Petra Kuppers is a disability culture activist and a community performance artist. Petra grounds herself in disability culture methods, and uses ecosomatics, performance, and speculative writing to engage audiences toward more socially just and enjoyable futures. Her latest book is Eco Soma: Joy and Pain in Speculative Performance Encounters (University of Minnesota Press, 2022, open access). She teaches at the University of Michigan and Goddard College. She is a 2023 Guggenheim Fellow, and a 2022 Dance/USA Fellow.  

Crip/Mad : Asylum Dances, Archive Dances

Using movement and writing, Kuppers addresses disabled and mad presences in asylum spaces and in arts archives through participatory performances grounded in disability culture. At Camargo, she plans on finding development time to research hidden disability portraits and movements, to chart how disability is tracked in the archive(s), how it travels over time, and how it interacts with embodied memories deep inside herself, and in movement memories of community participants.