Camp Jened（克里普营地）丨美国纽约丨Alan Winters（部分结构设计与建造）

Crip Camp: An Interview with Filmmaker Jim LeBrecht About Accessibility, Universal Design, and Spaces of Freedom

The politics of disability are fundamentally spatial. They respond to the struggle for equal access and representation against different forms of socio-spatial discrimination and aspire to alternative understandings of the relation between the body and space that destabilize both current constructions of an able body as well as established norms concerning the use of space. Expanding beyond design guides and regulations to encompass more broadly structural and systemic issues related to the experience of disablement and segregation, this concern continues to be relevant well beyond the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA).

The goal, in this context, is not only to facilitate access to buildings for differently abled bodies but also access to society itself as equal individuals.

space. They are paradigmatically captured in different performances taking place at the core of the spaces of political representation. For example, in the United States, the occupation of the San Francisco Health and Education and Welfare Offices in 1977—the longest occupation of a federal government office in U.S. history to date—led to the final approval of the Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. In 1990, the Capitol Crawl comprised disability right activists crawling the steps of the U.S. Capitol Building, leaving their wheelchairs and other mobility devices behind, to demand Congress to pass the ADA. But beyond such dramatic moments, there exist more peripheral locations that have provided opportunities for those politics to unfold, helping shape and empower the collectives working to pursue them. Camp Jened was one of them: a summer camp for people with disabilities taking place since the sixties in Hunter, New York.

Page spread of the original article "Crip Camp: An Interview with Jim LeBrecht" published in Ed #3 Normal.

In the following interview, I talk to Jim LeBrecht to learn more about the camp. LeBrecht is an activist and former member of Disabled in Action, a sound designer, and a filmmaker.

Born with spina bifida in the late fifties, he was a camper for a couple of years in his teens and is currently working on a documentary about his experience. Comprising footage shot in 1971 by a group of revolutionary videographers called The People’s Video Theatre, some 8 millimeter footage shot by LeBrecht’s family and additional images from 1974, the documentary is directed by LeBrecht and filmmaker Nicole Newnham and produced by LeBrecht, Newnham, and Sara Bolder.

. The term ‘Crip’ reclaims the term “cripple,” which has conventionally carried negative connotations, and has been used both by activists and scholars in the last decade to expand the discussion on disabilities beyond the politics of normalization and assimilation. In our conversation, we discuss this space and its role in resisting the normalizing nature of architecture.

Before delving into his experience of the camp itself, LeBrecht and I discuss diverse questions surrounding architecture and filmmaking. He expresses concern that the ADA has meant, for many, the end of a struggle, and represents for architects and developers “a ceiling” for their engagement with people with disabilities. LeBrecht states, “We are never part of the conversation, so our concerns are rarely considered and are reduced to complying with certain regulations.” More broadly, LeBrecht argues that “the whole discussion about diversity and inclusion in the last years rarely has included disability. We are not even being thought of.”

In response, I tell him that the lack of engagement with these concerns and the lack of representation of architects with disabilities in the profession are questions that are increasingly being addressed.

The question of representation is at the core of LeBrecht’s concerns as a filmmaker. Representation concerns the possibility for him to be in the spaces where filmmaking unfolds: “When I became a director, I looked at what the normal trajectory was, and you have to consider not only shooting in different places but also film festivals, editing retreats in distant locations, and the questions of accessibility related to those.” Part of the advocacy for this film is a response to this context, a challenge those barriers. However, it goes beyond that: “We need to discuss the relation between underrepresented and misrepresented communities, and this is key in the realm of film. We need to tell our story through our lens, not through somebody else’s.” This goal frames our discussion of LeBrecht’s experience in Camp Jened, the story at the core of

Camp Jened, ca.1970. Photograph by Steve Honigsbaum. Courtesy of the author.

I would like us to start discussing the history of Camp Jened. And I want to insist from the outset that history is very important for me in order to go beyond an understanding of architecture’s concern with disabilities as a merely technical question—that of the adequacy or adaptation of the built environment for bodies with disabilities. Accessibility to space is fundamental, and the technical dimension of this question is one of the aspects in which architecture is concerned more obviously. However, in order to discuss how architecture is concerned with the project of accessibility and inclusion for people with disabilities in a broader way, we need to consider the historical construction of disability: the delineation of what is an able and a disabled body and the ways they belong in space is something that needs to be discussed historically, and that is why I want to frame our interview in this way. In fact, Camp Jened responded to a historical context that was significantly different from ours, right?

Let me frame my response along my own experience. I started going to summer camps when I was eight years old or so. The majority of the camps back then, in the mid to late sixties, were very different from Camp Jened—I like to call them “straight camps.” They were fun, do not get me wrong. At least I had fun: I was the first one in the pool and the last one out. But there was one main difference that to me is key for what we want to discuss, which is the sense of community that was cultivated in Camp Jened—in my experience, it was just not formed in the “straight camps.” A lot of camps did not have disabled counselors, or disabled people in the administration, and that was key to this question. Many times, if they would see two campers talking together in a way that looked like they were interested in each other, they would break them apart because they would not want to expose them to the disappointment of a relationship not working out. We were treated more like patients, and that is the way I would characterize these camps as a product of their time.

This was two months where I did not have to worry about architectural barriers, and this meant I was not a burden to anyone. I could get independently wherever I wanted. It was a space of freedom.

