 Up next we have a wonderful opportunity to meet an artist whose social practice has taken him into thinking about accessibility and Empathy and how they function in relationship to His work as an artist and also his engagement with various communities. Please help me welcome Carmen Papilla Hi everybody. My name is Carmen I'm gonna be talking about the work that I've been doing about accessibility Usually I make work that's like socially engaged and it's it's addressing my own access in different contexts so I'm gonna start by showing a piece that I made in 2007 and so this was about the time that like I started using a white cane and I Used I used to use a typical white cane that was just you know a typical length like this one over here but in 2007 I made a 15-foot cane and I wanted to distance myself from the disability support institution the institution that the cane is is Connected to so I Made this and I would go on walks with it and I would like you know tap it from side to side and you could imagine the trouble I got into So I'm just gonna leave that there, but So I made a 15-foot cane and it was really at this time where I felt like the cane really was positioning me and it It really felt like I could be holding this thing and people would read my body a certain way And then if I wasn't holding this thing people won't put me in that you know Read my body in that way and put me in that category. So I sort of wanted to Play with that like distance and those social dynamics a bit And so I kind of just like would walk with with this thing and people would just like it stay out of my way And it was a way for me to like claim public space And also kind of like inflict my presence upon other people and it was a little bit Antagonistic, but it was at a time where I felt like really disabled by the city and This is the cane that I use now I basically just took all the white and red tape off my cane and there was this like nice graphite material underneath Then I just replaced the handle with this wooden handle And so I Yeah, I kind of like wanted to with with this cane especially just kind of like disrupt the message that the cane is Always transmitting which is this person needs help I also I think about the cane sort of as like a white flag It it often, you know, it's a magnet and a repellent at the same time It like brings people towards me that really with the best intentions want to offer support But often don't know how and they you know sometimes these interactions really happen really fast And I wouldn't be able to advocate for myself and you know I'd get someone to grab my arm and maybe like drag me across the street or direct me to a seat and It was you know, very uncomfortable and I just wanted to like kind of disrupt that a bit That was what I was waiting for Okay, cool. Yeah, so um and then I started I guess like this I I've been using this cane for a while now and it's been working pretty well I call it my detection cane because I really don't use it for identification. I use it just to like find obstacles Um, people are gonna have to tell me if my images are are coming up. So Is there an image up there? No Not yet Darn Okay, so I've been um In this process of kind of like replacing my cane with different things over the last few years And so in 2013 I was working with the Grand Central Arts Center in Santa Ana, California And I replaced my white cane with a high school marching band And so over like this six month period I was in conversation with this band And uh, they were kind of interviewing me on the kinds of like my my walking routes and like the kinds of things that I might encounter on a walk and Obstacles and then they went off and like made these um It kind of developed these musical cues and we developed this system So it was really about like replacing one system of support with another and really just kind of thinking about like You know trust and and modeling modeling mutual support in in this scenario that we kind of just This arrangement that we kind of agreed upon On the day before the performance We just had a short rehearsal in the high school parking lot and we just kind of like played out these scenarios and I was like So pretend I'm walking from like the the curbside to like a busy street. What would happen? and um The marching band director kind of like worked between me and the band trying to anticipate where I might go So it was really important for me to have like freedom to explore and the agency just to Explore this place that was unfamiliar to me, which was like downtown Santa Ana and I found my way into like underground parking structures and Restaurants and art galleries and yeah, so That was that Is that another image? Okay. Cool. Cool. Okay, it's working now um Yeah, so um, this is along the same lines. I I In 2015 I kind of gathered a bunch of sound making devices And like an air horn and a megaphone and I kind of just like dropped my cane and started using the megaphone to just like Identify myself And kind of like to to reclaim or perform the social function of the cane So like just choosing the words to identify myself in the moment Um and also to like hail support so I'd find myself like at a street corner I just kind of be like is anybody out there that can help me cross the street and um, and yeah So I've also re-performed this process in a couple other cities and it's kind of like this this method for me to like um Find my way through the city through like just Putting putting that that call for support. Um Out to my community or out to the public As a means of wayfinding, um, this is a walking tour that I've been leading leading, um since Is it a long line of people? Yeah. Yeah, okay Um, so like since 2010 when I moved I in I live I live and grew up in Vancouver, bc, but um I I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2010 to go to grad school and I had I moved on my own and I had to like learn all my walking routes and kind of like Walking route from my like apartment to the grocery store and you know, so on and um, and once I learned those places Those they became like sort of my references to the city and like places in which I felt comfortable So like I started just bringing people into that space and I don't identify as a blind person Like you only you just have to like look up synonyms for the word blind And you'll realize why I don't want to like identify with that word So actually identify around my learning style, which I often describe as like I'm a non-visual learner. I kind of like have Yeah, and it's um, it's you know, I use my non-visual senses as a primary way of knowing my the world around me and um, just kind of shifted the value at one point From the visual to the non-visual and I really think of the walking tour as like intentional time spent with eyes closed It's not like a simulation of my experience because I think there's some of that that people can't access um But it's it's really time spent with eyes closed learning how to exercise the non-visual senses So when you open your eyes, you