ROBERT WATERS

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ARTWORK >> Conceptual Art Workshop for the Visually Impaired



In the land of the blind, the visual arts are almost entirely mute. In galleries and museums, artworks that visually impaired people cannot see are also prohibited to be touched. The Conceptual Art Workshop for the Visually Impaired provides an undiluted art education for the blind in which the nature of the course content — the visual negation inherent in Conceptual Art (1) — theoretically transforms the disability of blindness into a critical ability.

While Conceptual Art proposes that aesthetics and vision are secondary — that the idea of an artwork is paramount and can substitute the dependence on an art object — a conceptual artwork still requires a physical manifestation to express its ideas. The Conceptual Art Workshop for the Visually Impaired is both a celebration and critique of Conceptual Art, amplifying the possibilities of both its expression and appreciation while exploring its limitations through a study in accessibility. Making Conceptual Art comprehensible to a public that is generally excluded from artistic dialogue, the workshop provides its students with innovative strategies for developing and expressing artistic, philosophical and political ideas in new forms and contexts. For the art world, the workshop provides a more "pure" and unbiased evaluation of Conceptual Art projects - a new perspective from the "experts" in visual negation. It also prepares students with various strategies for accessing and understanding Contemporary Art, which is largely influenced by Conceptual Art strategies.

Students gain access to the history of Conceptual Art through an audio version of the book Conceptual Art by Peter Osborne. The eight chapters of the book, which are erudite and philosophical, are accompanied by more casual conversations between artists and curators of important Conceptual Art projects. This audio component is assigned as homework and discussed in the classes, which further explore Conceptual Art through lessons, discussions and exercises. Students consider the experience of art – both its creation and interpretation – through all of the senses. The elements of visual design (i.e. rhythm, balance, form, line, etc.) are taught through connections with hearing, touching, smelling and tasting, providing students with the vocabulary to discuss and begin to understand Modernism, against which Conceptual Art reacted. The course continues with a study of the methods and strategies through which Conceptual Art developed, focussing on its use of language and action to expand the possibilities of art practices and appreciation. The course also examines the role of the blind in the context of art history, using the book Memoirs of the Blind by Jacques Derrida to explore contradictory ideas of sight and perception. Students participate in a field trip to an exhibition of contemporary art, expanding their critique of art to the institutions that house it. Over the course of the workshop students complete eight projects, in groups and individually, in private and in public. The projects give the students an understanding of the strategies commonly used by conceptual artists and ultimately form an exhibition in conjunction with projects from the same workshop as conducted in other countries.

As a Conceptual Art project in itself, the Conceptual Art Workshop for the Visually Impaired examines the visual negation inherent in Conceptual Art in the open form of an education and production workshop. The workshop is critical of itself, its content and the institutions on which it relies, amplifying ideas of accessibility through the serendipitous union of course content and student demographic. The workshop provides students with the knowledge, practice and empowerment to pursue creative endeavours, positioning the artistic expression of the blind as a valid and compelling new voice in contemporary visual culture.

1-Peter Osborne, Conceptual Art (London and New York: Phaidon Press, Inc., 2006), p. 18.

Course Material in Audio and Braille Formats

THE STUDENTS

While enrollment priority will be given to the visually impaired, people with a wide range of visual abilities are encouraged to participate in the workshop. This includes people who have been blind from birth, people who have become blind later in life, people who are legally blind but can sense light, people who use corrective eyewear and people with 20/20 vision. The inclusion of people who can see will help to dissolve perceived barriers between those who can and cannot see in relation to understanding art, as well as provide “helpers” for the class.

Students

THE COURSE

Class 1. Workshop Introduction
The Elements of Visual Design Explained Through the Senses
Project 1 – Blind Contour (Duchamp’s Fountain)

Class 2. The Pre-History of Conceptual Art
What is “Art”? and Why?
Project 2 – Erased Drawings

Class 3. The Art of Negation
Reactions Against Modernism
Project 3 – 4’33”

Class 4. Conceptual Art Strategies #1 – Instruction, Performance, Documentation / Process, Systems, Series
Project 4 – Instruction Paintings

Class 5. The Blind in the History of Art
Project 5 – Contextual Drawings

Class 6. Conceptual Art Strategies #2 – Words and Signs / Appropriation and Intervention
Project 6 – Olfactory Intervention

Class 7. Field Trip to an Exhibition

Class 8. Politics, Ideology, and Institutional Critique
Field Trip / Exhibition Critique
Project 7 – Braille Flyers

Class 9. The “Failure” and Influence of Conceptual Art
Project 8 – Following Piece

Class 10. Workshop Evaluation and Party
Exhibition Discussion
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