Kunst - Forschung - Geschlecht: Johanna Hedva

Vortragsreihe “Kunst - Forschung - Geschlecht”: Johanna Hedva

Why It‘s Taking So Long (Notes on Disability Justice)
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“Why It’s Taking So Long” is Hedva’s critical reflection on what happened in the six years after their essay “Sick Woman Theory” was published in 2016 and became an influential text in the fields of disability justice, feminism, and queer theory.

Critical of the insidious twinning of cultural capital with increased visibility, which does not necessarily translate into actual material support for those within marginalized communities, “Why It’s Taking So Long” examines the exploitative and fetishistic relationship liberal institutions have with disabled artists and workers. Moving past the idealism of Sick Woman Theory, “Why It’s Taking So Long” is an intimate expression of exhaustion, indicting the ableism of the culture industry while acknowledging that participation in it is necessary. Within this exhaustion, Hedva finds solidarity with those who resist the flattening that neoliberal capitalism requires, insisting on their own dimensionality as an integral part of activism toward disability access.

Johanna Hedva (they/them) is a Korean-American writer, artist, and musician, who was raised in Los Angeles by a family of witches, and now lives between LA and Berlin. Hedva is the author of Minerva the Miscarriage of the Brain, a collection of poems, performances, and essays, and the novel On Hell. Their album Black Moon Lilith in Pisces in the 4th House, a doom-metal guitar and voice performance influenced by Korean shamanist ritual was released in January 2021, and their 2019 album The Sun and the Moon had two of its tracks played on the moon. Their work has been shown in Berlin at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Klosterruine, and Institute of Cultural Inquiry; The Institute of Contemporary Arts in London; Performance Space New York; and the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon.