Feminist Art Field School - Sean Lee

2022

Led in collaboration with the University of Victoria the Feminist Art Field School is an online course geared towards students, artists, curators and community members interested in gender, feminism and the porous boundaries between art, activism and academic practice.

Join Michelle Jacques and Chase Joynt for module 3 in the virtual field school as they sit down with artist/curator Sean Lee to discuss ideas around disability arts and critical access.

Learn more at: https://aggv.ca/feminist-art-field-sc…

Check out some of the resources/institutions/artists mentioned in this video:


   / @theannieelainey  
https://leavingevidence.wordpress.com/
https://www.talilalewis.com/
https://secretfeministagenda.com/2020…
http://yinkashonibare.com/biography/

About


https://akimbo.ca/akimblog/crip-horiz…

PROJECTS


https://www.valentinbrown.com/
https://glcarissa.tumblr.com/

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located on the traditional territory of the lək̓ʷəŋən speaking peoples, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations. We extend our gratitude and appreciation for the opportunity to live and work on this territory.

Video editing by Marina DiMaio.Led in collaboration with the University of Victoria the Feminist Art Field School is an online course geared towards students, artists, curators and community members interested in gender, feminism and the porous boundaries between art, activism and academic practice. …

Chapters

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Intro
Intro
0:00

Intro

0:00

Philosophy on Accessibility
Philosophy on Accessibility
2:30

Philosophy on Accessibility

2:30

Feminist Art Field School
Feminist Art Field School
6:36

Feminist Art Field School

6:36

The Power of Disability Art
The Power of Disability Art
11:24

The Power of Disability Art

11:24

Critical Disability Curation
Critical Disability Curation
16:54

Critical Disability Curation

16:54

Colonial Comfort
Colonial Comfort
20:09

Colonial Comfort

20:09

Visual Description
Visual Description
24:24

Visual Description

24:24

Audio Description
Audio Description
25:27

Audio Description

25:27

Autogenerated Transcript from YouTube (if available)

Use CTRL+F to find key words if it is a longer transcript​.

Intro

0:00

[Music] [Applause]

0:05

[Music] [Applause]

0:10

[Music] [Applause] and sean we would love it if we could

0:17

start at the beginnings could you introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about your practice

0:23

sure um i guess i’ll start my introduction actually within image description so my

0:31

name’s sean um i use he or they pronouns i’m

0:37

i present as male i’m an east asian chinese person and i’m someone who’s

0:43

visibly disabled uh my back curves my shoulders are uneven and if you met me

0:48

in real life i’d be quite short i’ve got kind of

0:53

black hair that comes down to my shoulders beyond my shoulders at this point um i’m wearing

1:00

these like kind of steampunk glasses they’re green with like

1:05

gold rims that float on the frames i’m wearing like a black t-shirt the the

1:11

shirt says the future is accessible and it’s a it’s

1:16

a shirt made by um a disability youtuber annie segarra um

1:22

and i’m in my live i’m in my dining room i’ve got kind of like a a little bit of art behind me it’s like

1:28

a painting and otherwise it’s a pretty nondescript room and

1:33

um about me i am a disability artist and a curator

1:40

i’m the director of programming at tangled art and disability um we’re

1:45

based in the traditional territories of the anishinaabe the huden shonei and the

1:51

huron wenda and the mississauga’s of the credit um on treaty 13 territory here in toronto

1:59

um and tangled art and disability runs um the a gallery space the it was the first

2:07

of its kind to open in canada that’s dedicated to

2:13

exhibiting mad deaf disabled artists and uh exploring and advancing accessible

2:19

curatorial practices yeah so that’s a little bit about me

2:27

awesome thank you i wonder if i could ask a follow-up question

Philosophy on Accessibility

2:35

because you have shared uh so much um of your thinking and readings that have

2:42

inspired you and um uh tangled is a fantastic organization and

2:51

obviously you’re very uh integrated into its running you’re the artistic

2:57

leader of that organization but um what i feel like i learned so much about

3:04

your own [Music] personal philosophy about accessibility curating

3:11

looking at the materials that you shared shared with us and i wonder if you could talk a

3:16

little bit about that philosophy that you bring to the organization that you lead

