Resource

Accessibility in the art world with Christine Sun Kim

Published

19 December 2024

Format

Text
Video

In 2021, at Tilting the Lens we held our very first live conversation, with renowned Korean-American sound artist, Christine Sun Kim. The interview was hosted on Instagram Live with our CEO, Sinéad Burke, and it is now available on our YouTube Channel. Below we have gathered a few key insights from the conversation regarding accessibility budgets, access riders, and advice for disabled artists.

Thank you to Deaf interpreter Chris Tester and to Beth Staehle who joined us to help with voice and understanding.

Kim has crafted a renowned practice that considers how sound operates in society, deconstructing the politics of sound and exploring how oral languages operate as social currency. Musical notation, written language, infographics, American Sign Language (ASL), the use of the body, and strategically deployed humour are all recurring elements in her practice. Working across drawing, performance, video and large-scale murals, Kim explores her relationship to spoken and signed languages, to her built and social environments, and to the world at large.

What Accessibility Means to Christine

“To me, I would say that accessibility means that there’s no tension, that there’s a sense of welcoming, a lack of anxiety. To me, those are the experiences that would be experienced with accessibility whenever you encounter accessibility or you get access, you wouldn’t have to worry, you wouldn’t feel stressed.”

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On Incorporating Accessibility into Budgets

“When you think about [accessibility] from the beginning, you’re always better off budget-, energy-, and time-wise.”

“In the future, I hope to see budgets start to consider accessibility and have that be part of the total operational budget, instead of it being something separate or an afterthought. I want to see it become a line item in the total operational budget and it be part of the plan from the beginning on how to provide accessibility.”

On Accessibility Riders

“So many artists like me […] have an accessibility rider ready. What I’m able to do is at least save time and labour on my side to answer some of the most frequently asked questions. But you’re right. Whoever is inviting us or saying that we’re welcome, or whoever is a person with privilege needs to take some responsibility and do some research on their own before reaching out. I will say, as artists, we want to be able to spend more of our time and energy on creating the work rather than doing the education or showing best practices, when that’s something you can kind of look up yourself or do on your own time, because it’s disempowering or it’s exhausting for us.”

“So, for example, we’re still in the pandemic, but if, let’s say, somebody asks me to have a meeting and they want to have an interpreter, I’ve got a rider ready for average day rates, best practices. If the meeting is longer than two hours, we need to hire two interpreters, indicating what are better platforms to use, communicating the work process of interpreters where they switch every 20 minutes or 30 minutes or so. It’s quite detailed. I will share that I just did a nice photo shoot with some friends and I for the New York Times, but the shoot was based in Berlin, and there’s no ASL interpreters in Berlin.

What I did is show some different images of how to work with interpreters, being that one interpreter could be on an iPad working remotely on a stand or working from a laptop. I had these visual mockups, if you will, ready to show and share with the New York Times team so that they had a sense of what this would look like when working with an interpreter. Of course, every situation is different and every interpreter works differently. But every time I encounter a new interpreting situation, I document it, and then I add it to the accessibility rider.”

On Studio Visits

“I make notes of some quick reads on Deaf culture, on different ways to work with Deaf people, because I’ve had a ton of studio visits where people will come to my studio and ask me to explain what it means to work with Deaf people, and that explanation takes up so much time that there’s only a few minutes left to talk about my work. But I just lost all this precious time on a studio visit trying to do that, so now I’ve come up with a quick read list for people to do to prep for studio visits with me.”

Advice for Other Disabled Artists

“I think I would say the bottom line, or at least the parting advice I have is pick your battles, right?

There are so many things that I choose to either ignore or turn away from just in order to preserve my energy and to ensure that I don’t have burnout. What I try to choose to battle is the things that impact me the most or the things that will have the greatest impact for generations to come.

As I’ve gone through my practice, I’ve actually kind of mastered or gotten better at two things:

When I’m invited to participate in something, what I ask is, how accessible are all the platforms that this institution is on? Is your website accessible? Is your Instagram accessible? If I hear yes, then I’m more comfortable being a part of their exhibits or any other work that they’re doing in their institution, because I encourage the work that I partner with to be accessible.

What I try to do if I’m interviewed for any kind of publication, is that I ask the publication to not interview just me as the only Deaf artist or the only disabled artist, but to also interview other artists with disabilities in the future, and that I’m not the first and last artist with disabilities that this institution or publication encounters.”

On Teamwork

“I would also add that I have been fortunate in my career to work with a wonderful group of colleagues, interpreters, and everything I do requires so much teamwork. This isn’t something I do alone. It’s the people that I work with that help push me and help me kind of take on the battles I need to, or they take on the battles I can’t. Right? We shoulder this responsibility together and take turns. In that way, I’ve been so lucky, and so I would advise you to build up your team. When you find somebody really amazing, maybe an ally in some system or some institution, at that point, you are good to go.”