Hosts: Tanja Erhart & Julischka Stengele / Gutests: Pam Eden, Eva Egermann & Cordula Thym, Katharina ‘Senki’ Senk, Liv Schellander, Noa Winter – The Art of Access: Creating and Shaping Accessibility

Short introductory lectures, open discussions, and a film screening of C-TV and sensual elements will be part of this conference, providing cause and motivation to join forces in creating anti-ableist approaches and making the presence and future of the performance/dance world accessible to all.

Conference schedule
                                                                

From 11:00 am Early boarding
From 11:30 am Arrival for everybody, testing station
From 12:00 pm Welcome session
From 12:30 pm Introductory lectures
2:00–2:30 pm Break
From 2:30 pm Panel discussion
3:30 –3:45 pm Break
From 3:45 pm Conversations within interest groups
From 5:00 pm Dinner
5:30–6:30 pm Break
From 6:30 pm Tactile introduction into the installation Choir of Kin

The film C-TV by Eva Egermann and Cordula Thym will be played in a loop during the conference times. 

Hosts

Tanja Erhart (she/her) is a movement artist and pleasure activist who writes, loves, lives, and works out of the experience of a white, crip, queer, middle-aged femme. She has been active in the fields of intersectional dance performance and disabled culture for more than ten years, focussing on building anti-ableist structures through aesthetics of accessibility, pleasure, and care. 

Julischka Stengele (she/her) lives in Vienna and works internationally as a transdisciplinary artist, curator, text creator, and teacher. Following her vocational training as a home economist, she studied design, performance art, and visual art in Berlin, Helsinki, and Vienna. Her diverse projects tackle aesthetic, ecological, and social aspects of living (together) well.

Guests

Pam Eden (she/her) lives in Vienna and Lower Austria and works with people of various abilities and impairments in various social areas. Her focus is on the field of deafness since she has a hearing impairment herself and is fluent in Austrian Sign Language (ÖGS). Her passions are the theatre, acting, and music. Pam Eden offers ÖGS interpretation (with or without a performance) to build bridges between areas of hearing and hearing impairments. She appeared as an interpreter for two productions at the Schäxpir theatre festival – Monster and Zack Prack – and also works as an  interpreter for Nora Jacobs’s performance HOW DO YOU.

Pam will give an introductory lecture on ‘ÖGS & Performance: Collaboration and Artistic Practice’

Liv Schellander (she/her) is a freelance dancer/performer, choreographer, Somatic Experiencing (SE)^® practician, and facilitator. She collaborates with artists in various constellations, teaches, and produces her own creations. Since 2022, she has been touring with SOILED by Michael Turinsky. In 2023, she collaborated artistically with Fia Neises on With Or Without You, a dance performance sharing spaces of access intimacy. More recently, she has been increasingly driven by her interest in the aesthetics of access and multi-sensorial art creation in the performing arts as well as in neurodiversity inside and outside of the art scene.

Liv will give an introductory lecture on ‘Practices of Allyship’.

Katharina Senk aka Senki (she/her) lives in Vienna as a white, female, non-disabled dance artist. She performed in pieces of, among others, Doris Uhlich, Florentina Holzinger, Sara Ostertag, Georg Blaschke, and Michael Turinsky. In her own creations, Katharina tries to combine her interest in post-humanism, pleasure, and intersectional feminism with her knowledge in the fields of dance, movement, and martial arts. Senki co-hosts the association tanz.sucht.theater with Maartje Pasman that has been a framework for many exciting creations in recent years considering the issue of accessibility on several levels and involving important companions such as Tanja Erhart. Since late 2022, Senki also engages in artistic audio description.

Senki will give an introductory lecture on ‘Dancing. Words. Creative Audio description for Dance/Theatre/Performance’.

Noa Winter (no pronouns) is a curator, dramaturge, and accessibility expert who combines anti-ableist practices with empowerment and aesthetics of access. Selected projects include the co-heading of the Berlin networking project Making a Difference (2020–2024), curation of the festival Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer (2022), collaboration with Liz Rosenfeld (URSA-X) and Rita Mazza (Matters of Rhythm). Starting in the 2024/25 season, Winter works as a dramaturge at Gessnerallee in Zurich.

Noa will give an introductory lecture on ‘Aesthetics of Access – Disabled Dramaturgy and Artistic Contribution’