Well, it was the architecture that is characteristic of those institutions in which patients are interned. They called the places where we slept “dorms” rather than “bunks,” for example, and we had to go to bed at 8:30. I find that meaningful.

Different from those “straight camps,” I call Camp Jened a “Hippie camp”—and its links to hippie camps provided an alternative model for it, different from that of institutions. I went there for the first time in 1970, for half a month, and then full-time in 1971. I had heard about this camp from other campers in 1969, people were talking about it: a camp where you slept in bunks, where camp counselors slept in the same rooms where you did, where they were playing music all the time, and where campers were up late. It was supposed to be a wonderful environment. So I told my dad, “I want to go there.” I had also heard you could smoke dope with the counselors, but that was just some bonus points.

I was 14 when I went first. So, I find myself arriving there, in the bus, and I look outside the window, and I cannot figure out who are the campers and who are the counselors. Because I saw people in wheelchairs that were assisting the campers that were getting off the bus. There were people with disabilities receiving us, because they were also in positions of authority. And there are all kinds of wild looking people, hippies, that I could not tell if they had disabilities. Then I get there, and I was not infantilized. I was treated as a teenager.

Camp Jened, ca.1970. Design and construction of the structures by Alan Winters. Photograph by Steve Honigsbaum. Courtesy of the author.

Well, at this point, there were many liberation movements working in parallel. They were all, in different ways, seeking to challenge the authorities and the establishment. And the people that were running Camp Jened wanted to provide a space and an experience where people could feel or get a sense of their life, of what they were capable of. Of course, we all wanted to have fun in the camp, but there was this additional mindset that made the space of the camp special to develop a sense of community that you could deem political. In fact, a lot of us in the bunks started to talk about our future and discuss Black Power, Women’s Liberation, Gay Rights, etc. And we thought, “We really need the same thing for ourselves.”

At that point in history, summer camps were a space where one could find a community and come together to talk and organize. A place that did not really exist for us otherwise, really. There were only some universities where disabled students were starting to go and discuss their concerns together, like University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign or UC Berkeley. In New York, where I lived, it was Hofstra and Long Island University. However, I was still 14 or 15, so the camp for us was the only alternative.

This was two months where I did not have to worry about architectural barriers, and this meant I was not a burden to anyone. I could get independently wherever I wanted. It was a space of freedom. And this is a space in which I could be picked first for the basketball team versus not being picked at all. This was also a space where I met my first girlfriend in 1971.

Not being an architect, but having had to live with the very mixed results of the work of architects, I think that universal design is still the most appropriate way of looking at the questions that concern us.

Well, they just prevented them to avoid us being possibly frustrated.

I understand. But it seems to me that what you are describing in Camp Jened is that links of assistance and affection were normalized beyond institutional hierarchies and constraints. And this seems to be something that the camp might allow illuminating for our understanding of what it means to be a social being more generally, in ways that do not necessarily celebrate autonomy or individualism but accept how we are all assisted in different ways both physically and affectively.

Yes, one of the counselors described it as a “bubble.” And it was different from the world outside it. When we would go into town, which was about one mile down, into Hunter, New York, both social and physical space were significantly different. There were no ramps into the pizza place, for example, but there were not only physical barriers. The people there did not want us to come, because customers were uncomfortable with us: we had wheelchairs that occupied more space, we talked really loudly because of our different disabilities, our bodies looked unfamiliar to them, and they interpreted them as grotesque. So the camp was an exception to that reality.

Camp Jened, ca.1970. Design and construction of the structures by Alan Winters. Photograph by Steve Honigsbaum. Courtesy of the author.

I like to put it in these terms: you cannot strive for a better life if you do not know one exists. Once you experience a better life, it is an extraordinary catalyst for you to find it and protect it. That is what the camp meant for us.

Absolutely. And there were particular places where that took shape. Many of us ended up gathering in Berkeley, for example, where there was the Center for Independent Living among other things.

The camp hired several African American counselors from the South, and that brought to the fore multiple perspectives towards the problem of segregation. In fact, we could relate to many of their struggles. They could make clear to us how our experience could relate to them entering into a restaurant at the time when segregation was still well in place in the South. Segregation in general was something I could relate to since we were many times received by the same unwelcoming contexts. Nobody wants to appropriate anyone’s struggle, but we could see that there was a universality in being not “normal” that we shared.

JL:

Page spread of the original article "Crip Camp: An Interview with Jim LeBrecht" published in Ed #3 Normal.

I guess we can finish this conversation with this occupation—for I understand occupations both as political performances and spatial practices. They involve an active appropriation of space and its transformation, a challenge to its order through its inhabitation. Crip Camp is an invitation to continue imagining ways in which we can challenge the normalizing and segregating tendencies of space upon bodies and communities through their occupation. This seems to me to be the architectural project of today.

Not being an architect, but having had to live with the very mixed results of the work of architects, I think that universal design is still the most appropriate way of looking at the questions that concern us. An elevator located away from the main flow of movement or ramps to the side and not meant for everyone reinforces the imposed “otherness” of the disabled community—a community constructed as an exception to the norm. It is important that architects embrace the diverse ways in which bodies occupy space, not as something you

to do. This shift might lead to the invention of spaces that can be for everyone. The solution can never be “separate but equal.” That has never been the right solution for any collective.