This summer I had the immense pleasure of working remotely with members of Teatro Visión, a Chicanx theatre company in San José California, to record experimental descriptions of 5 figurative works in permanent collection of the San José Museum of Art. Their descriptions are so very powerful and evocative. I can’t wait to share them.

We are currently putting on the finishing touches before releasing the work into the world in early December 2021 as part of the exhibition, Our whole, unruly selves. Stay tuned!

Sincere thanks to everyone at Teatro Visión and the San José Museum of Art who is making this project possible, and for so much patience and understanding during a particularly unruly time in my own life.

Contributors: Alexia Diaz, América Bautista Bárcenas, Brissa Ibarra, Carolina Perez, Citlali Ortiz, Isabel Hertal, José Chuy Hernandez, Maria Theresa Bárcenas, Maria Vargas, Marissa Torres, Matt Casey, Natalie Herrera, Nicole Machuca, Rojana Ibarra, Ronald Feichtmeir, Samanta Hertel, Ugho Badú, Veronica Eldredge, Vitalina Wainzinger, and Yasmin Rivero

Consultation: Ramya Amuthan

Project Coordination: Leigh Henderson, Robin Treen and Lauren Schell Dickens

Recording: Robin Treen, Lauren Schell Dickens, and Jeff Bordana

Artwork coordination: Anamarie Alongi, Aron Lee, and Dan Becker

Translation and Spanish-language consultation: Juanita Berber-Acosta

Audio Engineering: Nathan Saliwonchyk

This project was commissioned by the San José Museum of Art, and curated by Lauren Schell Dickens. 

I have long been curious about why artists labelled with intellectual disabilities aren’t better represented in Disability Arts spaces (let alone the artworld at large).

This past spring I spoke with a number of people about some of the dynamics that create and shape the distance between some groups of disabled people and with some artists labelled with intellectual disabilities about their experiences, frustrations, dreams, and desires.

It’s a complex conversation, and one that I want to keep having.

I had the honour of publishing an article on this subject in the summer issue of BlackFlash magazine, A Temporary, Collectively-Held Space guest-edited by Carmen Papalia. Regrettably, a plain language version is not yet available, but we’re working on it.

Sincere thanks to Carmen Papalia, Maxine Proctor, the BlackFlash team and all those who spoke with me at all stages of this writing, including Eliza Chandler, Emily Cook, Rachel Gray, Tara Grude, Jessie Huggett, Sean Lee, Stephanie Nadeau, Debbie Ratcliffe, Elizabeth Sweeney, Alain Shain, and Shara Weaver.

Advocates of expanded assisted death regimes have been very successful in campaigning for the “right to die.” So much so that I’m told that most people on the political left assume that any opposition to it is informed by a conservative, pro-life position.

I recently had the opportunity to publish a version of a text that wrote (fuelled, to be honest, by rage and despair) while Bill C-7 became enshrined in Canadian law. This legislation radically expanded Medical Assistance in Dying in so-called Canada, creating a special track to early death for any adult with a disability.

Disabled people and people with disabilities overwhelmingly oppose this change to the law. While it’s heartening to see this beginning to be covered with more accuracy in the media, lives have already been lost as a result of this discriminatory legislation–lives of disabled people who would have preferred to live but lacked the supports to do so.

I’m honoured to publish this piece alongside poetry by Jane Shi. Many thanks to Anna Bowen for her careful editing of this text, and for the opportunity to add my voice to the chorus of opposition to this law.

In light of recent experiments with alternative approaches to audio description, I was invited to craft a response to an exhibition of abstract paintings from the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery (KWAG)’s permanent collection.  We’re looking for help!  Feel like you don’t “get it” or are easily intimidated by large abstract paintings (or paintings of any kind)?  Don’t worry, so do I!  Have some access barriers you need support around?  Me too!  Let’s figure this out together…

Here are the details from KWAG’s blog:

The Myth of Consensus is an exhibition of abstract works created during the 1960s and 1970s, a heady time full of optimism for the future. The bloom of counter-cultures and constitutional separatism mobilized a rebellious new generation of citizens. Against this cultural backdrop, artists sought out innovative ways to give voice to an era of rapid societal change, turning away from traditional modes of representation and towards abstraction.

Kitchener-based artist Aislinn Thomas has been commissioned to create a response to this exhibition. For this project, she is inviting community members of all ages and experiences to help create visual descriptions of a selection of works in the show.

Visual description is a set of practices that aims to make visual information accessible through spoken language for those who are not able to fully experience something through sight.

Thomas’ recent work intervenes into the conventions of standardized access measures in search of experiences of access that are pleasurable, responsive to a range of preferences that are not often met by institutional approaches to accessibility, and are artworks in themselves. While professional description absolutely has its place and its fans, experimental and DIY approaches to visual description (and access more broadly) open up possibilities for collective care and solidarity.

Contributors will be asked to respond to one of three artworks from KWAG’s Permanent Collection on view in The Myth of Consensus:

• Harold Feist, Tirade, 1977
• Takao Tanabe, Optimist, 1964
• Harold Town, Summit Meeting, 1961

No prior experience is necessary—we will guide you with prompts and questions. We will record your description in audio on-site at the Gallery. A selection of responses will be woven into an audio work that will also be translated to an American Sign Language video.

