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PRESENTS is an online screening of short video works that don’t require an abled or physically present body in order to be performative. Thirteen sick, disabled, d/Deaf, and care-giving artists come together to expand the idea of ‘performance’, presenting work that is embodied, immediate, and present without forcing bodies to conform to ableist norms of art-making. In addition to their video work, each artist has created a “score” for you to perform yourself alongside their work in your own home.
Available to watch online from 13.09-13.11 at presentsscreening.de.
Digitally screened by: Berlin Art Week, HAU4, the Dreamy Place Festival (UK), and Video Club (UK)
Screenings in person:
September 21 at VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver Canada
October 20 at HAU2, Berlin, Germany
THE VIDEOS
Some videos ask us to consider our performances online on social platforms, such as Traveling Solo ASL Story via Zodiac Signs which plays with online influencer Instagram culture, or OHYUNG: now i close my eyes the world i see is so beautiful which creates a virtual world where avatars of the living and dead reunite and are projected back onto the body.
Others invite us to the most morbid dance party of our lives, such as apocalypse core which asks us to scream-sing our favourite song as the world burns, or the music video where Hang Linton sings Blue Light Hike as they’re chased through a wage-labour nightmarescape by a violent police system embodied in a rapping pig.
Artists also grapple to represent the unrepresentably cruel systems of ableism and colonialism we live under: Upright Nationalism’s relentlessly parades military personnel being forced to stand up and serve their country, while In the Belly of the Beast creates an experimental horror film to depict the rot of colonisers like Christopher Columbus that lie at the heart of the American empire.
Artists perform with mythical beings who could be our downfalls, our or saving graces: we dance a perilous dance with the ancient baby God of love in Cupid’s Shuffle; and sculpt Golems for our and our community’s protection in Alchemy of the Ill.
Finally, our simple daily routines are elevated to performance: Dust Prayer shows the beauty of the rituals of ablutions, Cranes shows the power of solidarity of simply sharing a cigarette in silence, and Sound of Subtitles shows how the act of deep listening (not with our ears, but with our bodies) can be an act of creation.
ACCESSIBILITY
All of the works, when necessary, are subtitled and audio described in English and German, as well as having versions in German and American sign language. All scores come in written and audio format in English and German. Some of the works play with performative and artistic aspects of these versions, not just making translations of information, but adding new artistic layers and interpretations to the works themselves.
The website itself should be screen-reader friendly and keyboard navigable, please contact us if there are any issues.
We are pleased to announce that childcare services will be provided during the program to support individuals with caregiving responsibilities.
We are pleased to announce that childcare services will be provided during the program to support individuals with caregiving responsibilities.
Masks are optional but encouraged during the screening. Please approach any member of staff with further questions or concerns.
CONTENT WARNINGS
Upright Nationalism by Chloe Pascal Crawford contains repeated scenes of ableism, where wheelchair users are made to stand up by military exoskeleton technology.
In the Belly of the Beast by Misra Walker thematises racist colonialism in the USA.
Blue Light Hike by Laura Lulika + Hang Linton has a gory image of a fake chopped-off finger, and depicts anti-Black police racism.
CREDITS
Curated by Frances Breden and RA Walden, with project management by Lo G Moran.
Artists: Khairani Barokka, April Lin 林森, Seo Hye Lee, Laura Lulika + Hang Linton, Misra Walker, Venesse Guy, Chloe Pascal Crawford, Saioa Alvarez Ruiz + Katrin Bittl, Brothers Sick, Zinzi Buchanan, RA Walden.
Visual and Web Design: Cooper Lovano
Media Management: Svenja Simone Schulte
In collaboration with: Collective Text (English audio description), Ping Pong Translation (German translation and audio description), Dana Cermane (German Sign Language), Valene Przybylo and Deidra Pelletier (American Sign Language), Alexander Ostojski (German proofreading).
A Coproduction with HAU Berlin. Funded by the Canada Council for the Arts.
VIVO is located in the homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) peoples in a warehouse space at 2625 Kaslo Street south of East Broadway at the end of E 10th. Transit line 9 stops at Kaslo Street on Broadway. From the bus stop, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight decline. The closest skytrain station is Renfrew Station, which is three blocks south-east of VIVO and has an elevator. From there, the path is paved, curbless, and on a slight incline. There is parking available at VIVO, including wheelchair access parking. There is a bike rack at the entrance. The front entrance leads indoors to a set of 7 stairs to the lobby.
A wheelchair ramp is located at the west side of the main entrance. The ramp has two runs: the first run is 20 feet long, and the second run is 26 feet. The ramp is 60 inches wide. The slope is 1:12. The ramp itself is concrete and has handrails on both sides. There is an outward swinging door (34 inch width) at the top of the ramp leading to a vestibule. A second outward swinging door (33 inch width) opens into the exhibition space. Buzzers and intercoms are located at both doors to notify staff during regular office hours or events to unlock the doors. Once unlocked, visitors can use automatic operators to open the doors.
There are two all-gender washrooms. One has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The other is a single room with a urinal and is wheelchair accessible: the door is 33 inches wide and inward swinging, without automation. The toilet has 11 inch clearance on the left side and a handrail.
