Becoming Disabled - workshop (2017)

Research Pavilion, Venice Biennale.

A performative workshop and installation – by Liisa Jaakonaho & Kristina Junttila

The theme of the Research Pavilion 2017 was “The Utopia of Access”. Our performative workshop-installation circled around the theme of disability and access. In our ongoing collaboration we approach disability as a category that can be explored creatively; as a culture specific social construction, rather than a biological fact. The workshop was influenced by performance theory, critical pedagogy and post-humanist, critical disability studies; notions of performativity, embodiment, materiality, dependency, relationality, and normativity. During the workshop we constructed an installation, consisting of photographs, drawings, text, and other traces from the exercises that we facilitated.

​An article about our collaboration was published Uniarts Helsinki’s IssueX
magazine. You can read the article HERE.

We have also written about the project in the Research Pavilion blog.

A peer reviewed article about this project, we have published here:

Exploring (dis)ability: towards affirmative spaces in and through arts pedagogy. Article written with Liisa Jaakonaho in “Performative approaches in Arts Education. Artful teaching, learning and research” Routledge. Ed: Anna-Lena Østern and Kristian Nødtvedt Knudsen.