resting up collective
our guiding principles
resting up collective is an interdisciplinary group of chronically ill and disabled friends practising slowness/crip time to create, think, and interrupt neoliberal pressures and expectations on the body.
We’re sick, tired, and slow. We move under crip time and reject notions that productivity defines our value. When we check our schedules, we do so knowing that “crip time bends the clock to meet disabled bodies and minds” (Kafer). Crip lives are not linear and sit outside normativity, beyond the neoliberal trappings of 9 to 5 and an underlying focus on self-improvement.
We struggle with work and unpicking internalised ableism. We recognise that for many crips wage labour is seldom optional. We don’t want to have to prove our sickness or weigh up how ill we’re feeling to justify a day off. This collective rejects the need to perform illness (to the medical sphere and otherwise) and seeks to make space for all of our lived experiences and bodily narratives.
We are working towards a future we desire and each has a hand in crafting. A mindset that accepts the bed as a creative and political site. A future that won’t demand work over rest. A world that allows for joy and pleasure seeking, and prioritises this over unsustainable labour demands.
We believe in the strength of a group, of mutual aid, and care in every form. While we struggle individually, we try to use this place to make/talk/rage and offer workshops and projects that are reactive and reflective of collective, global and local struggles. We hope the work/not work we do together can help craft new crip theories, but mostly aim to support one another and whoever wants to join us.
Within RUC, there are sick and disabled artists, writers, feminists, queers, those with visible and invisible illnesses, students, workers, and more. We came together because of shared interests and individual work that illustrates what it is to live with chronic illness and disability. Several of us are white, university-educated, and based in the Global North—tensions we grapple with in our meetings and work. While we recognise the limitations of these perspectives and labels, we use them as organisational tools and welcome everyone who wants to join us.
We know that time remains a commodity. Though we prioritise slowness, we recognise this is at odds with the capitalist world we inhabit. This collective is a minimal commitment that we dedicate time to as and when we can. While we want to create new crip worlds, our energies don’t always stretch that far. This collective offers a place for the pieces that are half-finished, fragmentary ideas, or need more hands to make real.
Our principles are:
To make work for the chronically ill and disabled communities of which we are part. This project is outwardly focused and seeks to represent and reflect the experiences of many chronically ill and disabled folks.
We want to create crip communal spaces. This collective wants to find and fill gaps where people can craft and experiment with art - whatever that looks like. The work we make may be ‘bad’, unfinished, or not ‘useful’, and that’s fine.
Membership is open to all and we operate under a good faith agreement. If we do something misguided or harmful, we will hold each other accountable using transformative justice to avoid reproducing the same mistakes or harms.
We will grow, change, and have dormant periods. Our work is not stuck, however slow. We keep records of our practice and conversations. This helps us reflect and grow as our work and thinking happens.
We want to rest, recognising that this is a multifaceted term. We see rest as political engagement, self-preservation (as in Lorde’s approach), not thinking or doing, and, above all, essential for everyone.
follow resting up collective here: