Content Warning: We do briefly cover themes of self harm.
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Transcript
Julian Harper:
Hey, everyone, just giving a little content warning here. During this episode, we do mention themes of self-harm and violence. So please keep that in mind while listening. Thank you. (singing). Hello, everyone. My name is Julian Harper. (singing). Welcome back to Art is the Tool, our podcast about our disability and other stuff. I am joined by my amazing co-hosts and co-workers. We’ve got Adrienne Beckham.
Adrienne Beckham:
Hello.
Julian Harper:
We’ve got Alasia Destine-Defreece.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Hi.
Julian Harper:
And we’ve got Maggie…
Maggie Brennan:
Brennan.
Julian Harper:
Brennan.
Maggie Brennan:
Hey.
Julian Harper:
I only know them a lot.
Maggie Brennan:
No worries.
Julian Harper:
Today we just wanted to chat a little bit about artwork that is inaccessible. We don’t get to talk a lot about artwork itself and what helps make it accessible and today, what doesn’t. So we’re going to get into it, and I think we’re going to start with an artwork that Maggie had looked into.
Maggie Brennan:
I, for those who maybe haven’t listened to the previous episode, I’m the theater person in this room, at least. There’s several people in the organization who also are, but when this topic was posed, I was kind of like, oh, well, the only things that I can think of are performance based. And I was pondering, and then it occurred to me that I knew exactly what I wanted to talk about. So I studied abroad when I was in undergrad, and I studied in Dublin Ireland. And at the school I was at, we were seeing performances every week of professional theater in our city. And one day they said, “Okay, everybody, tonight we’re seeing a one person show. It will be at the school.” The artist came to the school and set up shop and all that kind of stuff. So we went through our day of classes and then reported back to the school to see this performance. And to my knowledge, if I’m remembering correctly, the things that I knew about this performance going into it were that it was called, Iscariot, and it was a one person show, and that’s what I knew.
So we all pile into this room and we’re ready to go for this about hour, maybe a little over an hour long performance. And there were so many things that I saw in that performance that I simply was not prepared for. And in terms of not just what was talked about and what the play addressed, but physical things that I watched that I was like, oh, I would’ve liked to have had some kind of content warning about physical violence or just generally body awareness or I don’t know. And there was a talk back after the show. I don’t know if I want to, should I be like, this is an example of a thing that I saw?
Julian Harper:
Yeah, I mean, we can also…
Maggie Brennan:
I can say trigger warning [inaudible 00:04:01] because that’s what I would’ve liked to have had. Did not get that, but trigger warning, self-harm. And this person in the course of the play had a whip and was whipping themselves. And then also at one point appeared to stick a fork into his hand. It was a whole lot of just really intense stuff. And a lot of us, after the show, when it was the talk back, a lot of us, we were all, for the most part, this was a group of American students. So we were all like, “Hey, why no trigger warnings? Do y’all know about that?” And it started a conversation, not just with this artist, but then the next day in our first class of the day, we were all still kind of reeling. So our professor was like, “Oi, what’s going on?” Or whatever, in his Irish accent. And we were like, “I need more time to process this, because that was a lot.” The show also dealt a lot with religious trauma.
It was kind of apparent about, I was apparent about halfway through the show that we were all bearing witness to this person’s experience in a very, way that felt just a little bit unsafe, not just for the people watching it, but also for the person doing it. So we ended up having many, many conversations with the folks who were running the program about what are trigger warnings? Why do we have them in America? And it’s not to say that they don’t exist in theater in Ireland. Please obviously don’t take this one experience as what it’s like to see theater abroad. But it was just kind of bonkers, bananas. And we had all, I think at this point, it was three weeks into the program, so we were pretty tight in a group. Yeah, yeah. That’s kind of it.
Julian Harper:
Yeah. So to me, it sounds like there’s a couple of things at play. There’s some of the programmatic stuff, like working with the audience, prepping them with different materials and having that kind of emotional context. But then there feels like, what am I trying to say? The… I’m getting there.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
You’re good.
Julian Harper:
What is the moral obligation of the artist? And I feel like, and this brings me back to grad school and conversations like with angsty performance artist, and as a person who’s dealt with religious things myself explicitly through art and performance art-
Maggie Brennan:
Totally.
Julian Harper:
… You’re often told that you really don’t have, you establish your own sense of ethical responsibility as an artist. And I feel like there’s a little bit of that, at least my understanding in my education, that that’s kind of how I was taught. That we are always running against the boundaries. We’re always getting up to the edge of what is of people’s comfort level. And that is your, some people view that as their jobs as artists. And so I feel like there’s some of that training, some of that, and also maybe mythology. As an artist, you kind of view yourself as this person who goes in and is breaking down boundaries and exploring the taboo and going places other people won’t go.
Maggie Brennan:
And even from a theater lens, I’ve had conversations with people when I was in college about trigger warnings or content warnings and what should be included and what shouldn’t be included. And a lot of people early on in those conversations would start from the angle of, “Well, we can’t say that there’s a trigger warning for gun violence because that’s the twist,” is that, you know what I mean? So it was like, “Okay, well, what if we write a better twist, but also surprised?” Well, there’s that, but at what point do you then as an audience goer, that is, that’s in effect, I don’t know. It starts to become the people who are producing the show or the show is not for people who might have, you know what I mean? It starts to really alienate people based on their experiences, which is the antithesis I would like to think of art.
Art is supposed to be the mouthpiece for various experiences and identities and all of that. So yeah, and we had that when we were in the talk back, the guy was saying, “Well, the reason that I didn’t have a content warning was because I wanted the audience to be in the moment and to be really watching presently and be really connected.” And it’s like, well, I don’t know. I spent think about half of that performance with my eyes closed and I wanted to plug my ears, but I didn’t want the people around me to be like, “What’s she doing?” It was like… I don’t know.
Adrienne Beckham:
Also, I feel like that’s a weird answer to that, because if you present somebody with a potentially triggering experience, then they’re not present. They’re thinking about their own safety and themselves, and it could very well take them back to a place that they don’t want to be. And then they’re not watching your show at all. They’re thinking about their experience and potentially having a very not fun time to put it mildly.
Maggie Brennan:
Yeah. No, I spent a lot of that performance as well, thinking about my peers and being like, “I really hope that my bestie in the back row is doing okay,” because it was kind of just so unsettling, it was unproductive. And the conversation became just about not about the larger themes of the work that were present. And I’m sure if I had read this on paper, I could be like, “Oh, I see. Action imitating, whatever.” But when you’re physically seeing it’s like, no, all of my processing of this is going to be done out of the environment, out of the space. I’m going to go home and cool down, and maybe in a week I will be able to think about this. You know what I mean? Which is I guess, fair.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Well, I do wonder if that response that a lot of artists seem to have when critics are saying something about their work, that idea that the integrity of the art is above all else, and that the art, it only works if I perform it this way without a warning or if I put it in this place despite anything else about the people who are already in that space. And so I don’t know, I’m just like, “What if this artist was challenged to think more about how people could feel safe watching this performance while still getting those larger themes out? Is there a middle ground, and does it always have to be that finding a middle ground quote, unquote, ruins the art?” Because I feel like that’s a conversation that comes up a lot is like, “Oh, well, this wasn’t my original intention as the artist. I wanted it to be this way. And by doing anything else to make the art more palatable or in some ways just straight up more enjoyable for the audience, that is ruining the piece.”
Adrienne Beckham:
Yeah. I also feel like, and I say this kind of also as a dig at myself, because I am a writer, so I write, but there’s a lot of ego involved in that experience too. And I think it’s almost like the audacity and artists can have to assume that they can control how a work sort of moves through a person. So to your example of the twist of gun violence and not wanting to include a trigger warning, it’s like, well bold of you to assume that a person’s not going to be able to just one, guess the twist anyway.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Give the audience some credit.
Adrienne Beckham:
Yeah. The audience is smart and the audience has autonomy and free will and free thought and will not behave in the way that you anticipate no matter what. So let’s maybe think about how we can create art that allows for that as opposed to trying to be so rigid and preserve this sort of quote, unquote integrity of the word. When really it’s like, no, you’re just trying to play God in your little world that you’ve created. And again, I’m a writer. I write stories, and I very much do that myself sometimes. But there is an element of when you’re creating something for consumption to a larger audience, at some point you have to pause and say, and this is a bit of a cliche kind of thing to say, but this work is not mine. It does not exist the way that I demand it exists in the way that it then hits the audience and changes.
Julian Harper:
I feel like maybe that’s a good point to move towards the piece, Elisa, that you were thinking about.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
I did want to say, I’ve just been sitting here thinking about theater performance art and connecting it to some of what I learned and doing theater things in undergrad. And this is all very theater of cruelty in which I’m like, to me, I’m blaming theater of cruelty. I am blaming, Antonin Artaud, I don’t know if I’m saying his name right.
Maggie Brennan:
Yeah. That’s good.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
But I say it’s his fault for saying, “What if we revealed mankind to himself by being evil to him on stage?” And that’s such an interesting concept, but a weird concept to be like, the point is to assault the senses. We are going to make people feel scared and uncomfortable, and that is the art. So I’m like, I can see why someone would be like, “I would never do a trigger warning because then how can I properly freak people out?” But it makes me question, and this is maybe, I think this is where it gets, it’s super subjective. It gets down to my own personal thoughts about art. And my goal in making art and engaging with art is not to be physically uncomfortable or feeling mentally unsafe. I do think that there is merit in talking about social movements or issues in the world that might make you uncomfortable.
So sometimes people are uncomfortable talking about class. Sometimes people are uncomfortable talking about race. I think there were some amazing gay artists who made works that focused on AIDS in their communities, and that made people uncomfortable in a way that I’m like, yes, that is a way that you are talking about your experiences marginalized whatnot that isn’t necessarily harming the audience. And I’m like, so my take is like I’m just like, some of that art to me is bad. And I think part of this episode is about being a hater, and I am a hater, and I don’t like the idea that the art is just to make people feel not good.
Adrienne Beckham:
I feel that. I also think it’s one of those things, at least personally, I’m just like, if you’re trying to make that kind of art, I can’t stop you. Live your life. That’s all good.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
I’m just going to hate it from the side.
Adrienne Beckham:
But allow people to make the choice to engage in that space. It goes back to trigger warnings. Allow a person to make that decision that they’re consenting to have this experience.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
And it goes back to autonomy.
Adrienne Beckham:
Because it’s like at the end of the day, I don’t mind reading or experiencing a piece of art that’s going to make me uncomfortable. I would appreciate if it had a point, but personally all well and good, but I want to do it at a time where I feel open to that. It’s not something that I would sprung upon me. And I think, yeah.
Maggie Brennan:
Totally. No, I think one of the first conversations that I had with my friends while we were walking home from that experience was, I would probably be feeling so much differently and I would be having different thoughts about what I just saw if I had known some things prior. I maybe would’ve been able to engage with the themes or whatever in a more productive and artist unpacking the thing way, because we’re all students, we’re all trying to go there to learn. But it’s also, I don’t know, I had to call my girlfriend after that and be like, “Hey, I’m having a time. We’re all having a time. That was crazy.” And also, of course, everything is, or not everything, but there’s room for subjectivity. There is room for brutalist and, well, I guess not brutalist, sorry, theater of cruelty. There’s room for all of these spheres. But at a certain point too, it on the topic of accessibility does become extremely alienating and extremely exclusionary.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Yeah, I think definitely for me at least bottom line is like, is there a point? If there is a point, I’m more willing to accept this, and then do I get a choice in engaging with the art at all when I’m engaging, how I’m engaging. Do I get a choice in that or is it just being thrust upon me? And I will use that to segue into Tilted Arc by one, Richard Serra, because while, look, I took art classes, I took art history classes, I can definitely talk about the why behind it, but I think that the why is bad, and that makes me a hater, and I think that’s okay. So if you don’t know, Tilted Arc was displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan. It was put up in 1981, and yay to me, a hater taken down in 1989.
Adrienne Beckham:
Oh, my goodness.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Yeah, it was up for longer.
Adrienne Beckham:
That’s a long time. Yeah,
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Longer than I thought.
Adrienne Beckham:
Sheesh.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
It’s 120 feet long and 12 feet high. It’s completely solid and it’s raw steel, and so it’s an unfinished rust plate essentially. So that over time, it self-oxidizes, and don’t quote me on the science, but basically it looks more rusty as time goes on. And that’s also part of the art. I bring this up because I think it is ridiculous to put a 120-foot-long, 12 foot high piece of steel in a high traffic area. Again, this was displayed in Foley Federal Plaza in Manhattan. There are office buildings around. And so when it was put up, a lot of the people who work in that area were quite frankly pissed off. They were like, what the hell is this giant piece of metal doing here? And it’s metal that it’s a sculpture. Yes, it’s public artwork. Yes, the government was like, “We give you money to put this up, Richard Serra.”
So technically he no longer owned it, but the whole point was to kind of be a barrier in a way. That sculpture, part of what he was doing, part of what Serra was doing was putting this piece in a very specific place that was high traffic because of the context of where it was. That was important as well, which is why it is a very quote, unquote, important piece of sight specific art, but it literally got in the way of people’s commute to work just because you’re walking maybe in the middle, now you got to go all the way around this giant thing. It provided no seating for anybody who was out there. And if anything, it just made people’s work days a little bit more difficult, which is what a lot of people complained about. It also reminds me of the type of architecture that tries to prevent unhoused people from sitting somewhere. It gives me that as well.
Julian Harper:
Yeah, like hostile architecture.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Yes, exactly. So it’s very hostile architecture to me. I know it’s technically sculpture, so it’s like, what’s architecture? What’s sculpture? Blah, blah, blah, that whole discussion. But at the end of the day, I’m like, this man said a lot of people walk through this space. I’m going to put a giant piece of metal up. Imagine someone who has, I don’t know, difficulties walking long distances. Now they have to go all around this large structure. There are ways I think that Richard Serra, again, I’m a hater, so I’m going to just say this, could have made this work better and more interactive in ways that some of his other work is, for example, I don’t know, putting little arches inside of the piece so people can still walk through so that people using mobility devices can still get through.
Things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s just a giant piece of metal that blocked everyone’s path. So I’m like, there’s not a ton of nuance that I’m giving you here. I’m very much talking about physical accessibility and how putting this in a high traffic area where people are working. It’s just inaccessible for people who have disabilities, for people who don’t have disabilities, for people who have invisible disabilities, for people who have visible disabilities, it just is a bad time for everyone except the artists who are like, “I get it.” It’s site specific.
Adrienne Beckham:
Also, nine years is wild.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
It was nine years of arguing. To be clear, it was nine years of making a petition, nine years of taking Serra. Well, Serra taking the government to court. Yeah, there was a trial. So he complained against the United States General Services office because they had violated the oral agreement he had not to remove the sculpture from that space. And so basically now the sculpture is in, I want to say it’s in, I don’t know, maybe Maryland, DC or something. I don’t really know, but it’s in three pieces and it’s taken down, and it will never go back up because Richard Serra said, “Unless it goes here, it can’t go anywhere.”
Julian Harper:
There’s been kind of a theme of consent and consent as material for the artist or something that the artist can play with as an idea. In my education, I know a lot of other people’s education, you’re encouraged to engage with those kinds of ideas and that most people have lots of critiques of these older, make big stuff and put them places, white guys. And this is definitely, definitely a mood in art history. We were just talking about land art, people literally just going to the desert and digging big giant square holes you have to drive four hours out to, and there’s the pairing of a kind of physical inaccessibility, but also the theory behind the artwork or the idea behind the artwork, at least this is how I felt, that you had to hold a certain air of mystery with your art in order for it to be understood in a certain way or as art with a capital A. Art that is engaging with this history, with this lineage.
And so you have to make sure that it is such a unique and totally new experience and an experience that isn’t tainted by anything else that is essentialized, that is anything that isn’t, the idea is removed and very modernist, very like, Clement Greenberg, very much like it is as much itself as it is. And so anything that is inessential, whether that be captions, whether that be it shares, whether that be wall text is removed. I can feel just how these things are connected, how the physical accessibility is informed by the way that artists are taught to imagine themselves. And as pontificators instead of, I don’t know, community members or I don’t know, friends. Imagine if you’re taught in art school to be a friend and you can engage with difficult ideas and engage with politics and this stuff that we’re talking about, pain, violence, but from the perspective of friendship, I know that sounds like, I don’t know, woo woo, but…
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
I like it. Theater of the friend.
Adrienne Beckham:
Well, it’s also, yeah, especially from performance art and theater. Like now we’re going to get into what if there was no audience, if you don’t specifically with theater, if no one’s watching the thing that’s just a rehearsal and it’s still art or whatever. But if it-
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
It requires engagement.
Adrienne Beckham:
It requires engagement.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
So does this piece, this Richard Serra piece. If I may share a quote that he said about it.
Adrienne Beckham:
Oh, go for it.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
He says about this piece, “The viewer becomes aware of himself and his movement through the plaza. As he moves, the sculpture changes contraction and expansion of the sculpture result from the viewer’s movement. Step-by-step, the perception not only of the sculpture, but of the entire environment changes.” Which is why he’s like, it has to be here specifically, site specific. But I wanted to bring up this quote just so that we all knew what he was thinking and to confirm that he wants the piece to be engaged with by moving around it. But I think it’s interesting that part of his initial idea is including this movement, and a lot of the critiques about it are about how it’s ugly, about how it’s just kind of ridiculous that it exists where it exists. And I just want to put on the table that we can definitely from accessibility standpoint, argue against that very idea itself, where the way to engage with it is through movement, through the plaza, but you’re making it more difficult to move through the plaza.
Adrienne Beckham:
Put it anywhere else, and people can still move around it. Yeah, sorry.
Julian Harper:
Yeah, no, no, I keep talking so much, but-
Adrienne Beckham:
As you should.
Julian Harper:
I think about… I remember I’m thinking about my professor and they’re like, “You know what the point of grad school is? Is to essentially eliminate your sense of taste, your individual sense of taste in art and to engage with art, not in terms of it’s your immediate like or dislike, but of the main elements.” And so I guess what I’m trying to say is that you are just, I feel like as an art person, you are in this space, you’re in this mindset. One of my main issues with the work is that people can choose to be put into a difficult situation.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Yes.
Julian Harper:
And I think that’s, I actually fine. And if you let them know this is uncomfortable, it’s going to take a long time. You get walk around all this whole thing, you learn who was meant to be in the space by looking at the space.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
And he just took a space that a lot of people are meant to be in. A lot of people are going to their offices to work.
Adrienne Beckham:
They’re contractually obligated to be in that space, literally.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
And he said, “This space is no longer for you. It’s actually for Tilted Arc.”
Julian Harper:
And in a way, I feel like we’re, again, and getting at that this argument that any frustration that someone might have with some of these artworks is the inability to deal with the raw difficulty of the idea. It is a tool used to dismiss legitimate arguments for these hours-
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
That’s what happened at the, there was a public hearing in 1985. Again, this went up in ’81. And what you’re saying, Julian is quite literally what happened. 122 people testified in favor of keeping it, and only 58 testify or testified in favor of removing it. But worth noting is that the people arguing in favor of it included Philip Glass, Keith Haring, different artists, historians, a psychiatrist. And they were all like, “Well, you see, you have to understand the art and that humankind, blah, blah, blah. And we’re artists, we came up with this idea, we understand it. We know what Serra’s doing because we get it.”
And then the local workers we’re the people who were arguing for removal, the people who were affected by it in their day-to-day life, who did not consent to having a piece of art that acted as a structural barrier to their days just plopped there, plop art, forgot to mention that for you, Julian. Plop art and plonk art is also what we can refer to some of these more site specific works as, but the ones that are in corporate or government plazas. But yeah, I mean, when you have a piece of paper and it says, “The artists and the people who are making a lot of money like this,” and the other paper says, “The people who are working nine to five jobs in these office spaces don’t like this.”
Adrienne Beckham:
And what’s wild to me is the artists, they say, “Oh, you don’t understand this idea.” But the reality is, the idea that this piece, at least in my mind is trying to convey, is an idea that the people that are advocating against it are very, very well aware of. They probably understand the idea more intimately than the artists themselves, because it’s their life. They are living it.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
The idea is to engage with it. They’re doing it every day whether they want to or not. Therefore, they get it.
Adrienne Beckham:
Yeah, I understand.
Julian Harper:
I mean, it feels like we’re dancing around maybe a kind of privilege. The material is privilege and they get to wield it wherever and that becomes the material. And even outside of accessibility, a state of mind of, I think many artists, especially famous ones, and how they have been taught to not interact with the audience that they talk about having a conversation through their artwork, but it is untrue. It’s an artwork. It doesn’t speak to them, it doesn’t communicate. It is just there. And it is a command and not a conversation.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
It’s a weird show of power.
