Kevin Gotkin Joins CRNY as Artist-Organizer

October 17, 2022

Kevin is in two places at once. They are on their couch, buoyed by pillows, looking past the camera. They are a scruffy white person with short brown hair. They wear asymmetrical gold hoop earrings and a gold chain necklace gifted by a group of friends for their 32nd birthday. On a shelf behind their couch at home in Lenapehoking, there are three plants: two ZZs and a Crown of Thorns. But they are at home only on the screen of a laptop that is elsewhere, in London, on the kitchen counter of the photographer, Louise Hickman, who is a very small square in the top right of the Zoom window where she is remotely joined to Kevin for this portrait. Kevin-on-screen is atop a small box on the table, just behind a mug that says I ❤️LONDON. Behind the screen there is a Money Plant and a Jade Plant, just behind the part of the screen where Kevin's plants are at home so that they almost seem to be one unit of houseplants, except Kevin's are a scale smaller on the screen. On the wall behind is the bottom of a poster that says SAN FRANCISCO. And there's an outlet with a white MacBook power cable that snakes along and loops into the side of the computer, like Kevin themself is plugged into the wall and might disappear if unplugged. This is an intentionally crafted aesthetic of remote crip connection, an ordinary scene of Kevin and Louise's friendship and collaborations.

Photo by Louise Hickman for Artists-in-Presidents: Transmission to Power (2021) at Blackwood Gallery, curated by Constance Hockaday. Image description: Kevin is in their home, on their couch, on Zoom, on a laptop, on a table in Louise Hickman’s house. Longer description in alt-text.

We are thrilled to welcome Kevin Gotkin to the Creatives Rebuild New York team. Earlier this year, Kevin served on the CRNY Outreach Corps to help spread the word about the Guaranteed Income and Artist Employment Programs to Deaf and disabled New York State artists. Through this work, Kevin guided us to discover and consider the challenges of building trust between artists and organizations, the tricky choice to accept time-limited direct cash transfers that send artists over a benefits cliff, the need for anti-ableist professional development resources, and more.

“I am honored that CRNY has chosen to continue these conversations with me as an Artist-Organizer within the organization,” Kevin says. “We have a lot to do to address the precarities that Deaf and disabled artists are living through. My new collaborations with Creatives Rebuild New York will advance disability artistry, the work of Deaf and disabled artists, and access practices in the worlds of arts and culture bearing in so-called New York State. I am hopeful that this work will build sustainability for the field and movement of disability arts.”

“We’re thrilled to have Kevin on board with CRNY as an AEP artist,” says Bella Desai, Co-Director of Strategic Initiatives, Artist Employment Program. “Kevin brought critical insights into disability artistry and access when they were part of our Outreach Corps, and we feel grateful and lucky that Kevin is continuing this journey with us, supporting both programs as well as informing our work at the organizational level. Kevin is educating the CRNY team and helping to support the organizations and artists that are in our programs.”

Before joining CRNY, Kevin was an Organizer with the disability arts ensemble Kinetic Light. Before that, they co-founded Disability/Arts/NYC with Simi Linton to help shape cultural policy for disability arts in NYC. They received their Ph.D. in Media Studies from the University of Pennsylvania and held a Visiting Assistant Professorship in the Department of Media, Culture, & Communication at NYU until 2021. Kevin’s performance and curatorial work has been featured most recently at Lincoln Center (An Evening of Access Magic, July 2022) and in ongoing nightlife organizing with the REMOTE ACCESS party collective. They have helped steward the Critical Design Lab (a 2022 United States Artist Awardee) and Creative Time’s inaugural Think Tank. They also run the weekly newsletter Crip News.

Please join us in welcoming Kevin to Creatives Rebuild New York as an Artist-Organizer!