3:22

sure yeah um i mean i think a lot of

3:27

the way that i curate is really to center

3:33

disability as a difference that matters and

3:38

when i say that you know i i think there are a lot of ideas that you know

3:43

disability arts is about including disabled people into normative culture

3:49

but actually i think a lot of what we’re trying to do in uh

3:54

what i’m trying to do through my practice is to really help um change the conversation and shift the

4:02

way that we understand disability because it’s always at least for myself um i shouldn’t seem

4:08

for everyone but like as as someone who um has lived experience as a disabled

4:14

person has always had lived experience as a disabled person um going to art

4:19

school i never really had an opportunity to explore ideas of disability

4:26

culture or disability community and i think that’s really what i’m trying to foreground in

4:32

my practice here is this idea that

4:37

disability community exists you know that there is a culture that we all um participate in and

4:45

for me like accessible curation that’s a huge part of it because access is as

4:50

disability um justice uh activist mia mingus tells us access is concrete

4:57

resistance to the kind of isolated histories that disabled people have lived it’s a way of

5:04

understanding that disability is not just located in our bodies but it’s it’s

5:09

constructed and the barriers we face the ableist uh structures that exist are ultimately one

5:17

of the biggest factors for creating um the the kind of uh

5:24

ableist uh and and inaccessible art structures that

5:30

we’re in today and so for me like i i really enjoy creating crypt culture i love

5:37

experimenting with it and um building solidarity within our communities

5:43

i use disability arts often times as an umbrella term but you know there are we have uh within

5:50

uh disability arts you know we have like artists uh we have mad artists we have uh deaf

5:59

artists we have uh sick spoony chronically ill you know neurodiverse and neuro-emergent

6:06

artists and you know we we all come at it from kind of different places of

6:13

lived experience but i think the through line of my practice is that we’re trying

6:18

to you know reimagine the world as a more equitable place and

6:24

the world as a more accessible one that really you know fully understands uh disability

6:30

as as i said a difference that matters

Feminist Art Field School

6:36

extraordinary you know one of the things that we’ve been reckoning with as we build

6:41

our course together or our experience together is the container of feminist

6:47

art field school as what we call ourselves and i wonder uh

6:52

if you might be willing to think out loud with us about those words as a container and whether or not they

6:58

resonate or some of the sparks that we might be able to connect to the work that you do with tangled and

7:05

genres like art or feminist art yeah of course like

7:11

i i mean i i think feminist art was my introduction into kind of critical access and into uh

7:20

you know critical disability um understandings and critical disability study like for me feminist

7:27

art can exist without really an intersectional lens that includes an analysis of disability justice

7:35

and you know just like in feminism where we understand that there are structural things that create

7:43

the social kind of meanings that are assigned to to people like i i think more and more we’re beginning

7:50

to understand that we can’t be siloed in our uh in our fields

7:56

i there’s um an incredible definition of ableism that delilah t.l lewis who’s a disability

8:05

justice activist has has helped um

8:10

has created alongside other um like black bipoc uh disabled activists

8:19

and that definition of ableism is it’s it’s really

8:25

i think it captures a lot of my thoughts around um

8:31

essentially why we have to include um ableism in that analysis and i’ll just

8:38

kind of recall it as best as i can it essentially says that

8:45

ableism is kind of a ableism dictates how we uh how we move

8:54

and how we uh are valued in society you know it it

8:59

pits us against this kind of mythic norm of what is

9:05

um what is valuable and

9:11

it’s it it really tells us that ableism is part of a system that like values

9:17

people based on just like these socially constructed ideas of what is you know

9:23

normal or desirable or productive and you know it’s it’s intersectional

9:30

these these constructed ideas are cobbled together from eugenics misogyny

9:37

anti-blackness colonialism capitalism especially capitalism um and

9:43

so you know it tells us who’s valuable in society and you don’t actually i think

9:49

the most important part here is that um tl says you do not have to be disabled

9:54

to experience ableism and i think that really changed my understanding of what disability is like that ableism is

10:01

structural and that it affects us all and so when we talk about feminist arts um when we talk about feminism in

