Against the Protocols of the Civilised Body: Workshop Hosting notes
How we framed the workshop for participants
Introduction
Taking place in-person at UQ’s St Lucia campus, this intensive workshop will build on the themes of the reading group sessions. (Prior participation in the reading group is recommended, but not required.)
We’ll explore how a temporary, access-infused collective can be formed; how we can share and negotiate our access needs and desires; and how we might map embodied knowledges and creative practices. We’ll play through improvisational, conversational, critical, poetic and disruptive image description and captioning exercises, seeking to unravel the ways that artworks can be described and redescribed.
Our work together will culminate in a script and staging directions for a live, hybrid publication and performance — a review of an unseen exhibition — that experiments with possibilities for inter-sensorial translations.
An outline for what you can expect over our day together is shared below. However, the workshop plan may be adapted as access needs emerge and change. The development of the workshop is responsive to some of the participants’ expressed access needs, including a request for material to be provided in a written form, and for additional breaks to be built in.
The workshop is experimental, and includes some methods and exercises that are untested. There is the possibility of collective failure, and hopefully, collective surprise. You are encouraged to move, lay down, sit, or any other mode of presence that supports your participation. You are also welcome to come and go from the workshop, if this supports your access.
During the breaks, we will be playing what we have called interludes; these are offered in case you would prefer to relax by watching or listening to a relevant access-infused creative work.
What to bring
There is no need to bring anything other than your selves. However if you wish, the following could support our work together:
- your favoured writing tools eg. pen/marker and paper, laptop, phone
- an instrument or other creative tool that you use in your practice, if you are keen to explore how this might be part of an access approach
- comfort items if these might strengthen confidence and assist sensory agency, such as a familiar cup, pillow or cushion, fidget toy, headphones
Open the shared document
Participants
Participant names/pronouns
Rae Choi (she/her) - HoH, lip reading helpful
Clare Glassock (she/her) -
el waddingham (they/them) -
Raelee Lancaster
Amanda Bennetts (she/her) -
Felicity Andrews (she/her) -
Nabil Sabio Azadi (He/او/They) - might use beanbags!
Tina Agic (she/her) -
Felix Reid (they/them) - fluoros
Timothy Brown (he/him) - light sensitivity
EVN (they/them) -
Jessica Kejun Xu (she/they) -
Simone Hine (she/her) -
Anna Hickey (she/they) - lights
Tammy Law (she/her) -
Llewellyn Millhouse (he/him) -
Tallara Grey (she/her) - sunglasses / fluoros
Logan Bobongie (she/her) - fluoros
Jacquie Chlanda (she/her)
Kyle (he/him) - sore back
Al Poiner (she/her) - sore back
Sean Rafferty (he/him) - sore back
Jasper Coleman (he/him) -
Participant information sheet
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/08eeqohnw70j82a1t9oqi/Workshop-Participants.xlsx?rlkey=qyxfys4e7uys90zs2jf3eg2fw&dl=0Our Powerpoint files, etc.
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/sr7ie9cf2b86t4mtxuf5s/AA1U8PIwT4dPoskJi_fZoIY?rlkey=gppacxcd7odqejwwhmps6d6z8&dl=0Workshop plan with scripting notes
9:30am – 10:00am · Arrival window
We invite you to arrive and land at your pace, between 9.30am and 10am. Warm drinks will be provided as you settle into the space. We’ll play some captioned works to help orient you to possibilities or offer a simple focus if your social battery is low.
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Coffee and tea available
(Powerpoint; backup link here)
10:00am – 11:00am · Establishing our temporary community
Overview of session
Introduction
Acknowledgment of Country
Our purpose today
Outline of schedule
Access approach, attendants and check-in
Discussion:
- Ways to collaborate and contribute
- The editing and publishing dynamic
Self-description exercise: who are we showing up as today?
What skills, interests and knowledges are you bringing with you?
Introduction and Acknowledgment of Country
Good morning everybody, and thank you for joining us today. We are [Fayen d’Evie and Jon Tjhia] and as you perhaps know, we work as Access Lab & Library, based on Wurundjeri Country, in Naarm/Melbourne. We would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of Magandjin, the Yuggera and Turrbal people, and paying our respects to their Elders. We extend that respect and acknowledgment to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who are sharing this time with us today.
Felix: To what degree is radical accessibility decolonial?
As students of access and as subjects of colonialism, we encounter ourselves in terms like ‘ally’ or ‘accomplice’, and in both contexts — connected contexts — we aspire to be active and practical agents against eugenics, supremacy and the capitalism that consolidates them. Speaking in a sandstone university, and one that was established to commemorate a settler-colonial milestone, we acknowledge the contradictions that permeate our lives. We again nod to our friend Gabi Briggs, who has talked about how in this colony, we all exist without resolution.
Our purpose today, and housekeeping
Our time today will be spent working together to create a work that will be presented on Saturday afternoon here at UQ.
