support scriptures is a non-linear¹ artistic research on image description. We explore image description both as an access tool and as a poetic device. We focus on crip, queer and feminist contemporary visual art.

support scriptures operates as an access ramp² around an accessibility practice : providing creative image descriptions to blind and partially sighted people, and to anyone who needs and/or enjoys them. We endorse image description writing as a maintenance practice³.

Following Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan, we believe image description bears a “tremendous expressive potential”⁴. Translating images into text is a complex creative task that, like any type of art, anyone can take hold of. support scriptures will hold a learning space for artists, poets and everyone who cares for the practice of image description.

The process will unfold as a series of reading groups, writing workshops and public moments in various contexts, which will be gathered in a closing publication. Parallel to that, support scriptures will develop an accessible online database of initiatives and references in the field of creative image description, audiodescription, and alt-text.

1 Ellen Samuels, « Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time », Disability Studies Quarterly, 2017.
2 Georgina Kleege, More than Meets the Eye. What Blindness Brings to Art, 2017.
3 Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969.
4 Bojana Coklyat and Shannon Finnegan, Alt-Text as Poetry, 2020.

WHAT/HOW

How to describe an exhibition? How to collectively compose an audiodescription? Can the
description become an artwork in itself? To what extent can it become an embodied
archive of an exhibition? How to write with our bodies?
support scriptures is a non-linear1 artistic research on image description as a creative and
collective access tool.

support scriptures reading group aims at building a community of concern around
accessibility and inclusivity within the arts through the maintenance2 practice of image
description.

During four monthly sessions, we will engage in close reading & listening to texts and
images. We will reflect on creative ways to translate visual content into words and to
decenter sight as the primary way of accessing art.

Each gathering is organized by Florence and processed in close discussion with one or two
guests.

On the first session, we will revisit a previous experiment we shared with Loraine Furter
and Sirah Foighel Brutmann in the context of Intersections of Care.

The following sessions will take place on April 17, May 15, June 5.

The future steps will consist in a series of co-writing gatherings.

WHERE
One Field Fallow @onefieldfallow
Rue de l'Enseignement 60/Onderrichtstraat 60
1000 Brussels
https://onefieldfallow.hotglue.me/

GRAPHIC DESIGN: Loraine Furter for support scriptures

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

Image 1
In the center of a pastel yellow background, a hazy silhouette of a Sumerian fragment of relief with four flowing vases. Two streams of water gush from each vase to intermingle with those issuing from its neighbor. Below this relief, on the right, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal with an abstract design formed of parallel curving lines which creates an eyelike effect.
In the foreground of these two shapes, a series of one square bracket, three round brackets and one curly bracket mirror each other symetrically. At the top is inscribed "support scriptures" with "crip" hollowed out letters from the word "scriptures".
At the bottom: "support scriptures reading group" with "crip" hollowed out from "scriptures".
Image 2
Same as image 1 on a white background.

What if we approached blindness not as a lack, but rather as a gain*?

What can our art-making learn from stories and experiences of blindness?

How do these stories inform our practices of making art accessible, of practicing "access intimacy"?

During this session, we will read from blind or visually impaired artists, writers, scholars, disability activists & healers Georgina Kleege, Audre Lorde & Fred Moten via Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Deborah Peifer, Hildegarde of Bingen.
We will discuss passing as sighted, coming out as crip, gaydars, experiences of touch and sound, echolocation, crip time and blind rage.
Artists Anaïs Chabeur and Sarah Van Lamsweerde will engage with these stories through the lens of their own artistic processes and research.
Everyone welcome!

* "We speak of losing sight, never of gaining blindness" is a quote from Georgina Kleege. The notion of "blindness gain" builds on Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, Georgina Kleege and Hannah Thompson.

* "Access intimacy is that elusive, hard to describe feeling when someone else “gets” your access needs. The kind of eerie comfort that your disabled self feels with someone on a purely access level.” (Mia Mingus)

[((({ support scriptures })))] is a non-linear artistic research on image description as a creative and collective access tool.

This reading group aims at building a community of concern around accessibility and inclusivity within the arts through the maintenance practice of image description.
During our monthly sessions, we engage in close reading & listening to texts and images.
We reflect on creative ways to translate visual content into words and decenter sight as the primary way of accessing art.

