How Do You Throw a Brick Through the Window...

Résumé du livre

How do you throw a brick through the window... expands upon the exhibition of the same title where seven artists respond to a question posed by writer, artist, and musician Johanna Hedva who asks, "How do you throw a brick through the window if you can't get out of bed?" Taking this question as both metaphor and provocation, newly commissioned and recent works by Yani aviles, Chloe Crawford, Nat Decker, Jeff Kasper, Carly Mandel, Jeffrey Meris, and Libby Paloma position art as a site for resistance and institutional self-reflection. Co-organized by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (JMKAC) and Tufts University Art Galleries (TUAG), the exhibition and accompanying publication recognize disability justice as a generative framework for reimagining access, dissent, and collective futures. The publication includes a forward written by Amy Horst, Director of JMKAC and Dina Deitch, Director and Chief Curator of TUAG who reflect on how this exhibition has productively challenged the ways in which each institution considers accessibility, audience engagement, and artist relationships. An introduction by written by co-curators Tanya Gayer and Laurel V. McLaughlin highlights the importance of interdependence as a method of care, protest, and world-building that is inherent to each artists' work in the exhibition. Following this introduction, an essay by Amanda Cachia situates the exhibition within the broader field of disability studies and contemporary art, providing historical grounding for the featured artworks. torrin a. greathouse contributes a poem, reflecting on their ability to use poetry for resistance and solidarity. The final essay by Mev Luna contextualizes approaches to activating protests, and analyzes how communal organizing adapts to available technologies, conditions of presence, and strategies of protection. The latter half of the publication presents installation documentation from both venues, alongside conceptual information regarding each artists' work. Through detailed historical information of disability studies, critical essays and poems, exhibition documentation, and conceptual descriptions, the publication extends and deepens the exhibition's central thesis. It advances a sustained inquiry into how artists contest systems such as the medical-industrial complex, normative social structures, governmental policies, and extractive economies-while also proposing alternative modalities of protest, coalition-building, and collective care.