Tuesday, June 08, 2010

Agent Fang comes out

Originally when I started this blog, it was for the purpose of cathartic ranting. Rubbish hotels, dealing with my impairment, crappy employment experiences, you name it, I bitched about it. It was great. Another great thing was that a lot of other people were doing it too. For a while I felt a real sense of online community with other disabled people. Blogging was a new craze and we owned a little corner of it. Then, one by one, people started disappearing, although many good things remain to this day if you look for them.

My favourite blogs from back in the day were The Perorations of Lady Bracknell and Diary of a Goldfish. In 2006 Diary of a Goldfish started 'Blogging Against Disablism Day' which has been an annual event each May ever since. It's the most wonderful, spontaneous and powerful thing I've ever seen anybody create. If you don't know about it, do check it out here - Blogging Against Disablism Day 2010

My posts became less frequent as I developed my career as a visual artist. Sadly for Fangworld, I started staying in Travelodges which were bland and boring but which had at least clean and basic disabled access. This meant my rantings about little B & B's stopped. I honestly couldn't stand many more bad experiences, although recently this theory has been sorely challenged by an unexpectedly dreadful stay at a Travelodge in Manchester whilst I was working with artist Tanya Raabe on her latest project.

The difference now is I want to write about this project, and my work, just as much as I want to slate inaccessible hotels. I expect there will still be the occasional hotel rant, but I'm lucky to be able to do that on a bigger stage at Disability Arts Online. This blog goes live in July 2010 and will be under my own name, so I might have to contain my ire a bit. Or not... I guess it's ok to have strong opinions, and life experience has taught me it's good to own them under your own name.

Here's the link to my new blog Disability Arts Online / Caroline Cardus' blog

If you're reading this because you used to like Fangworld, come over to DAO and read my new stuff. Or visit my website, www.carolinecardus.com to see how my experiences over the years have influenced the art that I make.

If you've just stumbled upon this, then check out the archives, or see the next post for a 'Best of Fangworld' list. I hope Fangworld will continue to exist even if I'm not a frequent contributor to it nowadays. It was fun to write, even though I didn't know much about writing, and a lot of my heart and soul is here.

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