Disability activist David Ruebain and curator Yates Norton discuss evolving attitudes to and representations of disability. Drawing on the themes of collectivity explored in In formation III, this conversation focuses on the notion of interdependence, particularly as informed by thinking from the disability movement, as an essential form of resistance to a neoliberal conception of the individual.
David Ruebain has been Chief Executive of Equality Challenge Unit, the UK higher education sector’s equality, diversity and inclusion policy and research agency, for the last eight years. Prior to this, he was a lawyer for 21 years; latterly as Director of Legal Policy at the British government's Equality and Human Rights Commission and before that as founder of the Department of Education, Equality and Disability Law at Levenes Solicitors in London. David has published and taught widely.
Yates Norton’s artistic practice includes collaborations with poets and artists in London, Cambridge and New York. He is currently assistant curator at Rupert, Vilnius, where he recently co-curated Entangled Tales, a group exhibition exploring new materialism. He is a graduate of Cambridge and Harvard Universities. He completed his Masters at the Courtauld Institute, London, researching the history and theory of ornament.