The ARKO Art Center and the Goethe-Institut Korea co-hosted a roundtable on November 15 to discuss disability art and inclusive curatorial practices. The online roundtable was held under the theme “Inclusive Curation: Disability Art as Radical Movement” and invited curators, artists and experts from Germany and Korea to discuss the boundaries of disability art and share specific methods and cases of disability art in the contemporary context.
The idea for a collaboration between ARKO Art Center and Goethe-Institut Korea originated from the workshop series “The Hidden Project”, initiated by Goethe-Institut Shanghai, which connected curators to exchange about inclusive curatorial practices and concepts of accessibility. The six online workshops took place between May and July 2022 and were attended by nearly 30 curators and experts from East Asia. They were facilitated by Sean Lee, Director of Programming at Tangled Art + Disability in Toronto, Canada and Dr. Kate Brehme, a Berlin-based independent curator and co-founder of Berlininklusion. Kate Brehme was also a speaker in the roundtable by ARKO Art Center and Goethe-Institut Korea. The roundtable expanded the discussion on curating disability art, administrative methods to support disability art, and the intersection of non-disabled and disabled people through art with case studies and insights into the Korean art scene.
Further roundtable speakers were artist Dirk Sorge, also co-founder of Berlinklusion; Seungjoo Lee, manager of Seoul Disability Arts Center at Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, who manages an artist residency for the disabled artist; and artist and curator Hwasoo Lee. The presentations were followed by a discussion moderated by Hyun Jung, professor of Department of Fine Arts at Inha University and director of Izza-Izza, which studies and supports the activities of artists with developmental disabilities.
The roundtable was held as a webinar and organized as a barrier-free event, with Korean-English simultaneous interpretation, Korean sign language interpretation, and Korean live transcription. This event provided an opportunity to rethink the category and definition of disability art through art and to consider the possibility of reinterpreting disability art as a radical art movement.
This YouTube video summarized the presentation and discussion of the event.