[-empyre-] [–empyre–] Refiguring the Future, Week 2: In/Visibility feature

[Lola Martinez]

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Following last week’s reflections on the exhibition as an ecosystem, we
continue onto week 2 with conversation on Refiguring the Future’s
engagement with accessibility.

Sciences and technologies have continually reinforced existing conceptions
of access. As dictated by mega-corporations, whose platforms render
accessibility features invisible, the scope between accessibility and
experience is limited. In light of this, blind, chronically ill, D/deaf,
and disability communities have expanded notions of accessibility by
utilizing emerging technologies and digital medias to provide resources and
representations. Yet what does it mean to build community within these
platforms? How can we collectively examine the impulses within new media
that impact accessibility, and in turn experience? Our intentions is to
create a space for speculative dialogues where artists, educators, and
technologists can provide new insights into discourses which are
reinforcing apparent and unapparent disability.

I’m honored to be joined by Ezra Benus, Anneli Goeller, and Yidan Zeng.
Each one of them played an active role within the exhibition and
conference, be it through advising, organizing, or participating, and have
generously provided their expertise and knowledge as we continue to learn
and work through notions of access and disability.

Ezra Benus studied at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem, the
University of Amsterdam, and graduated with a degree in Studio Art (honors)
and Jewish Studies at CUNY Hunter College. Benus was an Erich Fromm Fellow
at Paideia Institute in Stockholm, and is currently the Access and Adult
Learning Fellow at the Brooklyn Museum. He has spoken publicly about his
art practice and disability arts activism at venues such as CUE Art
Foundation, York College, and Princeton University. He has exhibited and
performed nationally and internationally at a number of venues, including
Jerusalem, Stockholm, New York, Dayton, and Calgary.

Anneli Goeller is an artist who uses 3D simulation and artificial
intelligence to speculate that the creation of algorithmic selves expands
the concept of personhood. They have been exhibited internationally at
institutions such as the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center in New York,
Peripheral Forms in Portland, Lithium Gallery in Chicago as well as the
Palazzo dei Cartelloni in Florence. In virtual space their work has been
featured in The Wrong - New Digital Art Biennale and The Universal Sea.
They are currently a MFA candidate in Film, Video, New Media, Animation at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Yidan Zeng (曽一丹) is an intimacy investigator currently wandering/wondering
through New York. She uses fabric, movement, and touch to explore
multi-sensual forms for connection. She's been a Digital Accessibility
Fellow with Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (2017), a Create Change
Fellow with The Laundromat Project (2018), a visiting glass artist at The
University of Hawai'i in Mānoa (2018), and a recipient of the Queens Arts
Intervention Grant (2019). She’s also half of a performance duo, Os&En, and
has performed in Miami, Providence, and on and off the streets of NYC.
Yidan received her BA and BFA from the Brown-RISD Dual Degree Program in
Computer Science and Glass.

--
Lola Martinez | they/them
Eyebeam/REFRESH Curatorial and Engagement Fellow

EYEBEAM

Visit Refiguring the Future: Exhibition Feb 8 - Mar 31

199 Cook Street
Suite 104
Brooklyn, NY, 11206

M. +1 305 586 4728
www.eyebeam.org
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