Month: June 2019

MOVING MOUNTAINS

aislinn
A hand holds an 8.5 x 11 inch publication titled Moving Mountains: Aislinn Thomas and Ruth Skinner in conversation. The cover is a pale yellow with 5 stylized, graphic mountain-like silhouettes staggered beside and in front of each other in a neutral warm palette of browns, grey, cream and a warm deep yellow.
Image credit: Christine Negus

MOUNTAINS USED TO BE UGLY was recently screened as part of London Ontario Media Arts Association’s Broad Topics: A Matrilineage of Media series, in partnership with The Museum for Future Fossils.  In lieu of an artist talk, I had the pleasure of corresponding with Ruth Skinner about this video, mountains, and access. This conversation in text is published in MOVING MOUNTAINS, the publication pictured above.  An open text document version is available here and a PDF here.

Big thanks to Christine Negus and LLOMA for being open to and supporting this dialog, to Jessica Negus for her design work, and to Ruth Skinner for the generous conversation.

Why access is love and there is no such thing as “barrier free”

aislinn
A photo of a wall at an art gallery. The text on the wall reads: Our hope is that everyone is able to access and enjoy our exhibitions. If there is anything we can do to improve your experience at the gallery, please let us know.
Wall text at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery. Photo by Stephanie Vegh

I was happy to be invited to contribute to The Cripsters, a new blog at Akimbo.  In this essay I rant advocate for a relational approach to access (one that is grounded in conversation and relationship) and swoon over the Access is Love campaign organized by an incomparable and brilliant trio: Mia Mingus, Sandy Ho and Alice Wong.  Their work encourages me to believe in a possible future where concern for access is shared in community and held with care.

“Given the broad range of human experience, perhaps the most kind and ethical stance is to realize that we can never anticipate every need, let alone develop adequate boxes to check in response. Not that this should keep us from trying to anticipate and meet the needs of our community, but that it should keep us humble.”