realize that you're leaving like this vast dimension that you you potentially would want to return to um What is this? Hang in painting. Okay. Well, this is from um 2015 when I was um in ireland at the model contemporary art center um I kind of did a couple projects through this residency program called the bureau of radical accessibility My friend megan johnston started this residency just as a means to like create a space in the institution to Think about accessibility from like a wide open perspective not necessarily just in relation to the disability community but we had been talking about accessibility and i've been writing about it a bit and um and and megan Really thinks a lot about publicness and what's uh institutions responsibility to a public and I I talk a lot about accessibility So we were really thinking about I I had started describing accessibility as Not really the condition of the body or like what the obstacles in the built environment are but um More of like a the degree to which one can hold agency in a given situation So it's really about like agency and power um And so like I I did a couple projects at the model center that kind of like Engage this idea and so I found this one gallery that was full of painting It was like it had paintings on the wall that were hung at like a typical height for a standing viewer um And so I just suggested that they be lowered to like, you know, really close to the floor Um, so people that that viewing position was became more of an embodied position It's like the viewer would have to problem solve their their kind of viewing experience and find a way to comfortably Come comfortably view the work Um, and while it kind of problematized that typical access or that common access it um It kind of like opened up access for like folks who are shorter and Kids too who just like walk up to the work and Is this a poster? Okay, so a couple years ago. I uh conducted an unsolicited accessibility audit of the Vancouver art gallery um With what's it's a traditionally conservative institution It's in a former court building and the museum collections are in the former like holding cells for incarcerated folks So it's like the site of colonial power and uh, you know, I would say cultural violence So, uh, we I was working in a gallery in Vancouver's downtown east side And I had been working with that community for maybe three years at the time Um, and I was working in this gallery called gallery gas shea and and uh, It's a collectively run gallery run by community members As a mental health focus and it's I would say like one of the more openly accessible spaces in Vancouver Um, just based on the way that people the collective politics of the space and the way people welcome folks in Um, and just practice accessibility So I kind of like called upon like my I guess like the six people that I felt like there were the best people to talk about accessibility with And some of which like identified as disabled, but some of them didn't um some identified as uh Persons of color or uh, my friend was like a trans disability activist as well and my friend Arlene was um A senior indigenous filmmaker who had been making these autobiographical films about her life But had little recognition for work. So what we did was I asked the group, um, I developed this like Access model called open access, which is kind of like the basic way to describe it is um Like accessibility as social practice. It's um, it's kind of like the social model for accessibility Where instead of like engaging a policy, which is often like an enforcement model where you know, if these things aren't in place Someone's going to get sued. Um, it's more of kind of just making it's organizing from accessibility from the grassroots Um, accessibility is like an ongoing practice in one's community Um, I would say everybody here practices accessibility based on the fact that everyone has preferences and You know, uh, certain politics experiences that they're Um, negotiating around others and that they're in community with so what we did when we were auditing the Vancouver Our gallery instead of looking at like the physical barriers to the space Um, and those conditions that are often looked at with accessibility audits We were looking at the social cultural and political conditions And one day we found ourselves um in this gallery Together, um, and it was the show photography show with objects made by indigenous artists and um We were just kind of crowded around this wall text and What one of my friends started reading it and it became really clear that they're misrepresenting um, colonization and uh, we had been talking about indigenous politics, uh, and you know, our friend Arlene as well Based on her background, uh, we we had been holding space for some of these ideas So we we had noticed that the wall text was written by the associate um Director and and chief curator of the institution who'd been there for 30 years And we just thought that that like while it was something you might just pass by It really pointed to The collective politics of the gallery and who like what the politics of people in positions of power were So what we started to think about is what would this text look like if it was edited by the artists who um Work out of gallery gashay. Um, so we all did this like, um Edit of the text in red corrective marker. Um, and um Provided the decolonial narrative that wasn't um available through the museum and you know calling out Well in the original text, you know Um first contact by european settlers was referred to as like an exchange between cultures and so we Um kind of like, you know, just called colonization out as as genocide, which is also like a language that the canadian government resists so after that project I I sort of um, it was a three month process that ended with a The audit ended with an exhibition. I basically condensed that process into a workshop that i've been taking to um Uh city departments and universities and museums and really introducing this new social model for accessibility as a new paradigm for accessibility So i've been thinking of this like last couple years as like a movement building campaign for open access Um tomorrow i'm going to be leading a workshop on open access. So uh around two two forty five So if anyone's interested in learning more, um I yeah, this is an image from a march that It I led this summer at this big show in ottawa at city hall and it kind of just showed my progress with open access over the last couple years And thank you One of the things we've talked a lot about today is the different communities and the different um people that we have to involve In all our conversations and I think that it's very important when we make those lists of the communities we're engaging that uh Ability and disability is included in those in those in those contexts Disability and ability are things that cross all cultural lines and all Identifications and is the most human of all of our lived experiences in many ways. So thank you carmen