Speaker: Jay Afrisando, University of California, Santa Cruz
Wed 23rd April 12:00 – 13:00 UK time. This seminar will be held in person in Peel 109 and you can join us online via Microsoft Teams.
Abstract
Often, access is treated as an afterthought in the artistic process, but what if we incorporate it from the beginning of the creative process and consider it part of the arts? How does the world emerge when access is considered an artistic resource? In this talk, Jay Afrisando will share his artistic practice focusing on aural diversity, disability, and decolonization, and how it incorporates access as more than just a functional element, resulting in artworks imbued with meaningful advocacy that transcends beyond the singular sensory experiences and the conventional disciplinary paradigm.
Biography
Jay Afrisando is a composer, multimedia artist, researcher, and educator. Through multisensory and antidisciplinary practices, he works on aural diversity, disability, accessibility, and decolonizing arts manifested in music-theater, film, installation, witty storytelling, and other genre-bending experiences. Through collaborations with aurally diverse and disabled artists, curators, and communities, his work celebrates neurodivergent, Deaf, and disabled modes of hearing-listening. He treats access as artistic resources and uses diverse methodologies to center crip practices, and his lived experience as a neurodivergent has created intimate relationships of cross-media and cross-sensory listening practices.
His works have been presented at various scenes and spaces, including daadgalerie, TanzFaktur, ARTJOG, UCSC IAS, Curb Appeal Gallery, Sound Scene at the Smithsonian Hirshhorn Museum, and HERE Arts Center, among others. Jay is a DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Music & Sound Fellow 2024 and an Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz.