Only very recently disability has been made part of diversity policies in art institutions. But as Sophie V\u00f6gele noted in her welcome address, while the diversity of institutions is measured by counting nationalities of students and addressed by organizing multicultural dinners, there are no serious measures taken so far to tackle ableism. This would imply that \u201cinstitutions provide access to disabled students and teachers in order to allow them to pursue their studies and work, but it is also important to acknowledge disability as a potential for new or non-mainstream artistic expression.“ A famous example for such new forms of expression is the British dance film by DV8 Physical Theatre and\u00a0its principal character\u00a0David Tool, a dancer without legs.\u00a0https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watchv=QgUT0Ufmkbk&feature=youtu.be<\/a><\/p>\n In his introductory comments Xavier Bouvier<\/strong>, Head of Studies and Head of the Composition & Theory Department of the Haute Ecole de Musique de Gen\u00e8ve, addressed the challenge of creating\u00a0more \u201cequal, fair and non-normative\u201c art school curricula. In particular he focused on some of\u00a0the keywords in the latestet version\u00a0of the Bologna Declaration of Europe\u2019s Ministry of Education. Among other the Bolgona reform, which\u00a0has initiated fundamental changes \u00a0in order to create the \u201cEuropean Higher Education Area,\u201c\u00a0aims at developing \u201ccompetence based\u201c curricula. The term \u201ccompetence\u201c refers to the applicability of knowledge, hence the student\u2019s capacity to apply the knowledge acquired and be fit for the labour market. In this context of applicability and employ-ability, competence profiles are in danger of perpetuating a form of ableism which dis-ables certain students. Unless designers of competence profiles validate the (often creative) ways in which students with disabilities acquire and apply knowledge and consider their alternative skills and strategies as\u00a0an asset, the logic of competence will not enhance the presence of such students with special needs.<\/p>\n In the art school context the question of who will be employable and which competences will matter most in the future is tricky, given that the market for performing artists has undergone and will continue to undergo enormous changes in the decades to come. Success measured within the normative model of being able to answer to a prior fixed market demand, may be less important than the ability to build new demands. Another point Bouvier singled out\u00a0is\u00a0Bologna\u2019s ambitious\u00a0goal\u00a0to foster \u201cintercultural understanding\u201c in order to \u201cstrengthen European and global citizenship and lay the foundations for inclusive societies.\u201c Especially in the context of \u201cconservatoires\u201c that seek to conserve and transmit certain musical traditions, it is hard work to build up artistic understanding across cultures. Taking into account that music cultures are steeped in traditions that \u201cfrequently behave in normative ways much remains to be done.\u201c<\/p>\n S\u00e9bastien Kessler<\/strong> the main speaker of the evening, describes himself as an activist. Kessler has an engineering degree in physics at the EPFL of Lausanne and a Master in Health Economics. Asked to represent the point of view of a person with a \u201chandicap,\u201d he got increasingly involved in adult education. Kessler co-founded a consultancy that specializes in universal access and has worked with Swiss hospitals, airports and universities.<\/p>\n Kessler took his personal experiences as starting point to his presentation. As July 3rd<\/sup> was one of those dog days of summer, he started his presentation by addressing the way in which the heat affects wheel chair users. He did so by polemically instructing us, the non-wheel-chair-using audience, to add something to our curricula: \u201cStick your feet to the floor, the back to chair and don\u2019t move for an hour. If you don\u2019t manage you\u2019ll get a bad mark.\u201c The lesson: We tend to be unaware that heat and sweat makes it harder to sit for long hours without getting soar; the ability to sit amounts to an unspoken (ableist) requirement of higher education.<\/p>\n Aimed at informing and educating, Kessler\u2019s presentation highlighted a range of disabling practices, as well enabling strategies and self-representations of „handicapped“ people. A\u00a0North American „disability sensitive training“ video he showed (see the link in the last slide of\u00a0PPT S\u00e9bastien Kessler<\/a>) was particularly impressive, if\u00a0only because, both white people and people of colour spoke about their disabilities. By explaining how they liked to be interacted with, they account for the fact that it is not easy \u201cto interact with people you are not accustomed to,\u201d as Kessler put it. What goes unsaid of course, is that they are thereby taking on the burden of educating\u00a0their fellow\u00a0\u201cnon-disabled\u201d people.