Exploring Inclusion at ‘Sensorial Encounters’ Workshop in Rome

Eva Fotiadi participated in the workshop Sensorial Encounters: Haptic and Non-Visual Access in Art, held on November 25-26, 2024, at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. The event brought together artists, researchers, and scholars to explore non-visual sensory experiences in art and their implications for accessibility and inclusion.

Eva presented her paper titled “Exhibiting for Multiple Senses: Artistic Research for Sensory Diverse Bodies,” which focused on exploring innovative approaches to inclusion and accessibility in art exhibitions.

In her paper, Eva examined the work of the media artists’ collective VibraFusionLab (David Bobier and Jim Ruxton) and visual artist Adi Hollander. Both projects focus on enabling vibrotactile access to sound in gallery spaces, creating inclusive experiences for sensory-diverse audiences. Eva analyzed how these works challenge traditional, vision-centric exhibition practices and proposed ways to rethink contemporary curating through inclusion, drawing on concepts like hospitality and multimodality.

Abstract of ‘Exhibiting for multiple senses. Artistic research for sensory diverse bodies’

In this paper I will discuss the work of the media artists’ collective VibraFusionLab (David Bobier, Jim Ruxton) which is based in Ontario, Canada, and of the visual artist Adi Hollander, who lives and works in The Netherlands. The paper will focus on projects developed to enable vibrotactile access to the sound of works by other artists, whether in exhibition or theater spaces. Bobier, Ruxton and Hollander bring haptic experiences in gallery spaces both as an exploration of creative access (Amanda Cachia) for sensory diverse artists and audiences, and as autonomous artistic research in sense perception. The focus of VibraFusionLab lies on inclusive technologies and especially on vibrotactile systems, with which they explore the potential of expanding art-making practices in D/deaf, blind, disabled and non-disabled communities, as well as of creating inclusive experiences for audiences from all these communities.  Adi Hollander’s collaborative and individual artistic research in haptic architecture has taken the form of the installation series Haptic Room Studies, which are spaces created by site-specific configurations of haptic architectural elements: wooden floors, modular wall systems of porcelain tiles, large pillow modules that a body can sink in. Based on research with hard of hearing, D/deaf and hearing artists and test users, the various Haptic Room Studies translate audio to vibrotactile stimuli as a way to explore questions linked to the materiality of sound, the spatiality of sound, the individuality of voice, the texture of spoken languages and so on.

Yet my aim with this paper is not to present these artists’ intentions, but to propose that their work forces us to rethink contemporary art curating through practices of inclusion. Specifically, I will analyse VibraFusionLab’s vibrotactile systems and Hollander’s haptic spaces as hybrids between art, exhibition props and exhibition architecture drawing from Beatrice von Bismarck’s concepts of ‘hospitality’ and ‘constellations’ -which Bismarck uses to theorize contemporary art curating- in order to reflect on how these artists’ work revisits the curatorial from the perspective of inclusivity and care. In doing so, the artists downplay the modernist ocular-centrism of art shows in favor of the multimodality of the human sensorium. They also explore new forms of artistic collaborations or coexistence in authorship, because their projects intervene and transform the experience of the work of other artists when auditory sound is transformed into vibrations.

David Bobier from VibraFusionLab and Adi Hollander are among the contributors to the anthology I am editing under the title Exhibiting for Multiple Senses. Artistic and Curatorial Research for Sensory Diverse Bodies, and is forthcoming in the Plural series of the publisher Valiz https://valiz.nl/en/publications/plural-series.