ABOUT THIS BOOK

A groundbreaking volume on the role of the non-visual in art and the emerging field of blindness arts.

In what ways can visual art be enjoyed beyond sight? Bringing together leading international scholars and artists in the emerging field of “blindness arts”—including blind and partially blind artists, curators, advocates for inclusive practices and models of audio description, cognitive psychologists, and theorists of installation, performance, and sound art—Beyond the Visual seeks to broaden the discussion of multisensory ways of beholding contemporary art, with a particular emphasis on modes that transcend a dependency upon sight. Through diverse examples of multisensory engagement, it contributes to ongoing conversations around accessibility and blindness in art while also challenging and expanding our understanding of how art is experienced.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Ken Wilder is an artist, writer, and professor of aesthetics at the University of the Arts London. Aaron McPeake is an artist and academic who is registered blind and teaches at the University of the Arts London.

REVIEWS

"It is often difficult to find the right language to talk about things that haven’t been talked about enough. This publication meets that challenge head on. It will shine a light on the relationship between blindness and art practice, a subject long deserving of far greater consideration; but beyond that, it has the potential to impact on a wider discussion about art and the way we experience it, reminding us that the best so-called 'visual art' must always be much more than visual."

— Godfrey Worsdale OBE Director of the Henry Moore Foundation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of figures
List of contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements

Introduction
Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake

Part I: Critical reflections on blindness arts

1 Modes of touch: modelling haptic engagement
Georgina Kleege
2 Blindness gain and the arts: from blindness arts to critical blindness studies and back again
Hannah Thompson, Vanessa Warne and Marion Chottin
3 Blindness as the creative liberation of curatorial practice
Fayen d’Evie

Part II: Towards inclusivity

4 Extant: provoking, disrupting, and redefining expectations of the blind and visually impaired presence in theatre
Maria Oshodi
5 Architecture Beyond Sight: working with blind and partially sighted people to co-develop design methods beyond the visual
Jos Boys, Poppy Levison, Duncan Meerding, Zoe Partington and Mandy Redvers-Rowe
6 Philosophical and pedagogical theories on the creative play of children with visual impairments
Simon Hayhoe

Part III: Access as praxis

7 Moving towards touch: the ambulatory aesthetics of description Amanda Cachia
8 Shaping collective access: community and interdependence in Carmen Papalia’s praxis
Àger Pérez Casanovas
9 Cross-sensory translation of light: pyrotechnical arts
Collin van Uchelen

Part IV: Multisensory environments

10 The art of getting lost
Simon Ungar
11 Blue House: the intangible space
Lydia Ya Chu Chang
12 Circumstantes: a site-specific performance installation and film
Ken Wilder and Aaron McPeake

Part V: Touch, sound, smell, taste

13 Holding Eva Hesse
Fayen d’Evie
14 Sounds as vibration: a method of making and a mode of reception in contemporary arts practice
Aaron McPeake
15 To be sniffed at: the role of smell in contemporary art
Claire O'Dowd
16 The mouth between the eyes: food art and material, social, sensorial relations
Rain Wu

Part VI: Words, translations, descriptions
17 Extracts from Black Cane Diary
Joseph Rizzo Naudi
18 A film you can feel: sensory deception, translation and confluence in film work Passing
Jo Bannon
19 Reimagining inclusive museum audio description: what it is, who creates it, and who is it for?
Rachel Hutchinson and Alison Eardley
20 Describing anarchy
Matthew Cock and Hannah Thompson

Part VII: Towards a blind aesthetics
21 Blind aesthetics: complexity, contingency and conflict
David Johnson
22 Gravity: the great big weight of the (visual) world
David Mollin and Salomé Voegelin
23 ‘Touch-space’, ‘blindness gain’ and the ontology of sculpture
Ken Wilder