Editorial Essay
1
00:00:00,000 –> 00:00:02,000
Hello!
2
00:00:03,833 –> 00:00:08,134
Firstly, this (I? We?)
3
00:00:08,134 –> 00:00:13,435
is/am/are an .srt file.
4
00:00:13,435 –> 00:00:18,835
An SRT is both a plain text file and a caption file.
5
00:00:18,835 –> 00:00:29,737
Download, drag, and drop me into an open-source video player or word processor like VLC or TextEdit, respectfully.
6
00:00:29,737 –> 00:00:35,738
This/I is/am written in the bottom third, across time.
7
00:00:35,738 –> 00:00:38,805
I am also co-authored.
8
00:00:38,805 –> 00:00:43,506
This is a part of an interdependent authorship and collaborative praxis.
9
00:00:43,506 –> 00:00:49,273
Though framed through a singular perspective,
I am shaped by a multiplicity of experiences
10
00:00:49,273 –> 00:00:53,307
held individually but felt/known together.
11
00:00:53,307 –> 00:00:58,841
More broadly, interdependent authorship allows for a specificity of experience
12
00:00:58,841 –> 00:01:04,842
while resisting the ways in which public disability disclosure
13
00:01:04,842 –> 00:01:11,043
overly invokes a specific, singular, and isolated body.
14
00:01:11,043 –> 00:01:15,743
So, please, bear that in mind—but more on that later.
15
00:01:15,743 –> 00:01:18,310
This issue is called deaf*.
16
00:01:18,310 –> 00:01:25,211
deaf* is a term I started using years ago to describe a/my particular vantage.
17
00:01:25,211 –> 00:01:33,246
An alternative to other, less favorable, terms that were provided for me by identity positions that border my own.
18
00:01:33,946 –> 00:01:39,780
Through my life those terms have loomed large, serving to intimidate, constrict, foreclose,
19
00:01:39,780 –> 00:01:43,081
and otherwise delimit how I might understand myself and others.
20
00:01:44,247 –> 00:01:49,215
I started using deaf* to imagine something different, something elsewhere.
21
00:01:49,215 –> 00:01:51,682
For me, the asterisk is key.
22
00:01:51,682 –> 00:01:57,016
When operationalized, deaf* has been used to describe a multiplicity of non-normative experiences,
23
00:01:57,016 –> 00:02:06,017
vantages, and epistemologies in/around aurality, orality, communication, listening, and beyond.
24
00:02:06,951 –> 00:02:15,852
It is a term contingent upon elsewheres, excesses, overflows, interstices, and the irreconcilable.
25
00:02:15,852 –> 00:02:23,886
deaf* is emergent, speculative, re: generative, and horizontal (of/ towards the sensorium’s horizon).
26
00:02:23,886 –> 00:02:33,621
deaf* is used as a descriptor of distinction, positionality, methodology, and the slippages between.
27
00:02:33,621 –> 00:02:44,022
This issue touches base with the embodied and experiential—these undergird what deaf*, or any other term worth in/provoking, could/should/would be.
28
00:02:44,856 –> 00:02:47,223
This issue turns to artists.
29
00:02:47,223 –> 00:02:52,024
This issue responds to a particular moment in contemporary art discourse where d/Disability
30
00:02:52,024 –> 00:03:00,058
has never been more present (as a subject matter) and yet its creative and critical methodologies are notably________.
31
00:03:01,992 –> 00:03:05,459
Arts institutions are performing surface level access considerations but
32
00:03:05,459 –> 00:03:13,793
are seldom (read never) responding to the ways in which art derives much of its value from inaccessibility
33
00:03:13,793 –> 00:03:20,094
and its mediums are founded in ableist notions of
mastery, sensory hierarchy, and possession.
34
00:03:20,694 –> 00:03:26,928
This issue begins to chart what a deaf* space could be and what it might offer art in this moment.
