memory, shared memory and memory inspired by place.
We have many questions about what it will take to develop this unprecedented residency - about the artists best suited to this work, and about artistic mediums most accessible to people with intellectual disabilities. During discovery, we will identify collaborators whose practices are empathetic and thinking partners who will use the Institutes core values as a guiding force. At the end of discovery, we hope to have an approach that supports the individual artistic expression of Selinsgrove residents; provides a model of co-authorship for documenting first-person accounts; and is beneficial to artists and residents alike.
There is urgency to our exploration; first person accounts of institutionalization are disappearing as residents age and pass away. These accounts have the potential to change our understanding of how these places are remembered, but also deepen our understanding of what memory can be when it is uncoupled from traditional communication. We want to find out from people with intellectual disabilities themselves what their lives are like, what their futures hold, and bring into the conversation people who might not have found their way there otherwise.