Julian Harper:
Yeah, totally.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
And when we talk about art spaces and art being elitist, this also, I think this fits into that as well because we’ve been talking about that. Who can talk about it? Who gets it? Who doesn’t get it? And talking about accessibility in the art world is not just making ticketing easier and removing financial barriers and ensuring that people can physically get inside the space. But I also think it’s allowing the people who are coming to engage with the art to feel like they have everything they need to engage with the art and not feel like they had to have gone to some art school to get it, or some art school to fight on the correct side of whether or not to take down a sculpture. And it’s like, is it accessible in the sense that we are giving it to everyone? Is it accessible in the sense that you walk into a gallery space maybe and feel as though you were invited to engage with the art and not feel as though you’re being told you wouldn’t get it because you don’t have some scholastic prizes in art or something?
Maggie Brennan:
And from an artist’s perspective, if you are making something and not considering that, why? Why not? And okay, you’re making the choice, but have you really unpacked why that is what your thought pattern is or what your, I don’t know. Why that choice? Why this now?
Adrienne Beckham:
Also, it’s like why that choice and why choose to make publicly consumed art? You can create art for yourself.
Maggie Brennan:
Richard Serra could have put that in his backyard.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
And I think should have.
Maggie Brennan:
Put it in your house.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
He should have. Oh, you want to get to your kitchen? But you have to go 120 feet around this large thing to that.
Maggie Brennan:
When you have friends over for dinner, you can be like, “Yo, check out the backyard.”
Adrienne Beckham:
Do you understand the point? Because I do, that’s why it’s in my house.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
But I love that question of why do you choose to do this and not that, Maggie, because I’m imagining Julian going with his experience in video art and going up to different contemporary artists being like, “Hey, I noticed you didn’t put any captions in this video. Why?” And they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t really, it’s not really the aesthetic.” And Julian’s like, “You don’t want people who are, I don’t know, deaf or hard of hearing to be able to read the screen or anyone who might benefit from captions?” And they’re like, “No.” Imagine having that conversation with someone and laying it on the table and saying, “Oh, do you not want these people to be able to access your work?” And imagine an artist being like, “Oh, no. I don’t want them to.”
Julian Harper:
Yeah. And I think this maybe gets into a last point, which is that I think we need to rethink how we teach artists. And I think we also need to rethink in the art space who our obligations are towards. And I think that, I mean, it doesn’t help that art spaces are run and funded how they are. And so the obligation becomes to whoever’s collecting the art. And so that becomes a complication in something like video art where it’s about creating this prestigious, the same as a painting. And so if all of the best art that all the best collectors want aren’t captioned, and that they build into their contracts, that you can’t alter the work in any particular way, any fundamental way. And then all of the museums essentially are like, okay.
And so because legally required to actually do the thing. So we have a system that reinforces these ableist structures because there’s a value to how these things are presented. And that’s video art, for instance. But I think it’s okay for us to demand a little bit more from our artists. And I think that arts institutions, and this is just me speaking offhand, but I am pretty sure that arts institutions are a little bit, that they really see themselves. They don’t want to control the art, for good reason. They don’t want to shift the culture makers. They want to be a platform for them. But I think what sometimes we can see is that in the one, I think this is one space where artists are behind, especially in visual art, and I think that they’re been taught to engage with the audience, like students.
That you have to learn the work and you have to understand the work. You have to read about it or that you have to understand this experience completely as itself. And so if you are confused or if you don’t understand, that is the experience. And so it becomes, you have to engage on these specific terms, the artist stipulates or doesn’t stipulate, and that we can demand from our artists maybe a collective framework, like a framework that envisions communities, that the artwork is something that they build in connection with people and that maybe they actually want people to have the physical space to engage with.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Julian, can I pose a question for you?
Julian Harper:
A hundred percent.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Oh, yes. Here we go. So I like everything you said. I like the idea of this framework. I like the idea of teaching artists to think about creating differently perhaps, and for these audiences. My question is with the work that we’re doing at Art-Reach, because we work so directly, oftentimes with institutions, so the theaters, the museums, the galleries, especially in light of Project 76 for example, where we’re going to be doing more of those accessibility reports and helping places improve their accessibility services and offerings, while not necessarily changing the artwork itself. Because as you said, we don’t have the authority to do that. The institution usually doesn’t have the authority to do that unless they commission the artwork from the artist.
