**Episode 2.4: Contra*Description with Liza Sylvestre - Show Notes and Transcript**

Simple English summary:

Image description is a practice that is often associated with creating accessibility for blind people. While, according to some people, image descriptions are supposed to be objective accounts of what is happening in a photo or film, some disabled artists are using image descriptions to critique other forms of inaccessibility. On this episode of Contra*, I talk to hard-of-hearing artist Liza Sylvestre about her work, which draws on methods of image description and film captioning to critique popular films, and with them, the broader culture of audism, which assumes that everyone has equal access to hearing sound.

Themes:

Hard-of-hearing artistry
Video description
Crip theory and Intersectionality
Access as art

Introduction Description:

The podcast introductory segment is composed to evoke friction. It begins with sounds of a wheelchair rhythmically banging down metal steps, the putter of an elevator arriving at a person’s level, and an elevator voice saying “Floor two, Floor three.” Voices begin to define Contra*. Layered voices say “Contra is friction…Contra is…Contra is nuanced…Contra is transgressive…Contra is good trouble…Contra is collaborative…Contra is a podcast!…Contra is a space for thinking about design critically…Contra is subversive…Contra is texture…”

An electric guitar plays a single note to blend out the sound.

The rhythmic beat of an electronic drum begins and fades into the podcast introduction.

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Episode Introduction:

Welcome to Contra*: the podcast about disability, design justice, and the lifeworld. This show is about the politics of accessible and critical design—broadly conceived—and how accessibility can be more than just functional or assistive. It can be conceptual, artful, and world-changing.

I’m your host, Aimi Hamraie . I am a professor at Vanderbilt University, a designer and design researcher, and the director of the Critical Design Lab, a multi-institution collaborative focused on disability, technology, and critical theory. Members of the lab collaborate on a number of projects focused on hacking ableism, speaking back to inaccessible public infrastructures, and redesigning the methods of participatory design—all using a disability culture framework. This podcast provides a window into the kinds of discussions we have within the lab, as well as the conversations we are interested in putting into motion. So in coming episodes, you’ll also hear from myself and the other designers and researchers in the lab, and we encourage you to get in touch with us via our website, www.mapping-access.com or on Twitter at @criticaldesignl

Interview Transcript:

Aimi Hamraie:

I'm so excited to be here with Liza Sylvestre, who is the co-founder of Creating Language Through Arts, an educational arts residency that focuses on art as a means of communication when there are language barriers present due to hearing loss. Welcome to the podcast, Liza.

Liza Sylvestre:

Thank you for having me.

Aimi Hamraie:

So just to start out, could you say a little bit about your methods as an artist?

Liza Sylvestre:

My method as an artist? Yeah. So I come to art from a more traditional approach of painting and drawing and that was a big part of my practice for many years. But always felt very limited by what I could say and do with a painting. So I found myself coming up with ideas for videos, installations, more interactive pieces of work. And that's really been my full fledged art practice for the past several years. So I do create videos. I also work with cultural organizations to create projects that are critical of the institution and how it's made inaccessible and how it actually enforces this divide binary of normative non-normative.

Liza Sylvestre:

I also am working on some curatorial things myself with a fellowship through the University of Illinois' Urbana-Champagne, which is having me work with gallery 400 and the University of Chicago. And we will be doing an exhibition in the fall of next year that is about disability but it's really about reaching past this disabled experience to get at the things that non-normative identities have access to understanding better than their normative peers. So take myself, for example, I have a hearing loss, I grew up with a hearing loss. It's a big part of my identity and I can't separate the way that I think from my disability. But I'm much less interested in making work that is just about my hearing loss and much more interested in stepping past that to the things that I understand because I have hearing loss so interested in work that leads out from disability.

Aimi Hamraie:

Hmm. Yeah, that's great. So what are some of the theoretical foundations of your work and how do they relate to your lived experiences?

Liza Sylvestre:

So I'm very much a believer in Crip Theory. I think all things come from an intersectional point of view. I think that we, as we have evolved, we can't think of things in isolation anymore. And Crip Theory does a really good job of connecting these dots between all the sorts of systems of oppression and says that we can't think about disability without also thinking about race, sexuality, and gender. We can't think about disability without also thinking about our architectural spaces and the designs that we've created for ourselves. And so I'm always going to be interested in thinkers and theorists and doers and makers who are approaching things in an intersectional way as opposed to a singular way.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah. Great. So kind of related to that in your artist's statement, you have this statement where you say, "My definitions of language and communication are continuously shifting and are directly tied to my own ability to navigate these concepts with my disability." So could you say a little bit about these concepts and how they've shifted and what new meanings they've taken on through your work?

