Reading at the Tate Modern for ‘Are you comfortable yet?’ BSL interpreted performances

by lisakellypoet

Join us to celebrate the artists putting inclusivity first, with Candoco and DASH

Uniqlo Tate Play: Kusama’s obliteration room

Location: Turbine Hall
Time: 18.00–21.30

Yayoi Kusama’s obliteration room is a playful, interactive artwork for all ages. You are invited to transform a completely white domestic apartment into a sea of colour using sticker dots.

Tour: Audio Description Tour, Kusama’s obliteration room

Location: Turbine Hall
Time: 18.30–19.00

An audio described tour for visitors who are blind of Yayoi Kusama’s obliteration room. Seats and hearing equipment provided. Please meet from 18.10 at the benches near the Cloakroom on Natalie Bell Building, Level 0. Please note this tour is now fully booked.

Welcome: U:Studio

Location: Turbine Hall
Time: 18.30–19.00 

U:Studio and our Tate team welcome you to Tate Modern Lates to help plan your night.

Activation: Candoco Open Workshop

Location: South Tank, Blavatnik Building, Level 0
Times: 19.00–20.00 and 20.30–21.30

Catch a glimpse of Candoco Dance Company’s creative process as they lead an open workshop for invited guests and collaborators inspired by the choreography of Trisha Brown Dance Company inside the Set and Reset display in the South Tank. The session at 20.30–21.30 will be BSL interpreted.

Digital Display: Anna Farley’s Set and Reset visual guide

Location: Tanks Foyer, Blavatnik Building, Level 0
Time: 18.00–21.30

Discover Anna Farley’s new visual guide for Tate, a guide for everyone that gives you another way to access the display Set and Reset.

Music: DJ Sets programmed by Global Roots

Location: Level 1 Bridge
Set times:
18.00–19.00: Anna
19.00–20.00: Pelin Pelin
20.00–21.30: Actress

Drinks and Music: DJ Sets programmed by Global Roots

Location: Terrace Bar, Blavatnik Building, Level 1

Enjoy summer cocktails, craft beers and more alongside DJ sets.

Set times:
18.00–18.30: Tim
18.30–20.00: Papaoul
20.00–21.30: Anja Ngozi

Workshop: Are You Comfortable Yet? with Anahita Harding

Location: Blavatnik Building, Level 2

Are you comfortable yet? Artist Anahita Harding invites you to respond through written text, poetry or visual motifs. Your response will be shared and performed by invited guests throughout the night. All performances will be BSL interpreted.

Performance times:
18.30: CRIPtic, Nina Thomas (recordings)
19.00: Tiiu
19.45: Lisa Kelly
20.30: Shaun Shears
21.15: Sam Castell-Ward

Digital Display: DASH– We Are Invisible We Are Visible

Location: Blavatnik Building, Level 4
Time: 18.00–21.30

This month, 31 artists with disabilities set out to disrupt 30 locations with surreal interventions alongside the 102nd anniversary of the first DaDa International Exhibition. See the results of their work from We are invisible We are Visible.

Talks: Art Chats

Location: Blavatnik Building, Level 5

19.00–19.30 Artist Davey Jose discusses how he explores his spinal injury in his work, hosted by his younger brother, presenter and teacher Bobby Seagull.

20.00–20.30 Artists Leah Clements and Amanda Lynch speak to Helen O’Malley, Producer of Community Programmes at Tate, about institutional change and artistic access in the cultural sector.

21.00–21.30 Meet artists Poppy Nash and Christopher Samuel for a discussion hosted by Senior Creative Producer, Liat Rosenthal

All talks will be BSL interpreted.

*Please note each talk requires a free ticket, available to collect from the Level 0 ticket desk, on a first-come, first-served basis from 18.30.

Talk and Screening: Jo Bannon and Candoco – Feeling Thing

Location: Starr Cinema, Natalie Bell Building, Level 1
Time: 19.00–20.00

Watch Feeling Thing, a film that invites us to pay attention to the objects around us and experience them as the dancing, feeling things they are. This screening will be followed by a talk with the artist Jo Bannon, Candoco’s Artistic Director Charlotte Darbyshire, and dancer Ihsaan de Banya, hosted by Tamsin Hong, Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate. The talk will be BSL interpreted and we have seats held for BSL users – please email us to reserve a seat.