All members of the community who are interested are welcome and encouraged to participate. Please let us know how we can help ensure your comfort and wellbeing in the Gallery. The Gallery is physically accessible with newly updated all-gender single stall washrooms.  On the days we are recording the gallery will be in “sensory friendly mode,” and lighting can be adjusted to suit your needs.  We ask that you help keep the Gallery as fragrance-free as possible (more on that below). We are committed to access—if you encounter barriers to contributing and would like to do so, we will work with you to make your participation possible.

Please contact Crystal Mowry, Senior Curator at KWAG, if you are interested in contributing and would like to book a time to do so, would like support navigating access needs, have questions or would like more information.

We will be recording during times when the Gallery is closed to the public:

• Monday 17  February, 10 am-1 pm
• Monday 24 February, 10 am-4 pm
• Monday 2 March, 10 am-4 pm
• Sunday 8 March from 10 am-1 pm
• Monday 9 March, 10am-1 pm

Participants will be booked in 30 minute appointments to allow sufficient time to get comfortable with the equipment and learn about the process. Admission to the Gallery is always free and we encourage participants to visit the exhibition beforehand.

For considerations of access, we ask that you please help keep the Gallery as fragrance-free a space as possible by refraining from using perfume, essential oils and scented personal care products the day of your recording. For more information on how and why to be fragrance-free, please see Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s website, and/or Nova Scotia Health’s Scent-Free Resource Binder.

For participation queries:

Crystal Mowry | Senior Curator
Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
cmowry@kwag.on.ca
519-579-5860 x 215

PHOTOPHAGIA:  
The Secret Life of Plants
will be described by gardeners and shown without the picture 

The Secret Life of Plants is a 1979 documentary based on a book by the same name.  The content of both has been critiqued as pseudoscience, yet continues to inspire reverence for plant life and a sense of cosmic interconnectedness.

The soundtrack was created by Stevie Wonder, a fact that conspiracy theorists hold up as evidence that Stevie Wonder is not actually blind.  Yet, as noted by The Organist podcast Stevie Wonder probably experienced the visual aspects of The Secret Life of Plants through a simple technology:  audio description, likely provided in a casual way by his assistants.

While conventional audio description may have its place, I’m invested in experimenting with the form and how its de-professionalization can open up access in pleasurable ways.  This summer I invited people who have relationships with plants (gardeners, florists, biologists, herbalists, master gardeners, plant scientists, farmers, etc.) to each describe a scene of the film, imagining they were describing it to a friend who was watching with their eyes closed. I’ve been thinking of this informal approach to audio description as “community description.”

The audio created by plant-affiliated contributors will play alongside the documentary, which will be screened without the picture at the Princess Twin Cinema during Culture Days on September 28, 2019.

This work is produced by Ontario Culture Days and will screen as part of the province-wide exhibition, DO BLUE BUTTERFLIES EAT PARTS OF THE SUN? curated by Dave Dyment on the occasion of Culture Days’ 10th anniversary.

PHOTOPHAGIA will screen at The Princess Twin Cinema (46 King Street North, Waterloo, ON) at 2pm on Saturday September 28th.  The event is free and all are welcome.  The Princess Twin is wheelchair accessible. It is a relaxed screening and community members are invited to do what they need to feel comfortable.  Please help us create a fragrance-free space by avoiding the use of all scented products.  For more on how and why to be fragrance-free please see:  bit.ly/how-to-scent-free

For any venue-related access questions, please contact the cinema directly at 519-884-5112 or manager@princesscinemas.com

For all other access inquiries (or other questions) please reach out myself at aislinn.zaria.thomas@gmail.com or Ontario Culture Days at on@culturedays.ca

To read the full event listing and to read about the other works in the exhibition please see the Culture Days website.

I’m so excited to release this project into the world!

A distinct aggregation / A dynamic equivalent / A generous ethic of invention:  Six writers respond to six sculptures was commissioned by the Walter Phillips Gallery at the Banff Centre.  Inspired by uninspired approaches to accessibility, it treats traditional audio description as a space for creative acts.

Writers Anna Bowen, Angela Marie Schenstead, Crystal Mowry, Laura Burke, Catherine Frazee and Nicole Kelly Westman each crafted thoughtful, generous responses to a public artwork on the Banff Centre campus.  Together these thoughts and words compose an audio piece that is available to stream from the Walter Phillips Gallery website and can also be heard on MP3 players that can be borrowed from the gallery’s front desk.

The work also exists in a visual format.  Artist Shannon Finnegan and I collaborated to create a broadsheet of transcriptions (pictured above).  The broadsheet includes six text drawings from the ongoing collaborative series A seat at the table, a slice of the pie, that grew from conversations about the practice of visual description.

This project continues to work on me, opening up questions and possibilities for visual description that may challenge sensory hierarchies, is rooted in pleasure, is individualized and particular, that talks back to a work, that memorializes what is no longer physically present, and that acknowledges the subjective.

I’m so grateful to the writers and artists who contributed to this project and all those who worked behind the scenes:  Jacqueline Bell, Caitlin Sutherland, Victoria Lessard, Ed Renzi, Nicolás Arévalo and Iga Gerolin.  Gratitude also to the Canada Council for the Arts.

The exhibition runs until September 27, 2020.

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.

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.”