Emily Watlington presents The Radical Accessibility of Video Art (for Hearing People)

Friday, December 8, 2023, 7 pm ET
In-person at Squeaky Wheel and online
Free or suggested donation; ASL interpretation available
Tickets available below

Join us for a special presentation by critic and curator Emily Watlington titled The Radical Accessibility of Video Art (for Hearing People). A coalition of moving image artists is using closed captions and image descriptions as an artistic medium. They are modeling types of access that are not afterthoughts, but folded into a work’s makeup. This lecture will discuss those artists, locating them alongside the video art pioneers who were initially drawn to video because it promised a radical kind of accessibility the white cube didn’t afford.

For in-person attendees: The event will take place at Squeaky Wheel. Please note that you cannot enter Tri-Main Center after 7:30 pm.

For online attendees: Upon check-out, you will receive an email titled “Your Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Art Center order has been received!”. A private link will be included in that email; the event will be available at the link at the start date and time. You will have access to the event for 24 hours; Squeaky Wheel members receive 72 hour access. Not a member yet? Sign up here.

We are excited to welcome Emily Watlington to Buffalo for the first time since her virtual Workspace Residency in 2020. This event is presented as part of the series [Speaking in Foreign Language].

Biography of the speaker

Emily Watlington is a critic, curator, and senior editor at Art in America. Her writing often focuses on disability culture, but also those places where art and science meet. She is a Fulbright scholar with a master’s degree from MIT—in the history, theory, and criticism of architecture and art—and in 2020 she received the Theorist Award from C/O Berlin. When she is able to step away from New York, where her life revolves around reading, writing, and seeing art, she is curious about roller skating, foraging mushrooms, deserts, animal liberation, and outer space.

Liza Sylvestre, Captioned-Channel Surfing (still), 2016. Courtesy of the artist. Image description: Movie still, close-up of a white man and woman wearing summer clothes in a rural setting looking excited in a phone booth. A caption reads “They are so young and excited and happy.”