10:08

general like if if your feminism doesn’t include disability then is it truly

10:14

feminism is it is it truly understanding all the ways that you know ableism has

10:20

actually been what upholds a lot of the other ways people are oppressed like

10:27

we have to include it in that analysis because when we think you know as queer folks about how

10:34

um we were things were justified in terms of uh

10:39

of discriminating against queer folks it was through this lens of mental illness through a lens of

10:46

disability and that’s often how it was employed that’s disability oftentimes is

10:51

employed against other uh other groups other marginalized groups

10:58

and so it’s really it’s vital to have accessible um

11:04

accessible gatherings it’s important to have disability as part of um

11:10

these conversations because otherwise we can fall so easily into repeating uh

11:16

the tropes that have created these structures in the first place

The Power of Disability Art

11:24

fantastic are we are we throwing the mic back and forth let’s do it i’m

11:29

having a great time i could listen to shawn all day so i’m just trying to think of the best way to

11:36

prompt him to to do it again um i’m thinking about uh

11:43

um the phrase that you used uh to title your

11:49

your um appearance on the podcast the secret feminist agenda podcast

11:56

disability art is the last avant-garde and just thinking about that phrase in

12:03

um in relationship to chase’s question about the name of this course and um

12:11

uh the commentary that you just made i mean to me as a

12:17

nerdy art historian um that uh that describes

12:24

disability art as something so powerful and i wonder if you could uh talk a

12:30

little bit about the phrase and where it comes from and what it means to you

12:36

and um that idea of the power of disability art

12:41

yeah well i i should start by saying that that phrase the last avant-garde is um

12:48

a phrase that that was coined by yinka nabare who’s um uh and a critically acclaimed artist

12:56

in the uk um he’s um a disabled artist as well and

13:01

it came from a panel that he was on uh in 2007 where he he kind of asserted

13:08

that disability arts is the last remaining avant-garde movement and i think like it was so powerful to me and

13:15

as someone who’s just being introduced to disability arts at the time

13:20

not necessarily even really politically aligning myself with disability that that understanding that reframing was

13:27

really an important way of how i understood and valued disability arts and it was really

13:34

exciting you know i think what yinka was doing was like

13:40

observing that there was there was there is an emerging

13:45

and kind of growing momentum of disability arts and this growth for him parallel movements

13:52

like feminist arts black arts queer arts you know movements in the 60s that were

13:58

really powerful vehicles for social change and were able to kind of upend

14:04

the the art sector for and resist kind of the

14:09

the ways that the art sector had stagnated and so i think

14:14

really like yinka’s assertion that disability arts is the last of on guard kind of

14:21

unapologetically centers uh disabled artists and culture and

14:28

it it asks us to understand that these practices are new

14:33

new to the mainstream i should say and a lot of these practices are not understood they’re oftentimes um

14:41

anti-capitalists they’re times about uh about discomfort there are often times

14:48

about you know different ways of being and and there’s a disability

14:54

scholar named kelly fritsch who um created this definition of the word

15:00

is like a reclaimed uh word that we use in the community and kelly

15:06

started using it as a verb to which meant um to open with desire for the way

15:11

that disability disrupts and for me that’s that’s kind of what this last avant-garde is about it’s about you know

15:19

cultural practices that disrupt our budgets that disrupt our timelines that

15:25

disrupt uh you know our expectations for productivity and i think those are all

15:31

ways that we we reimagine the world through disability arts like i think art

15:36

holds that possibility right to um to not only like

15:43

to not only showcase really beautiful works and to not only showcase the messages of the artist but really to

15:49

actually reimagine the worlds that we’re living in through you know curation through care through

15:57

kind of the mutual ways that um we we can gather and

16:03

so for me like this idea of the last avant-garde is so exciting because

16:08

it it simultaneously situates the movement um within

16:14

kind of you know the artistic movements that currently exist but also asks us to

16:19

understand that it’s something we don’t know yet it’s something that is um

16:26

still being developed and it’s still being formalized and um for me like disabled artists are

16:33

really important because we’re changing the framework of

16:39

how the arts industry uh functions and moves and

16:45

how it’s how it values uh where it places its value essentially

16:53

extraordinary i feel like i’m sparking in in all kinds of directions and one of the things that i think about a lot as a

