Conceptual Art Workshop for the Blind

In the land of the blind, the visual arts are almost entirely mute. In galleries and museums, artworks that blind people cannot see are also prohibited to be touched. The Conceptual Art Workshop for the Blind provides an undiluted art education to the visually impaired 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 Blind is both a critique and celebration of Conceptual Art, exploring its limitations through a study in accessibility while amplifying the possibilities of both its expression and appreciation. 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. Students will 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 will 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 will participate in a field trip to an exhibition of contemporary art, expanding their critique of accessibility from art to the institutions that house it. Over the course of the workshop students will complete eight projects, in groups and individually, in private and in public. The projects will give the students an understanding of the strategies used by conceptual artists and will 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 Blind 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.