“Sensorial Encounters: Haptic and Non-Visual Access in Art” is an exploratory workshop that challenges the primacy of visual perception and terminology in art and art history. Inspired by the methodological insights of authors such as Georgina Kleege, Elizabeth Bearden and Amanda Cachia, among others, this workshop questions the traditional conflation of sight with knowledge.

We invite scholars, artists, and thinkers to explore the dimensions of non-visual experiences in art. How do these experiences shape our understanding of subjectivity? What could we learn about an object if we were to feel it versus looking at it? How should these objects be displayed? We seek contributions that delve into these questions, offering diverse perspectives on sensory experiences and their implications for art and society.

This workshop will explore how artists who eschew ocular-centric practices have historically engaged with non-visual perception and created spaces to rethink access as more than a mere accommodation. We will examine how these artists' works offer new modes for understanding art and its interaction with the public.

The workshop seeks to redefine artistic encounters by emphasizing the role of touch, sound, and other senses in experiencing art, thus positioning disability not merely as a subject of representation but within the field of creative and affective agency.

Please follow the Workshop also online on Zoom.
Links: https://www.biblhertz.it/events/39662/2598514

PROGRAM

Monday, November 25, 2024

9:30-10:00 Introduction by the workshop organizers

I. Unlearning the Visual

10:00-10:45 Pierre Von-Ow: “Other Imaginations: Nicholas Saunderson and the Haptic Nature of Optics”

10:45-11:30 Fabian Lilian Korner: “The Knowledge of Touch: Some Notes on Rethinking an Art Historical Tactile Research”

11:30-12:00 Coffee break

12:00-12:45 Simon Baier: “Becoming a Paramecium: Environmental Experience around 1970”

12:45-13:30 Zsofi Valyi-Nagy [online]: “<img> alt= Alt-Text as Creative Accessibility Practice in and beyond Art History”

13:30-14:30 Lunch break

II. Haptic Art and Sensorial Perception

14:30-15:15 Amélie Castellanet: “Raoul Hausmann’s Montage Practice: A Haptic Art Beyond the Visual”

15:15-16:00 Tony Jacob [online]: “Haptic Horizontality in South Asian Colonial Photography”

16:00-16:45 Amanda Cachia [online]: “The Agency of Access: Please Touch”

16:45-17:30 Coffee break

17:30-19:00 Keynote [online]: Finnegan Shannon: “Recent Tactile Projects”

19:00 End of the first day

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

III. Accessibility, Museums and the Senses

10:00-10:45 Wiktor Komorowski: “Invisible Exhibition for the Invisible People: Artists for the Visually Impaired in the Polish People’s Republic”

10:45-11:30 Pratiti Ketoki and Yichen Li: “How We Feel in Museums: Disabled Bodies, Neurodivergent Movement and Sensorial Experience of Art”

11:30-12:00 Coffee break

12:00-12:45 Eva Fotiadi: “Exhibiting for Multiple Senses: Artistic research for sensory diverse bodies”

12:45-13:30 Karin Silverin: “Smelling Moss: Olfactory Epistemologies in Zheng Bo’s ‘The Pleasure of Slowness’”

13:30-14:30 Lunch break

End of the public part of the Workshop

15:00-17:00 Touch Tour at Museo dell'Ara Pacis

17:00 End of the Workshop

During the presentations, all visual material will be described. Captioning will be available, and American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation can be provided upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. We will make every effort to accommodate requests made with less than two weeks’ notice. Moreover, please let us know in advance about any access needs.

Scientific Organization: co-organized by Tobias Teutenberg and Virginia Marano, Charlotte Matter, and Laura Valterio (research group “Rethinking Art History through Disability” at the Institute of Art History, University of Zurich. Email to: disabilitykhist.uzh.ch).