The University of British Columbia
Robson Square
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Imagining Multisensory Art: Learning from Objects; Literacy and Inclusion
January 27, 2024
1:00 PM – 4:00 PM
at UBC Robson Square (map)
This event is at capacity. No more registrations are being accepted. Thank you!
About the Event
The Vancouver Art Gallery is pleased to partner with a group of researchers, artists, thought leaders, and activists for the UBC Connects talk: Imagining Multisensory Art: Literacy and Inclusion.
This free, half-day event will address how collaboration between institutions of learning and art can advance accessibility. It also aims to raise awareness around non-visual participation in the art world through multi-sensory approaches at art.
Developed in collaboration with a group of researchers, artists, thought leaders and activists, the program will begin with a conversation between the core team of organizers from UBC, Dr. Ruanne Lai, Research and Knowledge Translation Facilitator Vision: Molecules, Behaviour, Society Research Excellence Cluster; Dr. Stefan Sunandan Honisch, Honorary Research Associate and Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Studies; Mx. Rahbar, PhD Student, Library and Information Science and Dr. Laura Yvonne Bulk, Assistant Professor of Teaching in Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, and Stephanie Bokenfohr, Public Programs Coordinator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. They will discuss how their collaboration was initiated.
A conversation between writer and scholar Dr. Georgina Kleege and non-visual social practice artist Carmen Papalia will follow. They will discuss non-visual and tactile approaches to accessing art, while sharing details of their past collaboration and future aspirations for accessibility and the arts.
The entire afternoon is intentionally designed to create a space for tactile and non-visual participation with care, enjoyment and respect.
Refreshments will be provided.
Participants will be seated in small groups, and materials will be provided throughout the event to allow for co-creation and play. We will all learn from objects and artworks together.
Event Schedule
12:30 PM – Doors open
1:00 PM – Welcome and Refreshments
1:30 PM – Program Begins
2:00 PM – Panel Discussion with Core Group of Organizers
2:30 PM – A Conversation between Dr. Georgina Kleege and Carmen Papalia, followed by haptic encounters with art
4:00 PM – Program ends
Speakers
Georgina Kleege is a blind writer and disability studies scholar who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley, and now lives in New York City. Her recent books include: Sight Unseen (1999) and Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller (2006). Kleege’s latest book, More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art (2018) is concerned with blindness and visual art: how blindness is represented in art, how blindness affects the lives of visual artists, how museums can make visual art accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired. She has lectured and served as consultant to art institutions around the world.
Georgina Kleege is a blind writer and disability studies scholar who recently retired from the University of California, Berkeley, and now lives in New York City. Her recent books include: Sight Unseen (1999) and Blind Rage: Letters to Helen Keller (2006). Kleege’s latest book, More than Meets the Eye: What Blindness Brings to Art (2018) is concerned with blindness and visual art: how blindness is represented in art, how blindness affects the lives of visual artists, how museums can make visual art accessible to people who are blind and visually impaired. She has lectured and served as consultant to art institutions around the world.
Carmen Papalia is a nonvisual social practice artist with a degenerative blood disease. He uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public space, art institutions and visual culture. As a convener, he establishes welcoming spaces where disabled, sick and chronically ill people can build capacity for care that they lack on account of governmental failure and medical ableism. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is a response to the harms of the Medical Model of Disability.
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