Petra Kuppers‘ work explores focuses on international disability culture. She is a disability culture activist, a community artist, artistic director of the Olimpias, and associate professor of English at the University of Michigan. She also teaches on the low-residency MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College.

On Friday, Nov. 4, Kuppers (photo left) will present “Cultural Work and the Somatic: New Publics of Community Performance.” The presentation will be held in Studio A, Dance Building, 1310 N University Court, Ann Arbor.

Olimpias is a project research series/artists’ collective, focused on international disability culture. In multiple-year projects, Olimpias explores facets of contemporary social justice issues from an embodied, somatically informed perspective. Olimpia aims to be radically accessible, inviting disabled and non-disabled participants to engage with the group.

Petra’s academic book publications include “Disability and Contemporary Performance: Bodies on Edge” (2003), “The Scar of Visibility: Medical Performances and Contemporary Art” (2007), “Community Performance: An Introduction” (2007), and “Disability Culture and Community Performance: Find a Strange and Twisted Shape” (2011), which charts many Olimpias performance experiments.

Her edited work includes, most recently, “Somatic Engagement,” an collection of artists on the poetics, politics and publics of embodiment, published earlier this year.