Critical Disability Curation

16:58

filmmaker and someone who you know learned how to make films in activist and experimental

17:06

places and has since moved toward the more mainstream industrial apparatus of

17:12

cinema and media making one of the things that’s interesting about that move is the ways in which you

17:17

get to see how the institutions work and the politics of gatekeeping and inclusion and exclusion that keeps the

17:23

avant-garde the avant-garde and the mainstream the mainstream right and so there’s so many connections there to what you’re saying and i wonder if we

17:29

can continue the conversation by integrating you know what is a critical

17:36

disability curatorial practice how do we think about curation as such a central mode of making and

17:44

unmaking in these ways yeah like you know that was something that i

17:51

coming into my my role i really started off as an artist um as someone

17:58

who you know was was trying to piecemeal my own understanding of disability and so

18:03

when i first came to tangled i when when i learned about accessible

18:08

curation for instance i was really still under the impression that

18:15

access was something that you could scientifically quantify

18:20

that like if you if you learned about the many standards and checklists that that was

18:28

about creating access and you know people throw around the word

18:34

fully accessible all the time but in my work at tangled i’m beginning to understand more and more that like

18:41

we’re never gonna be fully accessible and you can’t sort of be fully accessible and i think that’s the that’s

18:48

the beauty of it is that when we’re doing this kind of work um

18:54

we’re constantly relearning and unlearning and for me

19:00

there’s there’s this idea that um disability scholar amy hamrai puts

19:05

forward which is called critical access and critical access sort of

19:14

it it rejects this idea that access is always good for everyone which is kind of how

19:22

in the 60s and 70s when the disability rights movement emerged um

19:29

that was kind of how they how the disability rights movement got

19:34

buy-in was to convince you know architects that good design is always good for everybody and we’re beginning

19:42

to maybe resist this notion through amy’s idea of critical access we’re beginning

19:48

to understand that maybe access needs to center disabled people and that sometimes um it disrupts or

19:55

creates discomfort for able-bodied folks that has to be a part of how we negotiate our relationships to one

20:02

another i think you know for instance um

Colonial Comfort

20:09

in in an exhibition that we did um in 2017 one of the earliest uh one one of

20:17

the first shows that i was involved with um we worked with an incredible artist uh vanessa dion

20:24

fletcher who’s a lenape and pogbatomi neurodiverse artist

20:32

and uh vanessa had had an exhibition called own your cervix in which

20:38

um she used uh you know porcupine quills and menstrual

20:44

blood as a way of understanding colonization hold on our bodies um i

20:50

could get into the the whole exhibition but the part i want to focus on is this this one piece called colonial

20:57

comfort that vanessa created which was like a white sette it was uh like a

21:04

little couch two two-person couch it was an old victorian style sete that she

21:09

amplified the textures and design with her menstrual blood and with porcupine

21:15

quills and a big part of how we show this work was the idea of

21:22

safety you know like can we safely

21:28

um like place the work and allow folks to engage with it when there are porcupine

21:35

quills you know if someone um comes in who’s from the blind or low vision community like how do they safely engage

21:42

with this work and you know we kind of went back and forth we thought you know do we does it

21:47

go on a pedestal do we put a rope around it um

21:52

and i think these were all things that we thought of and then at the end what we decided was

21:59

actually every time someone comes into our gallery we would just let them know that there are porcupine quills and we would

22:05

help guide them to interact with the work as much as they want um and so we we were

22:12

still creating access but i think it was about letting folks

22:18

engage with the work the way they need to and i think that was a really fundamental moment for me because i was

22:25

always understanding accessibility as creating independence and instead here we were

22:32

creating what called interdependence you know um i think interdependence and access those

22:39

are really like our communities addressed to ableism and you know it’s all it’s all very linked

22:45

back to the ways that we can try to decolonize our spaces and to clear our spaces

22:51

because it’s it’s all really linked back together and so i i think for me

22:57

this commitment that we were making towards disability justice and decolon

23:03

decolonizing through vanessa’s exhibition that was like a really fundamental change for me and

23:08

understanding like yeah access isn’t always about um

23:14

making this very scientific very kind of

23:20

compliance-based way of um curating and exhibiting the work

23:25

sometimes it’s about um doing what you can with the resources that you have

23:31

uh you know maybe if we had unlimited resources we would have been able to find some other way some automated