Liza Sylvestre:

So I am someone who is not culturally deaf, even though I am medically deaf. And there's a big difference between those things. And I think that my identity has been formed, it took me a long time to realize this, but it has been formed by my outcast from normative society. And I think that this is something you will hear a lot of people who have non-normative identities vocalize in some way or another. And so I find more kinship with maybe someone who is LGBTQ and the way that they think about spaces and their bodies and the language that they use than I do with a deaf person. And that's because my access to language and communication is about my in-access. And I see so clearly how my relationship to culture and how that has formed my history and my identity is shaped by my access to language and my access to communication. And so those things are much bigger than simply having a hearing loss.

Liza Sylvestre:

And you know, I say this all the time, it's my hearing loss is the result of a simple cellular failure in a very particular part of my body. But the resonance of it is something that changes and directs my body language, changes and directs my thought pattern, my thinking, my ability or inability to stand up for myself and vocalize what I need in a situation. All of those things have been conditioned and put through this lens of hearing loss that is really a cultural problem instead of the simple cellular failure in a particular part of my body.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah, that's a really good way also I think of explaining Crip Theory and the differences between, you know, Crip Theories of normativity and medical models and how they perceive our bodies.

Liza Sylvestre:

Agreed.

Aimi Hamraie:

So yeah, maybe we can talk about some of your specific projects now.

Liza Sylvestre:

Sure.

Aimi Hamraie:

So you have one called Captioned where you create captions for existing films that are not just one-to-one representations of what is being said, but they are your commentary on the film. So, for example, one of the films I watched that was on your website, there's a character who is addressing an audience and the character is saying, "No matter what I do, no matter what I say on this stage during our work, I love you all." And your caption during that time says, "His voice is uneven. His words with equal spaces between them." So could you say a little bit about your methods for creating these captions and what they're trying to do?

Liza Sylvestre:

So like a lot of my work, this project Caption, which is becoming an ongoing series of work because I've done it in several iterations, is a direct connection to something that I do in my everyday life. So I grew up, I graduated from undergrad in 2006 and so I grew up... I was before a lot of these changes were made legal. And in terms of ADA compliance, I think the ADA was passed in what '90, what in '92? Yeah. And so I was born in '83 and I grew up at a time when, yes, there were modes of access for me but technology was not where it is at today. If I wanted to watch a film that didn't have captioning, there wasn't a department on my university campus that could add those captions for me, and if there was, I didn't know about it or I was too ashamed to use it. And so I spent so much of my life pretending I could understand what was going on when I never knew what was going on.

Liza Sylvestre:

And so those films are the actual material manifestation of things that I would tell myself when I was forced into these situations of basically complete boredom. Watching a two hour long film in a class when I have absolutely no idea what's going on because I can't hear it. And so I would literally sit at my desk and I would pretend to take notes and I would fill up that time with my own ideas about what was happening or I would make drawings or I would describe things that were happening or that I thought were happening. Or I would go off in these completely different tangents of ideas that were just creative and had absolutely nothing to do with what was in front of me.

Liza Sylvestre:

And so by adding my own commentary to those films that do not give me the access I need to understand them, I am stepping into the shoes of my youth, of that person who wasted hours and hours and hours of their life just enduring these situations that were not made accessible to me. And I still do it now more than I care to admit as an adult person who teaches at universities. And time and giving use to that time and I'm also giving a voice to what my own experience is and I think that the general idea that the disabled body is lacking in some way is false and that always we are having a full experience. And so when I'm sitting there and I'm trying to figure out what's going on and I don't know what's going on, I am still reading the films and I am still writing things down and I am still making use of my time. But I'm also showing you this layer of the film that is true, that is my experience.

