Open Call | The Hidden Project
© The Hidden Project
The Hidden Project
Creative Lab on Curation and Access in East Asia 2022
ABOUT
The Hidden Project is a creative lab to explore various aspects of accessible curation in the visual arts. The lab is targeting at curators with and without disabilities from East Asia co-led by two international facilitators with extensive knowledge and experience in the field of disability arts and accessibility.
AIM
The Hidden Project 2022 aims to bring curators from East Asia together in a hybrid workshop to explore accessible curatorial practices and imagine critical and rigorous conceptions of access. Ultimately, this creative lab will resist compulsory able-bodiedness that is too often attached to the visual arts sector and encourage frameworks that can cultivate the robust talent of disability artists.
TIME and TOPICS
The hybrid workshop is scheduled to run across May to July 2022 in approximately 5-7 online sessions (about 25 hours in total) composed of lectures, case studies, group discussions, project presentations, digital visits to local art museums and others, covering but not restricted to the following topics:
When we talk about inclusive arts, disability arts, what do we talk about?
What is accessible curation, how it’s been applied and what is the impact?
What are the main challenges faced by curators and museums in creating accessibility for artists and a diverse audience?
What are best practice samples of accessible curation?
What the future is going to look like?
Value of disability arts, disability aesthetics, and disability as the “last avant-garde”
Networks for disability artists, chances for internationalization, exchange and collaborations
Comparison/discussion on legal framework regarding access in Asia, Europe and North America
TARGET GROUP
The Hidden Project is open for professional curators in East Asia at different stages in their career regardless of age, gender, and disability.
APPLICATION
If you are a curator, independent or institutional, who is interested in participating in this project, please send your CV, contact details, and motivation letter, no longer than one DIN A4 page to Mr. Xingcheng SHEN, xingcheng.shen@goethe.de by 27 February, 2022 (deadline).
In your letter, please specify:
WHY you are interested in this program
HOW this project would be meaningful to your curatorial practice
WHAT experience you have in implementing equity and diversity in your work
Your letter can be written in one of the above mentioned East Asian languages, in English, in an audio format, or in a video format for sign language users.
ACCESS
The sessions of The Hidden Project are free of charge, and will be conducted in English with translations into other East Asian languages or sign languages where individually needed by the participants.
If you have any further questions or access needs for the application or the creative lab, please do not hesitate to contact us via email to xingcheng.shen@goethe.de or phone call to +86 21 6391 2068.
ABOUT THE LAB FACILITATORS
Dr. Kate Brehme
Co-Founder of berlinklusion,
Network for Accessibility
in Arts and Culture
in Berlin, Germany
Kate Brehme is a Berlin-based independent curator and arts educator with a disability. Kate began her curatorial career in 2002 while undertaking a Diploma of Visual Arts and BA in Contemporary Art in Melbourne, Australia. After graduating from her MA in Cultural Heritage Studies in 2008, Kate moved to Scotland where she began working in arts education for organizations such as The Fruitmarket Gallery, The National Galleries of Scotland and Strathclyde University.
In 2009 Kate founded Contemporary Art Exchange, a nomadic curatorial platform fostering professional development, accessibility and inclusion for young artists through international projects. Since moving to Berlin in 2012, Kate continues to produce Contemporary Art Exchange projects and lectures for both the Master Education in Arts program at the Piet Zwart Institute in Rotterdam and NODE Center for Curatorial Studies in Berlin.
In 2017, Kate co-founded berlinklusion, Berlin’s Network for Accessibility in Arts and Culture striving to make Berlin’s arts and cultural scene more accessible for artists and audiences with disabilities.
Sean Lee
Director of Programming
at Tangled Art + Disability
in Toronto, Canada
Sean Lee is an artist and curator exploring the assertion of disability art as the last avant-garde. His methodology explores crip* curatorial practices means to resist traditional aesthetic idealities. Orienting towards a “crip horizon”, Sean’s practice gestures towards the transformative possibilities of crip community building and accessible practices that desire the ways disability can disrupt.
Sean holds a B.A. in Arts Management and Studio from the University of Toronto, Scarborough and is currently the Director of Programming at Tangled Art + Disability. Previous to this role, he was Tangled’s inaugural Curator in Residence (2016) as well as Tangled’s Gallery Manager (2017). Sean has been integral to countless exhibitions and public engagements throughout his tenure at Tangled Art + Disability.
In addition to his position at Tangled Art + Disability, Sean is an independent curator, speaker, and lecturer adding his insights and perspectives to conversations surrounding Disability Arts across Canada, the United States and internationally. Sean currently sits on the board of CARFAC Ontario, Creative Users Projects, and is a member of the Ontario Art Council’s Deaf and Disability Advisory Group and Toronto Art Council’s Visual Arts / Media Arts Committee.
*Crip is a word reclaimed by disabled people, which includes political ways of understanding disability identity within the context of disability culture, justice and an anti-ableist world. Disability scholar Kelly Fritsch notes that crip means “to open up with desire the ways that disability disrupts”.
© The Hidden Project
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