Kym, a light-skinned femme person with brown hair, sits at the edge of an expansive canyon. She leans forward peering into the view finder of her digital camera. She wears a worn green cap, pink jean shorts, and a black razorback tank. The bright blue sky is spotted with puffy white clouds, and the sun shines down brightly on the red and brown rock formations. Photo taken by Sammy Cunningham, on the land of the Ute, Southern Paiute, and Pueblo peoples (now known as Moab, Utah).
Kym McDaniel is an experimental filmmaker, multidisciplinary collaborator, choreographer, curator, performer, and educator. Her films have recently screened in solo and two-person screenings at UnionDocs, Mills Foley Microcinema, Cellular Cinema, Rhizome DC, and the Society for Disability Studies Conference, as well as in group exhibitions at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Slamdance, Experiments in Cinema, and Antimatter, among others. Their work has been funded by the New York Council for the Arts, New York Foundation for the Arts, and New York Choreographers Initiative. She has taught in cinema and dance departments at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Binghamton University, and the University of Utah.
She began filmmaking after a head injury and resulting chronic illnesses changed her relationship to time, her body, and dance. Their embodiment as a queer femme and engagement in disability culture informs her gaze and current practice as an artist.
She has an MFA in Cinematic Arts from the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and an Advanced Certificate in Disability Studies from the City University of New York. She is currently an Assistant Professor in Dance Film and Digital Technologies within the Dance Department at The Ohio State University.