We’ll explore how a temporary, access-infused collective can be formed; how we can share and negotiate our access needs and desires; and how we might map embodied knowledges and creative practices. We’ll play through improvisational, conversational, critical, poetic and disruptive image description and captioning exercises, seeking to unravel the ways that artworks can be described and redescribed.
Many of you have joined us in our series of three online Reading Groups leading up to this week, and will be familiar with some of the ideas and approaches we might begin from together. For others who are newly joining us, we recognise you bring your own histories of learning and are looking forward to those becoming a part of our collective approaches.
And during breaks, we’ll share some references and creative works that you can explore if you wish to take in more examples while we allow for others to step away.
We want you to feel as relaxed and comfortable as possible, so please feel invited and encouraged to take care of your own needs as they arise — toilets [here], water [here], help yourself to the snacks, and move around, wriggle, stim, pace, stretch and lay down as your bodymind asks you to. We are running an air purifier and have masks available.
Outline of schedule
A quick outline of today’s running order.
[Run through proceedings.]
We can change this at any time to suit where the group is going and what its needs are.
Access approach, attendants and check-in
Our approach to access will be grounded in Carmen Papalia’s concept of ‘access as a temporary, collectively-held space.’ And we will embrace the concept of abundant subjectivity, where all perspectives are welcome and relevant. We accept that access and collaboration are inextricable.
Jess: How to build trust and is it possible to have access intimacy in a temporary, short term collective?
As a temporary collective in this workshop, we will actively re/negotiate how access is framed and created – and ways that consent can be articulated and upheld – interpersonally and collectively. We invite you to share your access needs at the speed of trust, and encourage identification and discussion of access frictions.
Timothy: When people arrive at an arts encounter, they are often asked to disclose access requirements before the room has earned the trust that makes disclosure possible. The friction is real. There is not enough time, not enough relationship, not enough sense that the disclosure will land somewhere careful. People withhold, or over-explain, or guess at what the space can hold. None of that is access. So the question I am bringing is about the conditions that make disclosure something other than a transaction. What has to be true in the room first? What does a temporary collective need to build, and in what order, before access needs and desires can move honestly between people? ... I have been thinking for a long time about the conditions under which disabled people are asked to disclose, describe and translate themselves inside arts spaces. I want time in a room with other people thinking about the same thing, without the pressure to arrive with answers. I am hoping to listen well, move at the pace of the group, and let what surfaces surface.
We often begin a gathering with an access check-in, which allows everybody to share how their access needs can be addressed in order to enable them to participate as much as they’d like to. Today, we are going to try this as an iterative process — so you don’t have to disclose your needs or vulnerabilities potentially to a group of strangers.
Tallara and Fayen will be our access attendants, and we hope they will be especially useful to you when disclosing your needs more widely doesn’t feel safe. You can communicate your access needs and desires in a number of different ways:
- Within the group, verbally or in writing
- Directly, via access attendants (who will advocate for your needs to be met) — in person or via text message (share details)
- In other ways that come to mind for you, which we haven’t yet thought of or mentioned
Invite access check-in
Ways to work and collaborate
As we move into this workshop — which will be followed very swiftly by a performance — we just wanted to quickly point out some ways to be in this very much experimental process together.
We’ll begin with some exercises that are oriented around specific prompts, but as the day goes on we want to empower you to follow where these exercises are sparking interest. We’ll be spending some sessions in small groups, but if you feel more comfortable working solo you can do that too. You can write, speak and make as one or three or as all at once. We can make collective or individual gestures.
We have lots of equipment on hand and are here to support you working through your preferred forms and mediums.
We also have a shared document, which you can write in at any time during the day or beyond. We’ve found using a document like this really useful to free people up to engage asynchronously with extended reflections, creative diversions, new prompts and ideas and fragments of writing. It takes the pressure off doing things in real-time, and it means you’re not entirely forced to move on when you would rather linger.
We genuinely have no idea what we will come out of this day with. Our process will be to spend tomorrow understanding and shaping what we leave here today with, working towards the performance on Saturday.
If we’re talking about this work in terms of an experimental publication of sorts, you can think of us as editors or publishers. We keenly welcome your suggestions, preferences and ideas! We also hope to earn your trust and permission.
Self-description exercise
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Who are we performing as — and/or showing up as — today?
- What aspects of our complex selves, experiences, and embodied knowledges are we bringing to our participation today?
Mapping our skills, interests and knowledges
- Create an open map of creative skills, access interests, and embodied knowledges.
- What would you like to offer to this group? What might we all be drawing from today?
- Ways to share this: with the group now; think about this and text us; add it to the shared document during the break or as the day unfolds?
11:00am – 11:10am · Rest break
Interlude: a compilation of Andy Slater’s Tiktok image descriptions(Powerpoint; backup link for Andy’s invitation and NotWildlin’s response)
11:10am –
12:00pm · Encountering an imaginary exhibition: image description
As we move into the next 50 minutes, we want to invite a revisiting of the access check-in, either as a group or through access attendants.
