Projects

May 21, 17:00, Royal Danish Academy – Architecture, Auditorium 2, Danneskiold-Samsøes Allé 53

Art Beyond Barriers: A panel debate focused on the responsibility of access, cultural heritage, and visual art, through a presentation of the project Mapping Disability Access to Danish Art Spaces. This event is featured in conjunction with a series programmed by UKK on the projects Diversity Commons and Urgent Matters.

At the start of 2024, three art workers with varying disabilities began to map their access to the spaces that gatekeep success within their careers, an area which until now has been greatly underexplored in the Danish context. Their documentation of these cases of access and inaccess has been placed into interactive mapping works that allow others to follow their route in search of resources and opportunities offered by these spaces and experience firsthand the barriers and access measures they encounter.

In an effort to uncover the underlying processes to provide access, four panelists with backgrounds from the fields of accessibility, cultural heritage, and the visual arts have been invited to discuss a selection of cases from these mapping works. As many of the art spaces providing these resources and opportunities are under regulations at a state level from the Cultural Ministry and Castles and Culture Agency, or locally from the municipality, who ultimately holds the responsibility to ensure equal access?

At the same time, these cases reveal that not all barriers stem from the built environment or physical infrastructure, but restrictions in labour laws or inaccessible programming are just as limiting. Armed with a holistic approach we aim to challenge the current understanding of accessibility within the Danish art sphere and to inspire a shift towards a new approach that centres the experiences of those struggling in this current environment of inaccessibility within the field.

Programme

17:10 - Introduction by Asal Mohtashami (Building Diversity) & Sidse Grangaard (Rumsans, BUILD).
17:30 - Visual Presentation of “Mapping Disability Access to Danish Art Spaces”
18:00 - Rest break
18:10 - Panel debate with Nicolai Bo Andersen, Adam Linde Nielsen, Rhea Dall, and Per Troelsen, moderated by Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø.
19:00 - Open questions
19:30 - Drinks and food are offered

Mappers

Anna Walther - Visual Artist. Using themes of access and trauma, her practice spans a variety of media such as sculpture, installation, text, and painting. This work has mapped resources for invisible disabilities, cognitive abilities, wayfinding, sensory processing, and exhibition communication.

Cath Borch Jensen - Dancer, cross-media Conveyer of #Whatwedon’ttalkabout, BodyActivist & Mediator of contemporary art.
Her bodily-rooted cross-media practice explores & challenges our human ways of relating to and communicating with and about one another. She divulges multiple physical and structural access barriers she encounters daily, due to birth-induced Cerebral Palsy & permanent wheelchair use.

Anthony Dexter Giannelli - Visual Artist. His practice explores immobility, fluidity, trauma, and authenticity through works on paper that because of the physical and legal restrictions of his disability are often translated onto virtual planes. His mapping work documents navigating art spaces while living with PTSD and mobility limitations, against visible and nonvisible access barriers.

Panelists

Nicolai Bo Andersen - Architect and Professor at the Royal Danish Academy – Centre for Sustainable Building Culture. In his teaching, research and practice, a critical question is how a phenomenological, first-person aesthetic experience may inspire ecological awareness and protection of the environment while respecting the planetary boundaries.

Adam Linde Nielsen - Architect, Researcher, and Educator at The Royal Danish Academy – Institute of Architecture and Technology. Nielsen is a queer Danish/Egyptian academic examining inclusion, accessibility, rebuilding, and public health in the built environment. His work takes form through collaborative research dissemination, books, exhibitions, events; currently questioning – Is our built cultural heritage for everyone? And how is the building culture staggering democratic participation?

Rhea Dall - Director and Chief Curator at O-Overgaden – Dall has held various leading positions in art institutions in Oslo, Berlin, and Copenhagen as well as project coordinator of the Danish & Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Biennial. Under her direction, O-Overgaden is engaging in several shows and programming focused on disability, and access, and has begun a process toward addressing access needs to their physical spaces.

Per Troelsen - Project Manager in Realdania By & Byg – Troelsen works with historical buildings from the early 18th to late 20th century, including a city mansion in late baroque, buildings by Arne Jacobsen & Jørn Utzon, and lately brutalist buildings circa 1970. He has experience from Copenhagen municipality as a construction case officer and from various design studios, primarily with restoration and property development.

Moderator

Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø - Assistant Professor at UCPH – Department of Arts and Cultural Studies. Her research concerns visual and aesthetic cultures focusing on bodily, experience-based forms of expression and (self)representation, with particular attention to disabled embodiment in media, contemporary art, and popular culture.

Accessibility