*Please note this requires a free ticket, available to collect from the Starr Cinema, on a first-come, first-served basis from 18.00. (If you are a BSL user who has reserved a seat in advance you do not need a separate ticket.)

Performance: Christina Lovey – Rhythmicity Me

Location: Natalie Bell Building
18.00–18.45, Level 2 inside In the Studio rooms 8 and 11
19.00–19.45, Level 4 inside Media Networks rooms 6 and 12
20.00–20.45, Level 4 inside Materials and Objects rooms 5 and 9
21.00–21.15, Level 2 inside In the Studio room 2

In Rhythmicity Me, Christina Lovey uses rhythm tap to create sounds and vibrations that respond to artworks across the galleries. Here she shares her experience of processing data through rhythmic actions with viewers and the space.

Screening: Tate Shorts

Location: Natalie Bell Building, Level 4
Time: 18.00–21.30

Relax and enjoy Tate short films which explore how artists with disabilities respond to the gallery, featuring David Johnson, Lisa Squirrel and dancers from Corali.

Talks: 10 Minute Talks

Various times, throughout the building

Staff and volunteers from across Tate share their personal insights into works from the collection.

FOOD AND DRINK

QUIET ROOMS AND ACCESSIBILITY

TATE MODERN

Turbine Hall

Bag checks will be in placeBankside
London SE1 9TG
Plan your visit

DATE & TIME

29 July 2022 at 18.00–22.00

  • No ticket required for admission to the Lates
  • Some events require a free ticket, see programme for more details
  • Book to see Lubaina Himid and Surrealism Beyond Borders which will also be open late

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Thanks to Write Out Loud for Brilliant Review of ‘What Meets the Eye’

by lisakellypoet

What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective: eds. Lisa Kelly, Sophie Stone, Arachne Press

by Kathy Owston

Saturday 7th May 2022 9:08 am (first posted 6th May 2022)

entry picture

This first week of May has been Deaf Awareness Week and this past year has seen Deafness and the Deaf community attract a lot of positive media attention. What a good time to read and reflect on this collection of poems, short fiction and scripts by UK Deaf, deaf, and Hard of Hearing writers. 

The winner of Strictly Come Dancing, profoundly deaf contestant Rose Ayling-Ellis, was seen on our screen, week after week, using BSL (British Sign Language) signs in Sign Supported English (SSE). Some of her performances incorporated the imagery of silence, dancing with no musical background. This captured the imaginations of her British audience and judges. However, as most Deaf and Hard of Hearing people will tell you, they don’t ever actually hear silence; Deafness creates all manner of perceptions of sound, as are reflected in many of the poems in this collection.

And in Hollywood, we saw Troy Kotsur become only the second Deaf person to be nominated for an Oscar. He won! The film CODA – an acronym for “Child of Deaf Adults” – saw deaf actors in deaf roles, getting the recognition that they deserve.

What Meets the Eye?, published in 2021, explores the theme of movement, as perceived by the Deaf. This is interpreted in many different ways, including mobility, stillness, being emotionally moved, movement within and after lockdown, being part of a political movement, and freedom of movement. 

It’s edited by Lisa Kelly, poet and co-editor of Magma 69, The Deaf Issue, and actor and writer Sophie Stone. The preface is by Deaf writer and award-winning poet Raymond Antrobus. He himself has recently published a new poetry collection, All the Names Given, which takes the reader on a journey, like reading a novel. Both collections consider the miscommunications that are experienced by the Deaf/deaf community, sound and silence, and movement, which by Antrobus is interpreted via travel. The writers in What Meets the Eye? have a much broader interpretation of movement.

There are over 50 contributions, by all British writers. Some of the pieces link to BSL videos produced by the authors and translators, making them accessible in both languages, English and BSL. This year also marks the legal recognition of BSL as an official language, after years of Deaf activism.

So many of the contributions met my eye, but to name just a few:

Mary-Jayne Russel de Clifford in ‘Label’, the movement throughout her life of being labelled as Deaf, Girlfriend, Graduated, Mother, Divorced, Vegan:  “I am here/I reject your labels/Life moves and I with it.”