Having established some of our capacities, skills and interests — and some of the subjectivities we wish to put forward today — this part of the workshop brings us to image description and imaging fictions.
We might think of image description here not only as a way of creating non-visual access, but as a discourse and creative writing practise. We will together work with ‘improvisational, conversational, critical, poetic and disruptive image description and captioning exercises, seeking to unravel the ways that artworks can be described and redescribed’.
We might also think about something that arose in the Reading Group sessions, about descriptions as sensory archives of not just works but configurations and relations of artworks.
And in the context of UQ Art Museum being in a notional ‘non-physical’ state of existence, we might also consider the prompt, or invitation, to engage with the concept of an ‘impossible exhibition’.
- Show excerpt of ‘Goose Woman Cat’, by Joseph Rizzo Naudi (in Powerpoint; backup link here)
Rae: how can we engage with modes of communication (language) so it’s not about clarifying but feeling - something that can shift between different senses, gaps, mistaken translations? How can captioning and image description be used in a more porous way so it conveys slippage, rhythm, embodied communication?
Nabil: I'm especially excited to engage with questions around the 'mutual emergence' that can occur through inter-sensory translation. I have my own nascent poetic approaches to image description, partly inspired by dialogue with Kānaka ʻOiwi scholars, that I look forward to contributing.
Small group activities
We’ll split now into small groups. Each group will choose a visual artwork from a selection of seven, provided to us from the UQ Art Museum’s collection.
→ View the artworks (participant page)
In these groups, we’ll spend ten minutes discussing:
— What is seen and what is unseen?
— Where does your eye go first? and next?
— What is overlooked?
— Who is describing; who are you describing as?
Next, we’ll develop our descriptive positions. You might …
— Imagine you’re documenting/archiving an imaginary — or impossible — exhibition
— Consider the arrangement or placement of works
— Explore the relationship between works
— Go into greater depth with your description (or extend it into speculation — into, or beyond, what is seen)
Clare: I am interested in exploring that node between cerebral thought and more embodied practice … The nerd in me also greatly enjoys […] archiving, documentation and source.
Offer a choice: Invite people to rearrange their groups according to interest? Or go back to original groups to discuss?
12:00pm – 12:15pm · Recap and discussion
12:15pm – 12:45pm · Encountering an imaginary exhibition: captioning and audiodescription
- In this session, we will begin to play with captioning and audiodescription, considering a single video work, Tracey Moffatt’s Other (2010).
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Play Close Readings (one minute excerpt, no sound) in Powerpoint (backup link here)
Rae Choi: How can we engage with modes of communication (language) so it’s not about clarifying but feeling - something that can shift between different senses, gaps, mistaken translations? How can captioning and image description be used in a more porous way so it conveys slippage, rhythm, embodied communication?
- We will begin this exploration pre-lunch, and continue after lunch
Other 2010
Tracey Moffatt 1960 -
Gary Hillberg (Editor) 1982 -
Single-channel digital video, 7:00 min, edition 30/200
Collection of The University of Queensland, purchased 2010
(Powerpoint; backup link here
Felicity asked: How can we think of accessibility not as estrangement, as reinforcing otherness, but a process of enfoldment that invites a collective experience acknowledging different ways of knowing and being?
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Collective discussion:
— What possibilities can you imagine for captioning part of this video work?
— What possibilities can you imagine for audiodescribing part of this work?
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Self-organise into small groups (solo contributions are also possible)
— Each group volunteers to experiment with a different aspect of captioning or audiodescription
— What register/s of description might you explore? You might consider language, identity, perspective, character, mood, …
— What kinds of texts do these descriptions suggest? How might you present them? Stylise them? Score them?
— We will initiate these explorations pre-lunch, but they will be mainly be developed in the afternoon sessions
12:45pm – 1:30pm · Lunch break
1:30pm – 2:30pm · Responding to the unseen exhibition: drafting a hybrid intersensory publication and performance
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Collective discussion
— Revisiting the access check-in: with the wider group and/or with access attendants - How could we draw on different senses (and translation between and among senses) to extend or expand or unravel our descriptions of the artworks? What, now, could a sensory archive be?
Jess: How can image, text and critical reflection be interpreted or supported to be experienced sonically, conversationally and spatially?
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Small group work (solo contributions also possible)
— Development of different performance elements: image descriptions, captioning, audiodescription, performance scores, other inter-sensory translations
2:30pm – 2:40pm · Rest break
2:40pm – 3:40pm · Score for performance
- Revisiting the access check-in: with the wider group and/or with access attendants
- What should we call this? Let’s name our coauthored and open work: suggestions for titling and crediting the performance work
- Small groups: Groups or individuals continue to develop different performance elements, media texts and/or the score for the performance
3:40pm – 4:00pm · Closing
- Bringing our temporary collective to a close
- What worked well for you? What could we learn to do differently?
- Imaginary access
- What can we bring back into our contexts?
Loose notes