Fusing Iron: Reparations and Constellations for Disability his- her- hir- stories

Nuclear fusion in binary star systems illustrates how stars burn fuel to maintain equilibrium; when that fuel is exhausted, they collapse under their own gravity. In binary systems such as Regulus –known in Western constellations as the brightest star in Leo, in Sardinian star lore as the Sickle, and in Romanian constellations as the Horse – the element that fuels its brightness is iron. Iron, a core component of many metal objects, is also central to the production of Euro coins. Our financial realities, while not ‘written in the stars,’ are nonetheless materially linked to celestial processes. They tie our human experiences of exchange, remuneration, and financial reparation to cosmic phenomena. In this lecture, Ren Loren Britton explores constellation drawing and re-naming as shapeshifting conceptual tools – ones that shift in meaning depending on perspective, cultural context, and cosmology. Britton asks: what kinds of connections, materials, and practices of remuneration might we need in order to understand reparations as a meaningful way of accounting for harm?

Following the hir-his-herstoricizing work of Ren Loren Britton on the KrüppelGruppe in Germany—who developed collective, community-specific technologies—they will focus on cases where harm has been acknowledged and reparations proposed. Britton suggests that in some instances, the gravity of harm has been too immense—like with stars, there is also the risk of collapse. Drawing a material link between iron in celestial bodies and iron as culturally produced in the form of money, the work brings together disability communities, financial reparations, and stargazing—assembled like stars in a constellation.

Ren Loren Britton is a trans*disciplinary artist-designer reverberating with trans*feminism, technosciences, radical pedagogy and disability justice. The hir-story of cyberfeminism informs their focus on trans*, as in, transgender and trans*, as in, crossing contexts with feminist concerns. They are interested in how socio-technical systems make lives accessible and pleasurable. Departing from the understanding that we live in a deeply ableist white supremacist world they follow justice oriented practices by rethinking and reenacting all terms of who and what fits (in on/offline spaces) with what friction (or not) and why. Disability justice emerges in their practice as a practice of upholding and valuing all non-normative bodies and minds.

Ren holds a Master of Fine Arts from the Yale University School of Art and a Bachelor of Arts and of Fine Arts from Purchase College. Ren has held residencies at Sonic Acts, Künstler:innenhaus Büchsenhausen, MedienWerk NRW, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Sandberg Instituut, Rupert, Haus der Kulturen der Welt and Vilém Flusser Residency Program for Artistic Research 2021. They have exhibited their works at multiple institutions, including Sonic Acts, MU Hybrid Art House, MACBA, Transmediale, HKW, Martin Gropius Bau, Schloss Solitude, Constant, ALT_CPH Biennale, Yale School of Art & Kunsthalle Osnabrück.