Blogging Task One – Disability

Below are my responses and reflections after engaging with the resources explored for this task. While in places I have made overtly specific reflections to individual resources, elsewhere there is some crossover in those where I have felt that key issues being explored relate to one another, and so come under the heading of those key issues.


1. Film by Christine Sun Kim

The film and work of Christine Sun Kim fascinate me both as a practitioner and as a lecturer. I have worked for many years with a visually impaired artist and filmmaker whose work often explores the sonic and haptic relationships between objects, and with film itself (https://www.aaronmcpeake.com/projects/films.html). Most of the contemporary work revolves around haptic and sonic experiences of bronze cast objects, whilst our first film project traced the experiences of the artist returning to a space after twenty years of optic degeneration (‘A Sense of the World – The Blind Traveller’). These experiences collaborating and realising concepts have pushed me to always be searching for explorative ways of interacting with the use of sound and image, often involving much ‘collecting’ through recordings. The issue of loss is a key component to the work I cite, whereas Christine’s film looks much more precisely at the issue of the ownership of sensory materials.

Christine’s utilises various conventions in filmmaking to explore the subject of the film (Christine’s practice as an artist), blending documentary tropes with cinematic language that immerses the viewer in the overarching context of the experience of sound. The use of the traditional constructs of film language works to explore the assumptions and conventions that we all experience and respond to as audiences of films, without perhaps considering how or why this is employed. By starting the first two minutes as though it could be the opening to a fictional short film drama, the audience is invited to try to work out what is happening; who is this person? What is this person doing?

The film begins with references to the technology we will see deployed later, as Christine prepares to leave the apartment. The sounds grow in volume and seems to distort the image as Christine applies make-up whilst looking in the mirror. This soundscape continues to grow and develop into other sound elements from outside as Christine leaves the apartment and takes recordings with a microphone of the street. Christine introduces to the camera after two minutes as the sounds from the street scene slowly subside and the audience have the first confirmation that they are watching a documentary. The use of sound during the interview elements focusses on the movement and interactive contact of Christine’s hands as she signs for the camera/interviewer. This is interspersed with the injections of sound and ‘feedback’ from the sound recordings employed to drive the structures and circuits in the installations. The subtitles translating these movements into text on the screen are used in the traditional documentary sense, remaining during the cutaways that now make up the construct of the remainder of the film; the interview interspersed with footage of Christine engaging with the installation. Usually, the use of this would be in tandem with a voice recording that would persist during the cutaway sections, and the absence of this ‘voice’ as a recognisable audio recording during these sequences draws attention to how the language of film itself can act to exclude a mode of communication from those conventions. We see medium close-up shots of Christine’s hands signing, to draw this attention into sharper focus.

This use of traditional film constructs is a really engaging way of exploring film genre and style; all are minutely subverted as they are presented as one thing and represent another. I would use this film as an object to explore with students’ concepts around film genre and style, and around the ownership of the sensory experiences of film.


2. UAL Disability and Dyslexia Pages – Disability awareness through engagement with the world we build

As mentioned above, I have worked closely with visually impaired artist/filmmaker over the past twenty years, but I also worked closely with Claudette Davis-Bonnick in documenting her research on ‘Understanding Visual Impairments’ (https://issuu.com/shadesofnoir/docs/disabled_people). Claudette states how it is not the person with the disability that people are challenged with, but with understanding the disability. Claudette’s work has extensively explored barriers to learning in a practical context within pattern-cutting, but also, much as Christine Sun Kim’s film does, questions issues of ownership, specifically the assumption that beauty is an ocular experience. Through this relationship and consequent relationships, I have learned how diverse visual impairments can be; between and amongst those born without sight, and between and amongst those with degenerative disorders at their various stages. But also, the variety of conditions that are far less extreme, but equally problematic within the context of a world that is not built with these conditions in mind. These can include issues with colour, low or high levels of light, or even relating to how the person experiences sound visually. As the UAL Disability Pages video “The Social Model of Disability at UAL” states: “We are not disabled by our individual differences we are disabled by barriers in the world around us.” The person with the condition is often identified as needing assistance in the world, as though the world is not a place for them and therefore it is they who need to adapt and develop methodologies of coping with an environment in which they do not belong. This is rather than considering the world itself, built by us, as needing to adapt or be built better, in a more inclusive way. Such measures could be considered a hindrance to those, ‘able-bodied’, who feel they have no need to adapt. This would be an extremely uncritical position; considering that how things are have always been so, and have not in fact been assembled by us. Variety in methodologies is an invaluable context within which to learn critically. This is how we learn more about the ‘technologies’ around us, within the languages of disciplines and the construction of environments. We all adapt to these, none of them are ‘natural’, but constructs that we are participants in confirming and repeating/replicating. Questioning the conventions and practices that we are learning within, through their construction and how we all respond differently to them, provides a richer and more critical capacity for understanding within our own practices/learning.

My own experiences have profoundly affected the development of my theoretical understanding of sound in film, as a practitioner and lecturer, but also the technicality of such elements as a technician for large theatres or lecture halls. I remember an incident in a lecture hall at UAL where the lecturer at the front of the theatre did the common thing of rejecting the use of the microphone offered to them (people don’t like technology they don’t regularly use) and shouting out to the room “you can all hear me without this can’t you?”, to which the room generally responded in murmuring affirmation. Except for someone sat next to me who had not heard this and was moreover dependent on the microphone being used to tune into this signal with their hearing aid. I quietly explained this to the speaker aside and resolved the situation, but my initial annoyance came before noticing the student in need of the signal, because I often have problems with this attitude as a filmmaker for such events – when people discard the microphone, I lose the sound for my recording! I reference this experience because it exemplifies a common instinct people can have to reject what they don’t understand or trust. I used this knowledge in my approach to teaching technicians during the pandemic, many of whom understandably had great reservations about the task they were faced with.

