Perspectives on Visibility is a series of three film vignettes exploring the question, how have ways of seeing, & being seen, reshaped the nuances of accessibility under lockdown? Made and released between 2020 and 2021, this series explores the personal relationships with accessibility and visibility of three disabled performance-based artists during the Covid-19 pandemic. Acknowledging the well established history of disabled activists campaigning for remote access long before the pandemic.
The films were produced remotely using custom-made proxy tools, wearable phone rigs and video-conferencing software. Each of the works was respectively produced collaboratively with artist Sky Cubacub, part of Radical Visibility Collective, who’s garment-making focusses on the marginalisation of LGBTQ+ disabled people; Ebony Rose Dark, a visually impaired black drag performance artist, making work around seeing and being seen; and Sophie Hoyle whose practice explores an intersectional approach to post-colonial, queer, feminist, critical psychiatry and disability issues.
Each film foregrounds the beauty of accessibility, by allowing the narrative to be informed by the use of, and connection between, British Sign Language, Audio Description and subtitling.
Perspectives on Visibility: Hypervigilantes is the third in the series, in which Sophie Hoyle performs a speech echoing the voices of many disabled practitioners and activists who explore the relationship between accessibility and protest. This speech includes parts adapted from Anna Barbauld, Johanna Hedva, Taraneh Fazelli, Alison Kafer, RD Laing, Jasbir K Puar, Frantz Fanon and Socialist Patients Collective (SPK) Manifesto.