Liza Sylvestre:

And so in that particular film, which is Captioned the Twentieth Century film, there's all of this misogyny and there's all of these social dynamics that happen. And I'm through the body language that I'm observing, I'm picking up on all of those things. So it's kind of like my commentary is the backseat view or the backstage view of the play that's going on and the viewers are receiving both the view from the front stage audience, but they're also receiving my backstage view. And I think that both of those things work together and create juxtapositions that are very unique to the disabled experience. So for example, you just shared with me what he said on the screen actually and I had no idea that that was what he said because I've never seen the film with actual captioning. But I'm not surprised at all by what you're sharing with me, so.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah. I think this is really interesting and provocative kind of as a methodological model as well. And so I wonder if you could say a little bit about where you're imagining an intervention to be happening. Because I'm really struck by the way that you are describing your, it's not just your internal monologue, it's also a critique of something about the way the films are produced or something about the culture that does not provide accessibility. So do you understand this work also as creating some sort of intervention?

Liza Sylvestre:

Does the work create an intervention? That's a great question. So one gesture that is always important to me with art, whether it's my own artwork or the artwork that I'm drawn to that other people are creating, is...

Liza Sylvestre:

And it's kind of contrary to what is popular in the art world right now, which is in the world right now, it's popular to have a minority identity and to make artwork about this kind of identity politics. But so much of the work that I see is flattened and stops at that and is actually a gesture of exclusion rather than inclusion. So it's about saying, "I'm me and you are not me and I'm making this work so that you can see how not me, you are." And I think that I am trying to not do that. I'm trying to create gestures of inclusion that people can learn from instead of just saying...

Liza Sylvestre:

I was talking with my partner about this recently and he came up with a really great analogy, which is if your work is about the color red and you say, "This is the color of red. Everyone, this is the color red. It's red, it's red, it's red, it's red." Instead of saying what color is this? And having a conversation about it and asking people to question why they think a color is red or not red or asking people to have a conversation about it. Those are two really different ways of experiencing art. And I'm always trying to to be the second way, which is to ask the question and to ask the viewers to be immersed in the artwork so that they can surround themselves with it and not exclude themselves from the problem. And I feel like I'm not maybe fully answering your question here, but that's where my mind is going.

Aimi Hamraie:

So of what I am understanding you saying is that the intervention is about getting the viewers or the audience to question their assumptions about their relationships to disability, for example-

Liza Sylvestre:

Definitely.

Aimi Hamraie:

More than representing a perspective that's meant to be kind of viewed from the outside, but not necessarily experienced or engaged with or something. Is that accurate?

Liza Sylvestre:

That's completely accurate, yeah.

Aimi Hamraie:

Is there an element of it that's also like an institutional critique, I wonder? And it may not just be one institution, but here I'm struck by the fact that these are all kind of feature films, so they're a specific type of media that comes from a specific institution.

Liza Sylvestre:

Definitely. I am very much involved in critiquing institutions in general. I feel that institutions of all kind teach us how to think about disability and therefore they have an incredible weight and emphasis put on them to evolve and they're not doing it always in the right way. And and these films are definitely an extension of our institutions, whether they are the extension of Hollywood or the extension of a cultural organization or the extension of an educational model. Yeah.

Aimi Hamraie:

Right. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So recently you showed a version of this project at the Third Space Gallery in Rockford, Illinois. And in that version you showed 2001: A Space Odyssey. And so that's Stanley Kubrick. And then Sun Ra's Space Is the Place. So can you take us a little bit into that gallery space and talk about how it was set up and how the films were shown?

Liza Sylvestre:

Yeah, so this was at New Genres Art Space on Rockford, Illinois. And the title of the work was Third Space, which was my title.

Aimi Hamraie:

Ah, thank you.

Liza Sylvestre:

Yep. So those two films are very deliberately chosen. 2001: A Space Odyssey, I was interested in choosing that film because I found out that the supercomputer from the story's plot actually came from the school where I went to graduate school, which is in more Southern Illinois at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. And so I liked the idea of when the material of the film was projecting on the walls and kind of becoming part of the walls, it was also becoming part of the walls where the story extends from. And so this idea of history and an actual time overlapping through that kind of material gesture of the projection.

Liza Sylvestre:

But then I'm also interested in that film as this representation of a very white male idealization of the future and it has the backing of Hollywood and the symphony and the cultural context of that film. It'd been decades since I had seen it, but there were moments in that film that I just, you can't forget because of how iconic they are. And so that film was chosen for that reason. It's thinking about imagined futures, it's thinking about technology and how technology can both get us there and not get us there. The disabled body is also inundated with technology in a similar way to this idea of science fiction. So I think that it's so important to think about science fiction through the lens of the disabled body because it is always moving forward and progressing, but always still failing, which is what that film also does.