To reach the bathrooms from the studio, exit through the double doors and proceed straight through the lobby and down the hall . Turn left, and the two bathrooms will be on your right side. The closest one has a stall and is not wheelchair accessible. The far bathroom is accessible.
Khairani Barokka is Editor of Modern Poetry in Translation, and a writer and artist from Jakarta. Her work has been presented widely internationally, and centres disability justice as anticolonial praxis and environmental justice. Among her honours, she has been Modern Poetry in Translation's Inaugural Poet-in-Residence, a UNFPA Indonesian Young Leader Driving Social Change, an Artforum Must-See, UK Associate Artist at Delfina Foundation, and Associate Artist at the National Centre for Writing (UK). Okka's work includes being author-illustrator of Indigenous Species (Tilted Axis), author of Rope (Nine Arches), and co-editor of Stairs and Whispers: D/deaf and Disabled Poets Write Back (Nine Arches). Her latest book is Ultimatum Orangutan (Nine Arches), shortlisted for the Barbellion Prize.
April Lin 林森 (b. 1996, Stockholm — they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist and independent curator investigating image-making and world-building as sites for the construction, sustenance, and dissemination of co-existent yet conflicting truths. Working across moving image, performance, creative computing and installation, they dream & explore & critique & fret & catastrophise & imagine & play — for a collective remembering of forgotten pasts, for a critical examination of normalised presents, and for a visualising of freer futures as, of course, imagined from the periphery. Uniting their genre-fluid body of work is a commitment to centring oppressed knowledges, building an ethics of collaboration around reciprocal care, and exploring the linkages between history, memory, and interpersonal and structural trauma. Their work has been shown at the Museum of the Moving Image New York, Sheffield DocFest, Alchemy Film and Moving Image Festival, the V&A Museum, HOME, Malmö Konstmuseum, LA Filmforum, Edinburgh International Film Festival, Manchester Art Gallery, MADATAC, Arebyte Gallery, Lausanne Underground Film & Music Festival, NOWNESS Asia, and 4:3 Boiler Room.
Seo Hye Lee is a UK based South Korean artist utilising a multidisciplinary approach to creating new forms of narrative. Drawing on her experience of hearing loss and of being a cochlear implant user, Seo Hye explores the world both with and without hearing through the mediums of drawing, moving image and installation.
Laura Lulika is an unprofessional working-class queer disabled artist and parent currently living in Leeds, UK. Working across many shapeshifting forms, their practice explores themes of care, sexuality, labour, sickness, counterculture and dirt; Their work is driven by the rhythms and rituals within daily life. Lulika’s practice is heavily informed by their access needs and capacity in the moment, as well as the needs of those they work with. With a history of working in community arts, they currently hold dearly three roles supporting arts organisations in improving accessibility from an inclusive framework. Lulika loves to collaborate, exploring the experience of being human or non-human, in art, mutual aid, their local neighbourhood and care networks.
Hang is a self-taught, interdisciplinary artist, working in music, performance, dance, video, sculpture and installation. Their personal practice explores otherness through sound, non-linear time concepts, community and public art. Splicing avant-funk, dance punk and breakbeats, with samples from nature and historical recordings, their art is a rebellion against clean aesthetics, inspired by identity and changing global events. Hang bends your ear around the counterculture sounds and movements that have shaped them. They have recently been awarded PRS funding to write and release their first album and they will be releasing their first EP, Demonstrations, later this year.
Misra Walker (1992) Bronx, NY, is a community organizer, educator, and interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture, installation, and video. In 1971 Marvin Gaye implored the world: “What’s going on? OoOoO, What’s going on?” Walker carries this question with her, asking after Gaye, what IS going on? How can we understand our present material conditions if we don’t have the tools to analyze our past? Her work seeks to bring the inseparability of the present from the past to glimpse a possible future of liberation from capitalism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. Walker received her BFA from Cooper Union in 2015 and her MFA from Rutgers Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2022.
My work is for and made possible by:
The workers that cut fresh sugarcanes and bag fronto leaves
To the comrades who jump over turnstiles
To the folks that have multiple tongues
To the lands that inspire revolutions
Venesse Guy is a queer DeafBlind, Biracial-American astrologer, content creator, teacher, educator, visionary artist, and painter. She had been studying astrology for 14 years through meeting people from her personal experiences. She graduated from Gallaudet University in 2015 which is the only Deaf university in the world with a Bachelor in Social Work. She started an astrology business as a business owner for Astro Woke in April 2020 by providing online 1:1 services, online classes, and online workshops via sign language. She was the winner of the most promising astrologer from the Organization of Professional Astrologers with a grant in 2022. She is currently working on getting a Professional Diploma Course for Evolutionary Astrology with Maurice Fernandez and will be an OPA-certified astrologer in 2023.
