Against the Protocols of the Civilised Body:
Workshop
ALL + UQ Art Museum / groundwork
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
Contact us
Jon — 0419 820 422Fayen — 0424 602 022
Open the shared document
Upload files for the performance
9:30am – 10:00am
30 minutesArrival 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 one of our favourite captioned videos to help orient you to possibilities or offer a simple focus if your social battery is low.Interlude: Miyuki Tanaka’s 2017 audiodescriptive dance development at Kanagawa Arts Theatre
10:00am – 11:00am
60 minutes
Establishing our temporary community
IntroductionAcknowledgment 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?
11:00am – 11:10am
10 minutesRest break
Interlude: some TikTok image descriptions, made at Andy Slater’s request11:10am –
12:00pm
30 minutes
Encountering an imaginary exhibition: image description
Invitation to revisit access check-inDiscussion: image description and imaging fictions
In small groups, working with one of seven artworks – shared from the UQ Art Museum collection – we will produce a quick round of descriptions, and then develop our descriptive positions.
— 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?
—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)
12:00pm – 12:15pm
15 minutesRecap and discussion
12:15pm –
12:45pm
30 minutes
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), which is also from the UQ Art Museum collection.
Discussion: Possible captioning and audiodescription approaches
Collective experiment with one of these approaches
To be continued after lunch —
12:45pm –
1:30pm
45 minutes
Lunch break
Interlude: two versions of ~~~~~“…derelict in uncharted space…”
1:30pm – 2:30pm
60 minutes
Responding to the unseen exhibition: drafting a hybrid intersensory publication and performance
Invitation to revisit access check-in
Discussion: drawing on different senses to extend or unravel our descriptions of the artworks …
What could a sensory archive be?
In small groups or solo: further development of different performance elements
2:30pm – 2:40pm
10 minutesRest break
Interlude: captioned radio experiments
2:40pm – 3:40pm
60 minutes
Score for performance
Invitation to revisit access check-in
Discussion: what should we call this? How should we introduce and credit it?
Scoring the performance: sharing approaches to scripting, staging, and audience encounters
In small groups or solo: further development of different performance elements, media texts and/or scores
3:40pm – 4:00pm
20 minutes
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?