But do you foresee this work that we’re doing influencing artists to start considering these new ways to create or these new frameworks to consider while creating art? Or do you think that’s going to have to come mostly internally from these institutions, these art schools, where the artists are really first coming into themselves as people who are creating art with this academic background? So I guess, does it start there? I don’t know if it starts necessarily with the work we’re doing or not, but I’m just wondering how does the work we do at Art-Reach directly interact with how you see artists soon being able to consider accessibility and moving away from ableist practices?
Julian Harper:
I think that’s a really good question, and I’m not, I’m just me.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
I’m like, you have to answer this, Julian.
Julian Harper:
I’m just old guy. But I have been thinking about this a lot. And I think that, one, I do think there needs to be fundamental curriculum changes to how we teach higher ed and all the arts. Fundamentally, I didn’t learn a lick about accessibility in my entire education from undergrad to grad school. And that I think it is super important, and I think it’s great that museums are legally liable. I don’t want to remove that. It’s like, yes, and let’s hold them accountable. But I want to hold artists to the same standards that I think that they… I think they envision themselves as wanting to be inclusive. I think most artists want people to see their work. I think most artists want to be engaging in this particular way. And I think artists and art institutions have a particular to use the language of inclusivity and to use the language of diversity for their own means and for their own power.
And so I think we need to hold all of these different spaces, the academic space, the artists and the studio, the museums, the galleries, the theaters. We need to hold everyone to a higher standard. And I think why I think that there should maybe be a little bit more pressure on the artist specifically, is that I think in so many other spaces, artists are on the forefront. Artists are kind of pushing ahead in terms of pushing forth particular values and pushing forth new ideas. And I feel like it’s really silly for this not to be one of those things.
And there are artists already, people who do accessibility work often talk about, Caroline Woolard, or sorry, Carolyn Lazard. Caroline Woolard is another artist that I think is really great, but Carolyn Lazard, and they just recently here in Philly made these artworks that essentially forced the museum to have more accessible practices. And imagine that artists that hold the museum to a particular standard, and that is the work. The work is accessible. That’s part of the content. Why can’t that be the case? Conversely, imagine a museum that stipulates that if you want to exhibit in this space, these are the requirements and we will hold steadfast to these things.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
They could really do that. That’s the funniest part is I’m like, places can make decisions. Places can make you make things more accessible. Artists can make institutions be more accessible if that’s what their work falls for.
Julian Harper:
Totally.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Wild.
Adrienne Beckham:
I also think artists have the power of creating DIY spaces and DIY spaces can also influence and inform the larger current of how the art industry changes.
Julian Harper:
Totally.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
That’s true and slay.
Maggie Brennan:
Yeah. No, I think about my experience getting my theater performance degree and a lot of the really positive accessibility changes that happened while I was in school where it were largely student driven. It was students going to the teachers being like, “Hey, can we talk about what intimacy coordination is and working on productions and what situations call for intimacy coordination that aren’t just staging a kiss?” Really reframing how broad that scope can be is something that I think, is very much kind of an ongoing flow of not only the students that are also contributing to it, but also I had a lot of really awesome faculty members that were like, “Hey, out in the industry, this is what’s best practice. So we’re implementing it in school.” And I think that there should be, I don’t know, speaking from my performance perspective, but I think there should be more of that.
Julian Harper:
Yeah, totally.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
More of that. Less Richard Serra.
Julian Harper:
And I don’t know if this is true, but I feel like it’s shifting. I feel like more and more people are engaging with these particular ideas and I am excited.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Me too.
Maggie Brennan:
No, I’m fresh out and there was a lot of conversations throughout my time in school.
Julian Harper:
Cool. Well, I think that’s a good place to stop. Thank everyone for listening, for participating, for talking. This has been, Art-Reach and Art is the Tool. Yeah.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Catch you on the flip side.
Julian Harper:
Yeah. Okay. Bye y’all.
Alasia Destine-Defreece:
Bye.
Maggie Brennan:
Bye.
Adrienne Beckham:
Bye.
Julian Harper:
The music for this podcast was written and performed by Carl Trunk from Pop Pop Pop Records. You can check out that song and other Pop Pop Pop Records songs on their Bandcamp.