23:38

magical way someone comes near it the lights come off the big sign comes like something like that but you know

23:45

folks we’ve always had to hack inaccessible spaces we’ve always had to

23:50

just create um you know like like protocols and methods

23:56

for handling things even at the beginning when i described to myself um for for folks i think that was a part

24:03

of disability culture it’s a way that you know we can hack zoom in a way to to

24:09

allow for folks who are you know blind or low vision to come on and to understand

24:15

you know what kind of space is being created

24:23

thank you um that was fantastic and uh just to

Visual Description

24:28

to quickly touch on your your um visual description of of yourself

24:35

when i um and am asked to do that in zoom meetings i’m like uh

24:40

i don’t know i’m a middle-aged black woman with black hair and a red sweater and like the um

24:48

the facility with which you described yourself

24:54

uh to really give a complete visual picture is is i guess

25:01

practiced and um you know an indication of um

25:06

a kind of a skill building that that we have to the rest of us who don’t know

25:14

how to do that yet have to participate in in order to make this zoom space truly

25:20

um a more comfortable space for for more people

25:26

yeah and and i i just want to say like it really is about practice because i

Audio Description

25:33

am not the best at describing myself like i remember when i first

25:39

had to describe myself like i had no idea what to include um

25:45

i didn’t know how to describe you know my glasses my skin color like do i describe disability and then like

25:51

actually that ended up being a very political choice that i’ve continued to make every time i come into a space

25:58

is to really identify myself as someone who’s visibly disabled because like when you when you go into

26:04

space together like physically that’s what happens everyone can

26:09

for those who are sighted like everyone can easily see that i’m um visibly disabled so i think

26:15

we i i want to create that same sense through description and there’s

26:20

there’s lots of um there’s so many incredible artists doing

26:26

really interesting things with audio description you know like that that goes back to my standardization

26:33

mark remarks like i think there’s this there there are standards that have been created about

26:39

audio description but then there are there are all these artists and all

26:45

these uh you know activists doing really creative things with audio description

26:51

using it in poetic ways integrating it into the aesthetic of what they do and

26:56

that’s that’s also important right like making access not just an add-on but like part of a cultural aesthetic

27:04

and something that we consistently do i think is really

27:09

important absolutely um the other thing that i wanted to to

The Creative Solution

27:15

touch on out of your last comment um i hope i’m not hogging the mic chase um

27:21

is the idea that um the solution that you came up for vanessa dion fletcher’s

27:27

show was you know the creative solution that you had to come up with because you’ve had

27:33

limited financial resources and thinking about the

27:39

the kind of large mainstream public institutions that i’ve worked in

27:46

i think that your solution is was so beautiful and i think to myself oh you know gosh

27:53

how would we ever do that because we can’t have a person um guide everybody who comes to the show

28:01

to the piece um so there’s a different kind of lack in

28:07

mainstream institutions there’s plenty of money but not as much

28:13

relational wealth and um i hope i’m not

28:19

coming to this question too soon but it’s the one that um you know is always at the front of my

28:25

mind like what what do you think the capacity of larger public institutions

28:32

are to to be more responsible in um uh

28:38

fighting ableism in representing um artists from the disability community

28:46

and really being a part of this conversation and a kind of related uh

28:51

question is can you talk a little bit about the partnerships that you do do with mainstream

28:56

institutions definitely yeah it’s it’s such an interesting question when

Leadership

29:02

you ask because i’m i i balance kind of two uh [Music]

29:08

two kind of schools of thought when when we do this you know because i i want institutions

29:14

to invest in this and it needs to be a long-term thing but on the other hand you know

29:20

it can be really frustrating because institutions do have a lot more resources and if they simply made a

29:26

commitment to it that it could go a lot quicker um

29:31

and so oftentimes what i what i try to talk about is

29:37

really centering the community and and trying like one of the tenets of disability justice is

29:44

leadership of the most impacted i think for a lot of institutions it’s easy to

29:51

i shouldn’t say it’s easy but it’s much easier to create

29:56

one exhibition where perhaps a disabled artist can come in

30:03

and showcase their works but it’s it’s much harder to kind of genuinely commit in a long

