about
jarah
moesch
Jarah Moesch (MFA, PhD) is an artist-designer-scholar whose work explores issues of justice through the design, production, and acquisition of embodied knowledges. Jarah’s research incorporates queer crip theory, cultural studies, art, and design practices to develop new models for justice and to imagine new worlds.
Jarah’s artwork has been shown across the United States as well as internationally in festivals and exhibitions. Jarah holds an MFA in Integrated Media Arts from Hunter College, and a PhD in American Studies from University of Maryland.
current work
Improving Metadata for Better Accessibility to Scholarly Archives for Disabled and Sensory Sensitive People
Advisory Committee 2023
ELMS 3.0, The NEXT.
upcoming conferences, talks, & engagements
CCSWG ’24
Apply to be a participant by Jan 15th: https://bit.ly/ccswg24
8th Biennial Critical Code Studies Working Group
Feb 2-Feb 29, 2024
Discussion Leader, Queering Code
projects
A Post-Pandemic Reckoning:
Improving Metadata for Better Accessibility to Scholarly Archives with Disabled PeopleOctober 2022
with Erika Fülöp, Dene Grigar, Jarah Moesch, Richard Snyder
Reckoning, Care, and Repair at
Triangle SCI (Scholarly Communication Institute), Durham, NCLead for critical access of/to born–digital work, namely to design and create a metadata schema that describes and incorporates the embodied experiences of disabled people and commits to making them accessible from a disability justice perspective, recognizing that disabled people have intersecting embodiments that include race, class, gender expression, sexuality, and mental health, as well as one’s relationship to colonization, and that these identities are part of a disability justice framework. Moesch focused on articulating a schema that creates accessible pre–downloading/viewing information, so disabled people can know what to expect and how they might experience the works, but also to choose whether or not to engage in the first place.
#CripRitual
an exhibition of artworks curated by The Critical Design Lab (Jarah Moesch, Aimi Hamraie, Cassandra Hartblay) in collaboration with Tangled Art+Disability and the Doris McCarthy Gallery
Exhibition Dates:
January 21 – April 1, 2022
The show will be at two art galleries in the city of Toronto: Tangled Art + Disability, Toronto and the Doris McCarthy Gallery, University of Toronto Scarborough. You can also find #CripRitual online at CripRitual.com.
recent conferences, talks, & engagements
Disability Community & Culture at a Distance
Virtual Worlds, Kunstmuseum Bochum, Germany
June 22, 2023
Disability in Space
The Future of Commercial, Government, and Military Space Exploration; Policy Studies Organization
September 22-23, 2022
Design Trust
Open Environmental Data Project
June 16, 2022
#CripRitual: A Curators’ Talk
with Cassandra Hartblay, Aimi Hamraie, Jarah Moesch
Access & Disability Alliance, Cal Poly, Pomona
April 18, 2022
#CripRitual: Designing Accessible Exhibitions
with Cassandra Hartblay, Jarah Moesch
Macalester College, April 26, 2022
Care as #CripRitual
with Cassandra Hartblay, Jarah Moesch
Anthropology of Motherhood’s Culture of Care Series,
April 2022
#CripRitual: A Roundtable on a New Disability Art Exhibition and Digital Humanities Resource
with Cassandra Hartblay, Aimi Hamraie, Jarah Moesch, Sean Lee
SDS @OSU, April 9, 2022
#CripRitual: A Curators’ Talk
with Cassandra Hartblay, Aimi Hamraie, Jarah Moesch
Codes of Contact. Reel Asian International Film Festival,
Toronto Artist Incubator Workshop, April 4, 2022
#CripRitual: A Curators’ Talk
with Cassandra Hartblay, Aimi Hamraie, Jarah Moesch, Sean Lee
Practicing the Social, January 28, 2022
Crip Use
with Aimi Hamraie, & Kelsey Acton
4S. Oct, 2021
Extending Metadata of Interactive Media for Better Precision and Accessibility
with Dene Grigar & Matthew Hannah.
ACH. July 2021
The Pause: pedagogy for designing climate justice
Covid Exceptionalism, Bard (online). May 2021
Cripping the Podcast
with the Critical Design Lab
Allied Media Conference
Detroit, MI, July, 2020
Designing Crip Feminist Futures
Politics of Health
International Health Humanities Consortium
Nashville, TN, March, 2020 (Cancelled)
Collective Design Activism in the (Health)Care of Everyday Life
SDS@OSU: Multiple Perspectives on Access, Inclusion, and Disability
Society for Disability Studies Conference
Columbus, Ohio, April 2020 (Cancelled)
Fellow, Building Healthcare Collectives
Michigan State University & Ohio State University 2019-2020
Community-engaged, actionable, and equitable health services research that will improve healthcare outcomes for vulnerable communities. www.buildinghealthcarecollectives.org
recent appointments
Just Space Alliance
Board Member, Jan 2020-Jan 2024
Secretary, Jan 2020-Jan 2024
Lecturer, Design, Innovation, & Society
Science & Technology Studies (STS)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) Fall 2019- Fall 2022
Core Member, Critical Design Lab
Remote, Vanderbilt University
2018-2022
As a scholar, artist, designer, and educator, my research and pedagogy focuses on how knowledge is produced, distributed, acquired, and managed. My work is particularly concerned with how knowledge design practices perform as normative systems for all people, therefore excluding those on the margins. I do so through Queer Justice Design, my hands-on, critical practice founded in queer, feminist pedagogy, and integrated media art to produce new equitable practices and worlds.
My work is grounded in the social and physical effects of embedded histories of racism, gender, and disability, inequitable distributions of wealth, food and water, and colonization of land and people. My research investigates the production, distribution, and maintenance of knowledge pathways, and then builds new possibilities, from physical modeling and prototyping, to policies for designing different worlds. My artwork ranges from traditional forms of art to contemporary new media practices and tactical social interventions. This multi-modal work explores the tangled relationship between technologies, systems, and embodied knowledges through the performance of everyday life.
previous professions
Prior to academia, Jarah worked in digital media strategy, development, and design; building strategic plans for social media communications, designing training programs for staff to learn digital workflows, creating best practices for internal and external digital communications, and developing numerous websites from conception through launch; responsible for information architecture, user case scenarios, wireframes, user interface designs, visual design, and content production.
Jarah also has worked in broadcast television, film, audio, and video production/post-production. Events included Olympic Games, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS, concerts, teleconferences, other live televised events.
Jarah additionally has a background in animal care and in-situ field research, including work as a veterinary technician and zookeeper, as well as field research in remote regions for primate, whale, and turtle research; tracking and documenting encounters alongside audio and video recording for research and educational films.
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