<\/p>\n A critical aspect that came up when Kessler mentioned Switzerland’s\u00a0recent vote in favour of embryo testing, was the question of happiness. While some disability organizations supported the new law, others questioned its eugenic premises and the implied link between dis\/ability and un\/happiness. Kessler suggested that economic privilege \u2013 which, as I would add, tends to be accompanied by racial privilege \u2013 plays a major role in whether or not an impaired person can live a comfortable, and supposedly happier life. Without further exploring the question of suffering and happiness, Kessler pointed out that a monthly allowance of 1500 CHF, the minimum Swiss disability pension, makes life challenging. He further indicated that his own mobility and visibility as an activist owes much to the fact that his parents had the means to send him to good schools. His social and cultural capital as a white male Swiss citizen helped in finding an internship and enter a job through the backdoor, in making strategic choices about his studies (public health) and becoming an entrepreneur in a sector (the private field of disability) in which, as he says, his visible impairment is an asset rather than a disability.<\/p>\n \u201cLe freak, c\u2019est chick!\u201d the title picture to Kessler\u2019s presentation is a still from the American horror film \u201cFreaks\u201d by Tod Browning.<\/p>\n Produced in 1932, its\u00a0actors and actresses usually performed in\u00a0carnival sideshow where they were to show case\u00a0their physical „deformities.“\u00a0According to Wikipedia, the original version of „Freaks“ was considered to be too shocking and was destroyed. Today, people with disabilities figure in dogma films such as Lars von Trier\u2019s \u201cBreaking the waves \u201c or \u201cDanger in the Dark\u201d (see picture below).\u00a0It would have to be examined not only how exactly they\u00a0are\u00a0portrayed, but also\u00a0how\u00a0they are positioned in terms of their racial, gender, and class affiliation.<\/p>\n „Disabled people are never\u00a0represented as normal.\u00a0They are either super intelligent or they are incorporated as\u00a0the villain, they are represented as either\u00a0inefficient or as highly talented.“[1]<\/a> The later notion of being extraordinary, intersects with attempts to produce positive images, by portraying what,\u00a0say, sportsmen in wheel chairs are capable of. Showing a video ad on disabled sports, Kessler mentions that he himself, regardless of his non-sportive looks, has been asked whether he plays Basketball. Ironically, as I would add, able-bodied young Black men get asked the same question; the connecting logic perhaps being: there are certain \u201cother\u201c fields, such\u00a0as sports or music, in which\u00a0even non-normative bodies are credited for their\u00a0successful\u00a0performance.<\/p>\n Kessler himself did not focus on the ways in which different minoritized groups are interpellated\u00a0by the same norms, or excluded in\u00a0different or similar ways. Neither\u00a0did he engage\u00a0with the ways in which different marginalized\u00a0groups are being played\u00a0against each other, politically and\u00a0in cultural representations.\u00a0Rather, concerned with determining the needs of\u00a0and providing universal access to people with a variety of physical and mental impairments, his key message was: \u201cyou are not disabled everyday, you are in a disabling position depending in your environment and what concepts you meet.\u201c This important message also transpires in his carefully put together\u00a0powerpoint presentation\u00a0PPT S\u00e9bastien Kessler<\/a>.<\/p>\n [1]<\/a> However, Kessler also reminded us of the adds that depicted happy children affected by trisomy 21 (Down syndrome) in the late 1980s, in which people with disabilities are\u00a0portrayed\u00a0as, at least potentially, \u201cnormal\u201d consumers.<\/p>\n Serena O. Dankwa Colloquium no.\u00a05; Friday 3rd July 2015, 18.00 at\u00a0HEAD \u2013 Gen\u00e8ve The assumption that everybody is physically and mentally fit, efficient and productive is so much at the heart of higher education that ableism is often times not considered\u00a0when it comes to diversity. In\u00a0preparing for its\u00a0fifth and final colloquium, the Art.School.Differences team realized how central disability … Disability, ableism and the body in art schools<\/span> weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2706,"featured_media":1626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,152745],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","category-kolloquium"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2706"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1622"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4591,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1622\/revisions\/4591"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"flyer_Kessler\"](\"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/files\/2015\/06\/flyer_Kessler-300x169.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"S\u00e9bastien](\"https:\/\/blog.zhdk.ch\/artschooldifferences\/files\/2015\/07\/Coll5_kessler5-copie-201x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\nis a classical musician\u00a0who became a radio journalist who became a black feminist anthropologist
\nhttps:\/\/www.zhdk.ch\/?person\/detail&id=201721<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"