30:12

term to that and i i think that is what needs to happen it’s like more leadership from

30:20

uh from the community and more opportunities for leadership from the

30:26

community i think it starts with you know a lot of

30:31

uh a lot of consultations to be honest um to understand

30:36

what you don’t even know and to understand you know

30:42

why the community may be for instance uh hesitant at first to

30:48

engage with the community um there’s that what i oftentimes say with the

30:54

institutions that we work with is you you can’t only do this once if you try

31:00

to do everything perfectly one time then perhaps you’ve created access

31:08

through that one program but you haven’t actually made a commitment to the community and if folks can only ever go

31:15

to one program a year or one program period like nobody would really want to

31:22

invest in um that energy invest that kind of trust

31:27

invest that um you know that that kind of time to engage with that institution if um it

31:35

isn’t a real effort and so leadership i think is is the most important one

31:42

um in in my work with other institutions it’s also been about

31:49

opening to that discomfort um we have an exhibition coming up actually with um that we’re doing a

31:56

partnership with the robert mclaughlin um gallery in in uh in oshawa

32:03

and uh one of the artists as lynn thomas is creating what she’s calling what they’re

32:11

calling uh an invisible sculpture um and

32:16

this this sculpture is a commitment to fragrance-free space aslan’s someone who

32:23

has multiple chemical sensitivities and oftentimes uh make may come in wearing a

32:29

mask or a filter in order to try to mitigate some of these um chemicals that

32:35

that folks may who are heavily perfumed may be wearing and so for this show where actually aslan

32:42

actually proposed that we uh not allow folks who are heavily

32:48

scented into our space and you know it’s it’s really it can be very uncomfortable for an institution

32:55

to make that kind of commitment i think like i i really applaud the rmg for

33:02

committing to this and it’s something that we’re going to be doing some training with their docents around i

33:08

think a lot of folks are like how how do we do this but um that’s i think that’s the discomfort

33:15

and the commitment level that we need is to understand from the artists like

33:22

what if we shift our thinking to this because oftentimes there are scent-free policies but

33:28

no one enforces them and you know that creates an accessibility

33:34

for one group and so azan’s basically flipping the thinking around here aslan saying

33:41

like well then what happens when we have it the other way around is isn’t that equally uncomfortable and why can’t it

33:48

be equally uncomfortable that way and so i like you know that’s that’s one of the things that

33:54

that i think is is exciting about working with institutions is actually making them uncomfortable

34:01

um and and you know i i don’t mean it in like a in any sort of malicious way i

34:08

a lot of folks are incredible allies within institutions um

34:13

but i think when when folks are interested in disability arts like there needs to be this

34:19

recognition that like you you commit to access you commit to

34:25

the artists and you don’t try to create new harms when when you’re um

34:31

when you are doing these programs fantastic thank you

Access as Cultural Aesthetic

34:37

thank you so much i have to tell you that as you were speaking i furiously grabbed a post-it note

34:44

and wrote you know access as cultural aesthetic and i’ve like my eyes have

34:49

returned to this idea multiple times as you have been speaking and

34:54

i’m so inspired to think about you know the artists who are using audio

35:00

description as one way in which we can imagine that and i’m wondering if you could

35:06

offer up perhaps other ways that we might think about access as cultural aesthetic

35:12

yeah oh definitely i mean i think there’s there’s so many examples and

35:17

there’s so many artists hacking the inaccessibility of like normative culture we we’ve got you know

35:25

for instance artists working with vibration and sound as a way of kind of

35:32

transcending the ways that you can experience sound art

35:38

um we’ve got artists playing with captions in ways

35:43

that are really interesting um that kind of may on on one level actually be

35:50

inaccessible um for some and then like really interesting for others and

35:56

they’re they’re doing it in ways that offer multiple entry points

36:02

um for instance uh the artist who painted the piece behind me is valentin brown and valentin really

36:10

committed to accessibility as an aesthetic within his work um

36:16

you know i often talk about how artists gesture towards what i call a horizon i kind of

36:24

took back from jose esteban munoz idea of a queer horizon

36:29

um and you know i think it applies just as much to a horizon you know and elsewhere