Liza Sylvestre:

And then Sun Ra the Space Is the Place film was chosen because it represents a really different relationship to science fiction and the need for science fiction. It was created by Sun Ra who is many things, a visionary, a musician, a black cultural advocate who made this film that was not a Hollywood produced film and that manifests in different ways throughout the film. And so the film in a very interesting way comes kind of like from the material that Sun Ra is a part of in a way that Kubrick's film also does and they're very different in that way. This film is still about imagined futures and science fiction and this need for creating a space for black people because there's no space on earth and so they actually are going to be taken to a new space in a different galaxy. And so I see a lot of similarities between, coming back to Crip Theory here, between the black experience and the need for space that Sun Ra is talking about in that film and what the disabled body also needs. And the same could be said for LGBTQ and that body.

Liza Sylvestre:

And so I have one relationship to the Sun Ra film, I have a different relationship to the Kubrick film and my experience is neither of those things as a true third wheel of the disabled body. And so I displayed these films really largely in this space and they were actually physically touching in the corner of a room. And so I present them as the same thing and the only modification I did to these films, because I was interested in them functioning as their historical artifacts that they are, is my own caption commentary that my own disabled body producers as I watched these films. And so they're shown physically touching each other and viewers stand or sit or in a wheelchair in front of them when they experienced them. And the experience of both films is kind of overwhelming and touching both of them and they occupy the space of both simultaneously. And this third space, which is where the title of the exhibition comes from, is framed and created by both of those films.

Liza Sylvestre:

And so I'm interested in this kind of amorphous third space that is hard to define. And the two films are not the same length and I did not make them synced to each other and so when they play on reels, the Sun Ra film is much shorter than the Kubrick, and so it refreshes before the Kubrick film does. And so there's this continual regeneration of new spaces created by the two films together.

Aimi Hamraie:

Wow. I love that. There's so many layers to this. There's the contrasting white imaginary of the future and the black radical imaginary of the future and place and belonging. And then there's the Crip intervention of narrating what is happening otherwise. Can you give us a sense of any of those moments where your commentary was also pushing back against or intervening somehow within the content of the films themselves?

Liza Sylvestre:

Sure. So there were some really nice moments. So, I mean in the case of both films, there's a lot of misogyny and I talk about all of that. Just because you make a film about the need for space for black bodies and how that is a positive thing, does not give you the path to be completely sexist and misogynistic. And so I'm trying to call out both films when they do that equally. And unfortunately there is a lot of sexism and misogyny and the Sun Ra and that is a big part of my commentary and as well as in the Kubrick film. And I talk about both of those instances when they come up.

Liza Sylvestre:

There were nice moments that I'm not sure, they were these fleeting moments because like I said, the videos aren't synced and so the way that they line up changes and reorients itself each time they renew. But there are so many nice visual similarities and visual carry throughs when the films are played together. So, for instance, in one experience of watching the films together, there were people walking and they felt like they were walking together in both scenes or the music would overlap and become oddly synced. So yeah.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah. Wow. Seems like a really interesting technique to explore further in other kinds of cases too. Something I want to ask you about because it seems like they're part of the thesis of your work is that you're using these strategies of creating access also as a form of critique. It's not just like a functional thing that you would give to someone else and be like, "Here's an accessible version of this film or whatever."

Aimi Hamraie:

And I wonder what other mediums that method could be applied toward. And one in particular that I have in mind is the podcast. The podcast is a very specific type of media form and it does all sorts of things like there are journalistic podcasts and storytelling podcasts and whatever. But in conversations that I've had with deaf and hard of hearing people, including with you when we were getting ready to record this, there are a lot of differences in terms of how people describe their consumption of podcasts and the use of transcripts or not. So I just wonder what you think about that and if there is some way to do that kind of critique and commentary around the form of the podcast itself.

Liza Sylvestre:

Yeah. So I think that that is, thank you for being aware of that and being self critical in that way. So I think people ask this question and there's no quick fix and that's part of why it never gets solved. Right. One big problem I have with accessibility modes in general, and this is something a lot of my fellowship workers is grappling with and what I've done with other work in the past where I'm really critical of this idea of a normal experience and then a non normal experience and the division that that creates. So museums have audio description tours for blind people and I'm like, "I have a lot of problems with that." We don't have time to talk about that right now, but I think that you sharing Shannon Finnegan's Alt-Text as Poetry and then some of the work that I've tried to do in the past are really good models that could be potential solutions and ways of thinking about this.