35
00:03:27,629 –> 00:03:33,729
It does this through sharing personal, lived, and embodied understandings of deaf*ness.
36
00:03:35,030 –> 00:03:39,764
The writing and projects in this issue are not definitive or enclosed, rather
37
00:03:39,764 –> 00:03:46,031
they chart a space of openings and questions about what deaf* might mean and how it might function.
38
00:03:46,631 –> 00:03:53,366
Via artist works/projects, we start to develop a vocabulary of missing information,
39
00:03:53,366 –> 00:03:59,833
misunderstanding, and critical illegibility/intelligibility.
40
00:04:00,266 –> 00:04:07,968
The issue begins with a roundtable discussion that brings together artists Seo Hye Lee, Rotem Tamir, and Hannah Wallis.
41
00:04:08,334 –> 00:04:15,335
They discuss what complications, questions, challenges, and perspectives can/should form a deaf* horizon.
42
00:04:16,035 –> 00:04:23,136
While academics dominate and shape the discourse around Deaf and
Disability Studies we turned intentionally to artists and creatives
43
00:04:23,136 –> 00:04:31,171
to explore how deaf* ways of being inform their practice
and their relationship to structures within the art world.
44
00:04:31,804 –> 00:04:36,038
These individuals draw upon their embodied experience to articulate and
45
00:04:36,038 –> 00:04:45,039
collectively imagine the ways in which deaf*ness pushes against what
we know about identity, communication, and belonging.
46
00:04:45,906 –> 00:04:51,640
Lee, Tamir, and Wallis expand upon each other’s thoughts and experiences and begin to articulate
47
00:04:51,640 –> 00:04:56,508
a shared understanding of deaf*ness between them— one with leaky borders,
48
00:04:56,508 –> 00:05:04,075
private and creative experiences of sound, and an awareness of the constant pressure to conform.
49
00:05:05,342 –> 00:05:10,343
Their modes of communication and sensory experiences are complex and move in, out, and beyond
50
00:05:10,343 –> 00:05:16,210
the boundaries of traditional language structures/strictures.
51
00:05:16,210 –> 00:05:24,578
Margaret Fink, Mirthe Berentsen and Louise Hickman share essays informed by their personal experiences in/around deaf*ness.
52
00:05:25,112 –> 00:05:30,346
Their creative writing situates deaf* knowledge in seemingly ordinary moments,
53
00:05:30,346 –> 00:05:35,380
being in-between and slipping from one sensory experience to another.
54
00:05:35,380 –> 00:05:39,614
These slippages can happen slowly—throughout the course of adolescence and young-adulthood
55
00:05:39,614 –> 00:05:44,248
or through incremental ‘advances’ in hearing aid technologies.
56
00:05:44,248 –> 00:05:50,215
Other shifts are more rapid— after giving birth or with the emergence of comorbidities.
57
00:05:50,215 –> 00:05:57,950
The continuous reorientation they describe reveals how malleability or instability might be inherent to deaf*ness.
58
00:05:59,483 –> 00:06:05,484
Artists JJJJJerome Ellis, Alison O’Daniel, William Pope.L, Jordan Lord and Sarah Browne
59
00:06:05,484 –> 00:06:11,285
create works of art informed by cripistemological principles (more on this term later).
60
00:06:11,285 –> 00:06:14,785
These artists critically engage disciplinary conventions,
61
00:06:14,785 –> 00:06:20,753
challenge audience expectations, and experiment with access and accessibility as material.
62
00:06:21,153 –> 00:06:27,920
Through their work, they chart new ways of relating to and enacting art.
63
00:06:30,021 –> 00:06:34,388
To invoke and annotate something Derek Jarman wrote at the outset of his book Chroma,
64
00:06:35,021 –> 00:06:40,956
“[We] I wrote [have written] this book [issue] in an absence [reflux] of time.
65
00:06:40,956 –> 00:06:47,090
If I [We] have overlooked something you hold precious—
write it in the margin [comments].”