36:36

and elsewhen where um you know we’re in a utopia where

36:42

folks have their access needs met where there’s intimacy through our access and

36:47

valentin often takes on accessibility as an aesthetic for his

36:53

pieces but he doesn’t do it in a very traditional way he had you know over

36:59

or valentin had over a hundred pieces at our gallery and a

37:04

thousand little sculptures in our space and you couldn’t possibly create

37:09

um a traditional audio description because it would just be too

37:15

daunting and it would be kind of un it wouldn’t really be an enjoyable

37:21

listen because it would be this large opus of a track and each piece had

37:27

some similarities and so it really wouldn’t create the sense of what um

37:35

the exhibition is meant to evoke and so valentin instead um had had been writing

37:40

almost like diary entries um what they call uh what she calls captain’s logs in

37:46

the back of mountains works and so

37:52

the each piece um had this cap like many of the pieces had captains logs and

37:59

so instead valentin used those captains logs to create the audio description

38:04

and kind of created these um sound stations where folks could listen

38:09

to the the audio description and then uh mountain also created these tactile

38:16

elements it was a there was a big sculpture called big softy that had you know it

38:24

was made out of a lot of different fabrics a lot of really interesting tactile elements

38:30

if you touch a certain place it might squeak or it might uh be kind of

38:35

scratchy and other places uh could be really soft and you could hold it or you could take it apart and so

38:43

valentin was creating access not in a traditional way but instead complementing

38:49

um traditional visual art with uh tactile

38:54

elements there was also gloria swain who’s an incredible

39:00

uh black mad uh artist and activist we worked with

39:06

she programmed she curated an exhibition called hidden it was the last show that we that we had

39:12

before the pandemic kind of forced us to close our gallery space and during this process um

39:20

gloria had curated uh four other artists along herself

39:29

into the space but unfortunately one of the artists wasn’t able to be a part of the show anymore and while

39:35

there was potentially enough time to find another artist rather than draw the the artists like gloria decided to

39:43

hold an empty wall with text that wrote about kind of um holding space for this artist and every

39:50

artist who wasn’t able to really participate um and we paid a fee to that artist for

39:56

participating that that far into things and you know i think gloria was holding

40:02

access in a different way for the artists of the exhibition and also

40:08

to showcase access in a different way and we’ve since learned from that we’ve

40:14

put into the the very contracts that we signed with our artists a

40:19

what we’re calling for now we might find a better name for it like a care clause where you know

40:25

the productivity isn’t the most important thing the deliverable isn’t the most important thing it’s the

40:32

wellness and capacity of the artist and so if not

40:39

everything arrives that’s fine if nothing arrives that’s also fine you know it’s it’s about creating a space um

40:46

that tries to mitigate the inaccessibility of the very art world that we’re participating in

40:56

um yeah those are some examples of access off the top of my head but like i think

41:03

there are so many artists creating collaborative collective ways of doing this work

41:09

and oftentimes it’s through hacking it’s through

41:15

like you know very diy aspects and i think people are oftentimes surprised at that

41:20

because there is that they’re through things like the aoda the the the um accessibility for

41:28

ontarians with disabilities act and through like the ada the americans with disability acts in

41:34

the um in the us like the idea of access has

41:40

been kind of made into something that’s only ever about compliance and about

41:45

like the fear of reprisal if you don’t um

41:50

become accessible and while i think that’s that is important to have teeth behind

41:56

um you know resistant uh like parties to to access like

42:03

access can also be really joyous and it can be really exciting and liberatory and so

42:10

there’s numerous practices there there have been numerous failures as well and um you

42:17

know each time we learn something and i think each time we we come towards

42:22

something a little bit closer to that that horizon that idea of like a more

42:30

you know understanding intimate intersectional and

42:36

interdependent kind of arts sector

Where are you headed

42:45

um sean you have um just packed the last

42:51

45 or 50 minutes with so much information that um

42:56

i feel like we are at a point where we could move on to the last question

43:01

you’re already starting to um lean into those

43:06

sort of moments of visioning what what the future needs to look like so

43:12

our um our final question is where where are you headed and where where do we need to

