Image description

Surreal collage featuring singer Hermione Zittlau as a queen in an opulent red-and-gold gown and ermine-trimmed cloak, standing before a violet-beige wallpapered backdrop. On the left is a small window; on the right, sign language poet Gunter Trube appears as a royal advisor, whose scale and pose make him seem detached from the spatial setting. At the lower left edge and upper right corner of the image, cropped faces with open mouths appear. Displayed on screen is the subtitle: “Her Majesty should listen in disguise”, presented as written language corresponding to the signs performed by Gunter Trube in British Sign Language (BSL). In the upper section of the image, the yellow text “[wob-wob]” appears, an onomatopoetic caption referring to a vibrating or wavering sound event. The captions were designed by Carefuffle on behalf of IMAI.

Research Project

Since its emergence in the 1960s, video art has been regarded as an open and internationally circulating art form, closely connected to processes of social and media transformation. Its technical reproducibility and diverse modes of distribution created new possibilities for artistic production, mediation, and participation at an early stage.¹ Over the course of its canonization and institutionalization, however, aesthetic and technical conventions have developed that structure, limit, and exclude particular modes of perception and access to the medium.²

Digital video archives, which provide broad access to audiovisual cultural heritage, also operate within this field of tension. Although videos may be widely available, audiovisual participation depends significantly on how navigation, discoverability, and, crucially, the audiovisual content itself are designed. Accessibility thus becomes a curatorial and institutional practice that actively shapes the conditions of audiovisual perception. It raises fundamental questions concerning cultural participation, the mediation of cultural heritage, and the responsibilities of public cultural institutions.

In the project Re-Accessing Audiovisual Archives: “Aesthetics of Access” as an Artistic Method for Ableism-Sensitive Approaches to Video Art, research trainee Judith Greitemann investigates how digital video archives can be designed in ways that are both accessible and sensitive to ableism. At the center of the project is the further development of the online video archive of the IMAI – Inter Media Art Institute, which currently provides public access to more than 1,200 full-length video works and documents key developments in video art from the 1960s to the present.

Against this background, the question arises as to how the concept of “Aesthetics of Access” can be transferred to digital audiovisual archives. “Aesthetics of Access” refers to an artistic approach that understands accessibility not as a subsequent addition, but as the starting point of artistic practice.³ It is grounded in the experiences, as well as the artistic, design-related, and professional expertise, of disabled people.⁴

In the spirit of the “Aesthetics of Access,” the research trainee develops curatorial interventions that inscribe accessibility as a design principle into the structure of the archive itself. The research traineeship therefore engages with all areas of activity at the IMAI – Inter Media Art Institute and establishes new collaborations with artistic, social, and activist initiatives that develop experimental formats for captions, audio description, and sign language interpretation. The archive becomes a curatorial space of action in which questions of perception, participation, and representation are actively negotiated. The aim of the project is to develop approaches to ableism-sensitive archival practices that establish accessibility as an integral component of curatorial work and provide new impulses for engaging with audiovisual cultural heritage in digital archives.

The research traineeship is funded by the City of Düsseldorf and the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The research project is supervised by Dr. Linnea Semmerling (IMAI – Inter Media Art Institute Foundation) in collaboration with Prof. Dr. Renate Buschmann (University of Witten/Herdecke).

Sources

¹ Balsom, Erika (2017): After Uniqueness: A History of Film and Video Art in Circulation. New York: Columbia University Press.

² Watlington, Emily (2019): “The Radical Accessibility of Video Art (for Hearing People).” In: Future Anterior, 16(1), pp. 111–121.

³ Jenny Sealey / Carissa Hope Lynch (2012): Graeae: An Aesthetic of Access – (De)Cluttering the Clutter. In: Susan Broadhurst / Josephine Machon (eds.), Identity, Performance and Technology: Practices of Empowerment, Embodiment and Technicity, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 60–73

⁴ Neises, Fia/Sophia (n.d.): Aesthetics of Access. Available at: https://diversity-arts-culture.berlin/woerterbuch/aesthetics-access (accessed 20 May 2026).