Chloe Pascal Crawford is a multidisciplinary artist highlighting the labor disabled people undertake to set the conditions for their existence in public spaces. Her work is exhibited in relation to her perpetually-seated sight-line, challenging conceptions of lowness as a place to be overlooked. She has shown at the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Artists Space, VAE, EFA Project Space, and Eugene Contemporary Art, and received fellowships from the Ragdale Foundation, Santa Fe Art Institute, and Vermont Studio Center. She has a MFA from Mason Gross School of the Arts, and recently completed the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program. It took her 19 years to obtain enough work credits to qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance.
Saioa Alvarez Ruiz is a freelance performer in Berlin. She spent the 2022/23 season working with the Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz among others. She pursued sociology, political science and media studies in Düsseldorf and drama education at the Berlin University of the Arts. She pulls back the curtain on how feminine existence intersects with disability in her media-arts piece double-trouble.me. She notably took part in the theatrical productions “Oratorium” by She She Pop and “Ophelia’s Got Talent” by Florentina Holzinger, which were showcased at the Berliner Theatertreffen in 2019 resp. 2023.
Katrin Bittl a freelance artist. She graduated from the Munich Academy for Fine Arts in 2023. She deals with societal ideals and norms in her work, exploring her own body – as a woman with disability – in video, performance and animation pieces. Therein, she creates intimate spaces by including personal objects and furniture that underscore her autobiographical signature. To her, her body belongs to the world of plants, allowing her to look at “care work” and family under a new light. Her drawing and painting delves into the norming of the body by transforming, overpainting and placing it in ever-new contexts. She is also a writer who focuses on the intersectionality between feminine existence, disability, and inclusion.
Ezra and Noah Benus founded Brothers Sick, a sibling artistic collaboration on disability justice, illness, spirituality, and care. Their collaborative project has been supported through exhibitions at Museion Bolzano (IT), MMK Frankfurt (DE), Pratt Manhattan Gallery (NYC), Visual AIDS (NYC), The Shed (NYC), Shape Arts (UK), Gibney Dance (NYC). Commissioned published works include Blackwood Gallery’s SDUK: Lingering, and Kingdom of The Ill reader published by Hatje Cantz Verlag. Their work has been featured in publications such as Artforum (Susanne Pfeffer’s #1 artwork highlight of 2021), Pin Up, Mousse Magazine, Ocula, Art Agenda, Publico ípsilon, and Welt Kunst.
Zinzi is an artist working with dance, performance, facilitation and writing. Their practise is improvisational and intuitive in nature and they often share on difficult topics whilst finding playfulness in the potential of our alive bodies. They recently facilitated an Acupuncture Clinic at Gropius Bau Berlin, curated by SERAFINE1369/Jamila Johnson-Small and in 2021 focused on creating work for chronically ill people including a 90 minute sonic-performance called SICK DREAMS. Zinzi has been a facilitator at Ponderosa Dance Festival for many years and loves to creatively hold space for others.
RA Walden is a transdisciplinary artist whose work centers a queer, disabled perspective on the fragility of the body. Their practice spans sculpture, installation, video, and printed matter, all of which is undertaken with a socially engaged and research-led working methodology. Walden is interested in our ability and failure to navigate physicality, interdependency and vulnerability both communally and individually; understanding world-building not as a visionary tool for an imagined future, but as an embodied methodology for the now. Recent work has been shown at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: UK, HAU: Berlin, The National Gallery of Australia, SOHO20: NYC, and Kunstinstituut Melly: Rotterdam. Walden has been a resident of Shandaken Storm King: NYC, Wysing Arts Centre: UK, Hebbel am Ufer: Berlin, and La Becque: Switzerland. Their solo exhibition access points // or // alternative states of matter(ing) opened in May 2023 at Storm King Art Center, NYC; they will present a solo exhibition at Grundy Gallery, UK, in 2024 titled object transformations through the co-ordinate of time.
Frances Breden is a curator dedicated to community-oriented and collective art-making. She is one sixth of the queer feminist art collective COVEN BERLIN (covenberlin.com), with whom she’s worked since she came to Berlin in 2014. Frances is a founding member of Sickness Affinity Group (sicknessaffinity.org), a collective offering support around topics of accessibility, disability, and illness. Frances is originally from the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Kwikwetlem Nations, also known as Vancouver, Canada. She is currently studying at the Art in Context program at the UdK, Berlin.
RA Walden is a transdisciplinary artist whose work centers a queer, disabled perspective on the fragility of the body. Their practice spans sculpture, installation, video, and printed matter, all of which is undertaken with a socially engaged and research-led working methodology. Walden is interested in our ability and failure to navigate physicality, interdependency and vulnerability both communally and individually; understanding world-building not as a visionary tool for an imagined future, but as an embodied methodology for the now. Recent work has been shown at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art: UK, HAU: Berlin, The National Gallery of Australia, SOHO20: NYC, and Kunstinstituut Melly: Rotterdam. Walden has been a resident of Shandaken Storm King: NYC, Wysing Arts Centre: UK, Hebbel am Ufer: Berlin, and La Becque: Switzerland. Their solo exhibition access points // or // alternative states of matter(ing) opened in May 2023 at Storm King Art Center, NYC; they will present a solo exhibition at Grundy Gallery, UK, in 2024 titled object transformations through the co-ordinate of time.