To develop this, teaching technicians and lecturers the fundamentals of using certain technologies for making films within their practice could open up this space in relation to sound and image in particular and draw attention, through an alternative lens, to questions around why we use specific technologies and encourage engagement with what they do and also with how they work. The above example in the lecture hall, where ignorance around the use of a piece of ‘tech’ came from the leader of the room exemplifies an all-too-common issue of engagement with the environment and tools around us. The dismissal of the ‘tech stuff’ in this manner only works to cement disengagement from those tools that build our environments.

My short-term workshops with technicians learning to make videos during the pandemic could act as a much more permanent way of engaging with this world and understanding how much people can depend on them.


3. Representation/experience as a key tool for change in perception

When reading the #DisabilityTooWhite article/interview with Vilissa Thompson, I thought about the profound impact my work on outreach projects with LCF had upon my appreciation of representation and the privilege of empirical experiences in formative years. During time spent working on documenting projects lead by Carole Morrison I gained my first glimpses of what representation and experience can mean for a young person considering their first steps into adulthood and perhaps further education. The issue of representation is ever more divergent in the context of intersectionality. However, an area that the college has effectively targeted and that I have experience of is in outreach programmes for secondary school aged students where the participants are selected who would be, if they chose to do so, the first member of their family to go to university. This is a diverse group, linked by an apprehension that comes with not knowing. My experiences working with Carole on these projects opened my eyes to how powerful being able to see yourself in an environment that is alien to you and that you are unable to gain advice about from someone close who has experience of it. Working with a group of lecturers and technicians in the college for a series of workshops was demonstrably impacting the confidence of those young people involved. I had the privilege of interviewing the students and heard such a range of feelings about the programme, some who said they were now certain that university was a path they wanted to follow, some who were certain that this was not, and some that were suddenly interested in various other options that now appeared available to them. The consistent element in their responses to my questions was confidence. Knowing about a space and feeling confident about that knowledge proved to be extremely powerful and transformative. This made me consider the privilege of my own experiences at a similar age of things such as being taken to the theatre, an environment that is unique and therefore can seem somewhat daunting to those who have not experienced it. People worry about what to wear, how to behave, and without answers to these questions through experience, will lack confidence about perhaps a first experience of this.

These interventions at an early age can be extremely impactful, as can seeing those ‘like me’ represented in the world around you. However, this could be extended beyond those formative years. The assumption that those who arrive at university are comfortable there would be a mistake and we should continue to provide such experiences in spaces that are perhaps not natural places of feeling comfortable for students.

In terms of representation in the context of my teaching in film theory/history, I ask students to present a film that means something to them – this can be as simple as ‘I love it’ – as a first step to how to explore film critically. I might consider that instead two choices are made; one film in which the student feels they are represented, and one film in which they feel they are not. This extension of this exercise could act as an introduction to concepts of representation, but also an exploration of how easy or difficult this element of the task is for students from various backgrounds. This could be problematic depending on the diversity of the cohort and would need to be given context.


4. Invisibility

Whilst reading about the experiences and issues faced by Khairani Barokka during the touring of the solo deaf-accessible show, I reflected on the concept of invisibility and how this had impacted on my considerations around working with students online and in person, and what is made more or less acute in each context. This relates closely to my reflections on another article from the final resource: ‘Terms of Reference Journal from Shades of Noir (SoN) around Disability – ‘Key Term Video: Social Anxiety’ by Iga Sokolowska’.

Through my own personal experiences, and those of family members, with Anxiety, I have learned how invisible conditions can be, hidden sometimes through what is wrongly identified as “shyness”, or alternatively through the construction of a persona that acts to hide what is happening internally. During teaching online-only during lockdown, my experiences of teaching to a literally invisible group on Collaborate were a great challenge to my own feelings of anxiety about teaching in a new context. However, the regular one-to-one tutorials that followed helped me to feel closer to this group of students whom I would never meet and reassured me that they were indeed there and listening. These personal interactions lead to a couple of interventions where a student was struggling to cope and needed a private space to consult with me on the problem they were facing. This made me consider deeply those who had perhaps not had the confidence to do this, certainly not in front of the classroom, but even in private.

The issue of intersectionality within the context of disability is extremely diverse and always particular to the individual experience. However, the method of storytelling through the article by Khairani Barokka is a powerful tool in engaging with these specific experiences, but also in the wider contextual multiplicity of such experiences. In the classroom, engaging with the learner as an individual who has stories to tell of specific experiences could be an effective method, like issues explored earlier in the context of representation, whereby through showing vulnerability and authenticity we can engage and embolden those with us who may not have felt confident about their own situation. I try to engage students with stories of my mistakes and failures, my fears, and anxieties, during my professional and student career, to create a generous and human environment that is perhaps more open for them to share if they are struggling. This has not ever been formally researched but is something I tend to do naturally to try break down the concept of the ‘expert’ in the room with the ‘learner’.

Personal storytelling could be the method employed more concretely in the classroom, as a means of looking at the dramaturgy of story building in film, but also as a way of the group learning more about their perceptions of each other.