DL Williams, “MAPping a New Landscape”: the majority of profoundly deaf children, and some adults in the UK, now use cochlear implants to enable them to hear the sounds of speech and environmental sounds, through electrical impulses. Their implant speech processors need to be set with programmes, called MAPping. The MAPs are created using hearing tests which are done in an audiology clinic. “A new map is being drawn/with each new sound/another shade appears. / New countries/ entire new continents/ rise from the abyss/ …  This territory of noise/ comfort levels/ and threshold limits/ denote the boundaries/ of acoustic tolerance …  Here be monsters/ Beware of the cackling/crackling crisp packets …”

Lisa Kelly’s ‘A Map Towards Fluency’ describes something completely different, the handshapes needed to learn to use BSL signs, in her weekly signing class. It is beautifully observed and described with humour. Jean the teacher “as a child was forced to sit on her hands”.

Living life as an adult with a cochlear implant is very well described in prose in ‘Neutral’ by Sophie Woolley. This piece is set during lockdown. It uses different formats: plain text for Spoken English, BOLD for BSL, italics for actions. I loved this observation: “They’re both giving me the look that says ‘you’re wearing a facemask in a car with us?!’ There’s a disappointed air – like I’ve brought orange juice to a party instead of a bag of weed …”

This lengthy piece contrasts with the six-line poem of David Callin, ‘Coastal Walking for the Hard of Hearing.’ Pure simplicity, telling the experience and frustration felt by the majority of people with age-induced deafness. Hearing aids are helpful, but they do not restore hearing to normal, and are simply useless in some situations:

“The wind is a bully, in hearing aids/ making itself/ and nothing else heard. /So out they come/ and calm is restored/ the world reduced to a silent film.”

Many of the poems and prose in the collection, although written by Deaf and Hard of Hearing writers, do not allude to their hearing status or lack of sound. Movement is the theme explored. ‘Where is Syria’ by Hala Hashem, the rap ‘Pushing Boundaries’ by Clare-Louise English, and ‘In memory of our Father’ by Ayesha B Gavin, are all of special note.

In summary, a special read. So much explored. Well done Arachne Press.

Kathy Owston is a recently retired teacher of the Deaf of over 40 years. She has worked in the UK at Oak Lodge School for Profoundly Deaf pupils in Wandsworth, London, as an Advisory Teacher of the Deaf in Oxfordshire, in London and in West Sussex, and as an Implant Centre Teacher of the Deaf (ICToD) at St Thomas’ Hospital Auditory Implant Centre, London.  Kathy has also worked with Deaf children as an educational audiologist in Harare, Zimbabwe, and more recently in Jinotega, Esteli and Leon in Nicaragua 

What Meets the Eye? The Deaf Perspective, edited by Lisa Kelly and Sophie Stone, Arachne Press, £9.99

Poets for Ukraine Fundraiser

by lisakellypoet

Please consider donating to the Poem-a-Thon on Sunday 27th March which will raise vital money with the goal of achieving £10,000 for charities Hope and Aid Direct and Goods for Good. Find out more details below and thanks for your support.

A few words from Poets

Poets for Ukraine and JW3* are collaborating on a fundraising, awareness-raising, spirit-raising day and evening of poetry in solidarity with the people of Ukraine at this time of great peril and suffering. 

This will take the form of a day-long, hybrid Poem-a-Thon where sponsored poets each read for up to five minutes in front of both live and virtual audiences.

The Poem-a-Thon will be followed by an evening Gala Event where our special guests will showcase Eastern European and English language poetry. 

PLEASE SPONSOR OUR POETS GENEROUSLY!

…………

VENUE:

  • JW3 & Online (link to be shared soon)
  • 341-351 Finchley Road, London NW3 6ET

DATE:

  • Sunday 27th March

TIME:

  • 11am-5pm: Poem-a-Thon
  • 6:30 – 8pm: Gala Event

Our Poets are raising funds for two separate charities – poets raising funds via this fundraising page will be donating to Hope and Aid Direct.

………..

Hope and Aid Direct are a 100% volunteer led UK based humanitarian aid charity operating mainly in mainland Europe. They are a non political, non religious charity: “We take aid, not sides!”. They have volunteers spread throughout the UK. Nobody takes a salary, so all of the money you donate ends up providing aid to people who really need it.

“Hope and Aid Direct stand with the people of Ukraine. We are planning our response to this crisis and details of how we are going to provide assistance will be posted on this page. Whilst some charities are already on the move, at Hope and Aid Direct we aim to ensure that all aid that we take to the people of Ukraine is needed. As such, our operating model is to partner with an aid agency on the ground. They can then provide us with a specific needs list which we can gather, sort, loads on to our trucks and deliver to those most in need.”



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