43:19

be headed together yeah it it’s

43:25

well that question at the moment i always turn to

43:32

right now in in this moment in covid in the pandemic i think has been really um

43:40

has been really illuminating for us as an organization because it it

43:47

made us recognize just how untapped into the digital world that we

43:53

were like one of our practices was uh before covid was to live stream our

44:00

um openings but you know if you don’t do it in a very

44:06

meaningful way like it isn’t as effective and that’s kind of what we realized was

44:12

there’s so many possibilities um particularly because disabled people do often gather online

44:20

uh for digital content to be created and so that’s a big part of it is is

44:27

holding on to these hybrid um possibilities for for the future i’m i’m

44:34

worried that like a lot of capacity has been built around digital and then it’ll

44:40

be forgotten as soon as um a return to in-person events happens

44:45

and i think we we need to hold on to the new audience members we’ve created but more than anything else we need to

44:51

hold on to some of those more accessible practices that we’ve um we’ve learned how to how to do like

45:00

a lot of what’s happening right now a lot of the work from home the flexibility the the digital content

45:07

those are the things that disabled folks have been advocating for um

45:12

forever but it wasn’t until like this this unfortunately like like a

45:18

capitalist necessity necessity um created the opportunity for this that

45:23

these things happened up until then it was considered excessive but when it’s suddenly

45:30

the majority when it’s non-disabled people that also need this it’s it’s suddenly not excessive and i think

45:38

that’s that’s also what critical access tasks us with understanding is is you

45:43

know trying to be more understanding of how access

45:49

can really go beyond compliance and go beyond this

45:55

idea of only being a checklist you know and for us the hybrid is an exciting

46:02

place is a really it’s a site full of possibilities and that’s i think a big part of it is you

46:09

know for instance we one one of the experimental diys that

46:15

i’d like that maybe by the time this is showing will be um

46:20

a part of our practice definitely this year but like hopefully beyond is the ability to

46:27

book um a zoom drop in you know a guided tour through

46:33

uh we’re thinking an ipad but it may be different like you know where somebody can guide you

46:39

through the gallery and you can have an experience akin to dropping in and getting a tour from a

46:47

docent and it’ll be different but it’ll be but there are i think a lot of ways that

46:52

it could also be more accessible and more intimate and you know we’ll with we also love

46:59

in-person events and gatherings but we also really want to hold on to like the

47:05

digital ways that we can um program and create community so

47:11

that like only i think because the pandemic is so at

47:16

the moment that’s that’s where i’m i’m going with the future and i think a lot of other organizations

47:23

i hope do as well is is you know hold on to the capacity they’ve built digitally

47:29

and not just you know okay we don’t need to live stream anymore because we’re open again like i

47:37

think do both maybe maybe if you don’t have the capacity to

47:43

hold as many artist talks that means you do a little bit less and you keep the shows open longer and i think that’s

47:49

also something we’d like to see is is um

47:54

is just some slowing down and some uh like relaxing of the practices that

48:00

currently exist that i think a lot of us hopefully has at least at the beginning of the

48:06

pandemic took on was just trying to slow things down and yeah

48:13

hybrid models thank you so much for those thoughts you know when michelle and i first started

48:18

thinking about the field school together we had imagined it to be in person and imagined it to be in a much more

48:24

contracted time and we are so grateful for the opportunity to be in conversation with you and to actually

48:30

extend our time and slow down in our time and to continue to think of ways that our conversation and these

48:37

modules and these conversations that we’re having with students and other interlocutors can exist far beyond the

48:43

bounds of the field school itself and i’m so grateful for your insights and

48:48

and inspirations and ideas thanks for talking to us oh it’s my pleasure and you know i i

48:56

think it is it’s it’s really great that um in a lot of ways that we can do these

49:01

things digitally we’ve been able to collaborate with folks um

49:06

all across the world now that you know i think just culturally wouldn’t have been

49:12

thought of before it was always possible but um

49:17

is is now kind of coming through a lot more and so i’m excited for a lot of the possibilities

49:25

um in the future you know and when we can be in in a space and also digital

49:30

like i think a lot can happen and i really appreciate the invitation to to be a

49:35

part of this it was absolutely our pleasure

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