Liza Sylvestre:

I don't typically waste my time trying to listen to podcasts because the general conception is that you need to listen to it on your phone or without another form of access. So right away while you were talking about this, I'm thinking about those readers that can be utilized for learning how to speed read where the words are quickly flashing up on your screen on like a small space so there's not a lot to focus on, but a lot of content passes through it really quickly. And I don't know if that's a thing that can actually be utilized, but I would encourage you instead of thinking about, and I'm sure this is what you were already doing, instead of thinking about, "Well this is the normal way, this is the way that it's supposed to be accessed. And then these are these subpar ways of access," I'm wondering if that could be flipped or if the mode of access becomes a work of art, which Shannon Finnegan does so well in that Alt-Text as Poetry or what I've tried to do in other works of art.

Liza Sylvestre:

The mode of access shouldn't just be a mode of access, it shouldn't be separated. Joseph Grigely talks about this so well in his exhibition Prosthetics where he's talking about this is the work of art and then these are the modes of access that extend from that work of art that allow or disallow someone to experience that work. And you can do all of these things trying to audio describe a work of art, trying to make sure the lighting is good enough, trying to make sure it's at the right height so people in wheelchairs can see or view the work of art but it never changes the fact that the work of art was not originally intended for a non-normative body to experience it. And I think that that's key in thinking about evolutions that need to be made in terms of thinking about accessibility modes. The access shouldn't be separate from the thing itself and I think they need to be thought of as as the same thing.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah. I think what you're saying is really important. And I really like the suggestion also of using that the speed reading tool or technology because that also captures some of the kind of experiential dimensions of a podcast that it's this live stream of words, but you can't necessarily see or hear into the future of it. And yeah, and I'm really just wondering because it's something we're working on in my lab too, is how to do a podcast without it even being auditory and is it still a podcast then. Can it go to the podcast conferences and hang out with the other podcasters?

Liza Sylvestre:

It definitely should. I loved that you... Yeah.

Aimi Hamraie:

Yeah. So I'm really excited about your work because I think it's giving us ways to think about that and also giving us ways to do this sort of meta commentary on the existing media form and to draw attention to different norms and where they're coming up in these production processes too. So thank you so much for that.

Liza Sylvestre:

Thank you for your work as well. I just want to give a shout out to my fellowship work at Gallery 400. And I'm working on some, which is at the University of Illinois, Chicago, I'm working on forming this alternative accessibility to a program there and also a show that will take place in September, 2020.

Aimi Hamraie:

Cool, great.

Liza Sylvestre:

And a publication.

Aimi Hamraie:

So I'll get the links to those from you over email then we can include them in the show notes for folks to know about. Thank you so much, Liza. It's been so great to talk to you.

Liza Sylvestre:

Such a pleasure to talk to you and to have you include me on this. It's a big honor. Thank you.

Announcing Crip Ritual project:

All cultures have rituals. Rituals can be ways to change material circumstances, politics, lived experience, or even spiritual realities. So rituals are a method for designing a better world. In disability culture, we often use rituals as ways of designing and anticipating a more accessible future. What role does ritual play in your life, and what rituals could you imagine designing to ensure a better future for you and other members of disability culture and community? The Critical Design Lab invites submissions to an art exhibition called Crip Ritual, which will be on display in Spring 2021. You can submit your artworks to the exhibition for consideration via our website, www.cripritual.com, or participate on social media using #cripritual.

Outro:

You’ve been listening to Contra*: a podcast about disability, design justice, and the lifeworld. Contra* is a production of the Critical Design Lab. Learn more about our projects at mapping-access.com., and be sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

If you enjoyed this episode, please head over to Apple podcasts to subscribe, rate, and leave a review.

The Contra* podcast is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share-Alike International 3.0 license. That means you can remix, repost, or recycle any of the content as long as you cite the original source, aren’t making money, you don’t change the credits, and you share it under the same license.

**Episode 2.4: Contra*Description with Liza Sylvestre - Show Notes and Transcript**

Simple English summary:

Themes:

Links:

People, Art and Places Referenced:

Definitions:

Introduction Description:

Episode Introduction:

Interview Transcript:

Announcing Crip Ritual project:

Outro: