TWIXTlab's presentation will focus on three instances from artistic education workshops with Deaf and Hard of Hearing students, and the outcomes of these processes, namely artworks made in collaboration with invited artists and the students. How can we evaluate an artwork as an assemblage of materials, concepts, and relations, without losing sight of its educational and knowledge-production potential? Dana Papachristou (educational coordinator) and Yorgos Samantas (project manager) of Audibility project will draw a theoretical framework stemming from existing literature from Deaf anthropology, education, art theory, will refer to a practical guide-map to current applications concerned with Deaf accessibility and sensory translation, and will exemplify them with their curatorial approaches and their participatory observations from the field, enhanced by feedback from school-staff, briefly presenting excerpts of artworks.
Key-words: Deaf art, participatory art, accessibility, anti-audism, mapping, art education
Dana Papachristou is a musicologist and sound artist, focusing on the combination of art forms through the use of new media. After finishing her PhD on artistic applications of philosophical concepts by Deleuze and Guattari (Paris 8 – Vincennes & Ionian University, Corfu) in 2020, she is currently an adjunct lecturer in the University of Thessaly, department of Creative Media and Cultural Industries, and a post-doc researcher in the Ionian University, Greece. She is the educational coordinator of “Audibility” project within B-Air, concerned with Deaf experience and sound-art and music.
Yorgos Samantas is a social anthropologist focusing on sound and walking as cultural practices, as well as an artist who treats the same media as artistic means of expression. Among others he has conducted ethnographic research and has produced artistic works on urban youth cultures, mental health, water and the environment, political protest, art institutions, and cultural heritage. As a freelancer he has worked on education, the radio, ethnographic film, sound engineering and sound design. He is a member of TWIXTlab, a non-profit organization between anthropology, contemporary art and the everyday life, currently coordinating the "Audibility" project.
Both Dana and Yorgos are founding members of the Athens-based trans-disciplinary art group “Akoo-o”, working with sound, walking, the city and technology as artistic media.