WHERE
One Field Fallow @onefieldfallow
Rue de l'Enseignement 60/Onderrichtstraat 60
1000 Brussels

ACCESS & FURTHER INFO
Accessibility note: https://tinyurl.com/by72pa6r Photos of the space: https://onefieldfallow.hotglue.me/?beehive 
Any specific access needs or questions? please get in touch

This reading group is free of charge. You can donate to support children's education in Gaza through @onefieldfallow or @brussels4palestine: https://tr.ee/4AEZOGCBJk

[((({ support scriptures })))] is funded by FrArt/Fnrs

Image descriptions

Image 1

In the center of a pastel yellow background, a hazy silhouette of a Sumerian fragment of relief with four flowing vases. Two streams of water gush from each vase to intermingle with those issuing from its neighbor. Below this relief, on the right, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal with an abstract design formed of parallel curving lines which creates an eyelike effect.

In the foreground of these two shapes, a series of one square bracket, three round brackets and one curly bracket mirror each other symetrically.

At the top is inscribed "support scriptures" with "crip" hollowed out letters from the word "scriptures".

At the bottom: "support scriptures reading group" with "crip" hollowed out from "scriptures".

Image 2

Same as image 1 on a white background.

Audio description is the practice of translating visual information into words, either live and in person or in the form of an audio track. Audio description is initially intended to people who are blind or visually impaired in order to access the arts. It can also be helpful for people with learning and cognitive disabilities, and more broadly, for anyone who finds it useful or enriching.

But what is listening to images?
How to engage with visual arts through the sensory register of sound?
How to practice this "haptic encounter with the lower frequencies" of artworks (Tina M. Campt)?
How does listening affect audio description as a specific genre of ekphrasis?

For this session, I am inviting art historian Zoë Kennis* to explore practices of listening as they are theorized and enacted by composer, musician and researcher Pauline Oliveros and by black feminist theorist of visual culture and contemporary art Tina M. Campt.

Together, we will engage with and discuss excerpts from the following books:
- Quantum Listening by Pauline Oliveros
- Listening to Images by Tina M. Campt

* Zoë Kennis is a master’s student in Art Sciences and Archaeology at the VUB, researching photography and digital archives as spaces for social and epistemic justice. Her thesis examines the Digital Namibian Archives and the tensions surrounding the digitisation of ethnographic analogue photographs—exploring how open access can expand collective memory while also risking the reproduction of colonial power structures.
Zoë Kennis is visually impaired due to Stargardt disease. However, she approaches vision loss as primarily a source of strength, shaping a distinctive way of seeing, being, and relating to the world - one that informs both her academic and personal life with unique perspectives.

ABOUT

[((({ support scriptures })))] is a non-linear artistic research on image description as a creative and collective access tool.
This reading group aims at building a community of concern around accessibility and inclusivity within the arts through the maintenance practice of image description.
During our monthly sessions, we engage in close reading & listening to texts and images.
We reflect on creative ways to translate visual content into words and decenter sight as the primary way of accessing art.

WHERE
One Field Fallow @onefieldfallow
Rue de l'Enseignement 60/Onderrichtstraat 60
1000 Brussels

ACCESS & FURTHER INFO
Accessibility note: https://tinyurl.com/by72pa6r
Photos of the space: https://onefieldfallow.hotglue.me/?beehive  Any specific access needs or questions? please get in touch

The texts will be shared on the spot. They can also be sent prior to the event - feel free to ask.
No need to have attended the previous reading to attend this one!

The gatherings will be held in English. It is however possible to join if your knowledge in English is limited: we can take the time to translate together.

This reading group is free of charge.

You can donate to support children's education in Gaza through @onefieldfallow or @brussels4palestine: https://tr.ee/4AEZOGCBJk

[((({ support scriptures })))] is funded by FrArt/Fnrs

Slide design @lorainefurter

Font @danielbrokstad

IMAGE DESCRIPTION

On a white background, a vertical triangular shape in which a circular woven pattern surrounded by cloudy shapes evokes the shape of a portal.

On top of the image is inscribed "support scriptures" with "crip" hollowed out black letters from the word "scriptures".

On the upper left, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal in black and white with an abstract design formed of parallel curving lines which create an eyelike effect.

Below this, centered in the foreground, two series of one square bracket, three round brackets and one curly bracket mirror each other symmetrically.

In the lower part of the image, two black-drawn polelike reed columns curved at the top representing Inanna's gateposts to her temple. Between these two doorposts is inscribed "support scriptures reading group" with "crip" hollowed out from "scriptures".