LUX D/deaf Artists’ Film Commissions

September 29, 2020
A close up of a pyramid-shaped sound proofing foams. The text writes "Announcement: D/deaf Artists' Film Commissions"

LUX is excited to announce three new commissions from D/deaf artists reflecting on the possibilities of a Deaf artists’ cinema.

The selected artists are Rinkoo Barpaga, Louise Hickman working with Shannon Finnegan and Nina Thomas, whose new works will be exhibited on the LUX website from November 2020.

Rinkoo Barpaga is a Deaf British born comedian and a Theatre-Maker, who uses British and urban sign language. Throughout his 15-year career he has been involved in media creation and has worked for the BBC, ITV, MTV as well as independent media productions. He is also involved in stand-up comedy, which he developed in America. His award-winning documentary ‘Double Discrimination’ was filmed in Handsworth, Birmingham and interviewed young people; using urban sign language to describe race discrimination. For this project Rinkoo will create a point of view film exploring the first-person subjective Deaf experience. www.rinkoo.co.uk

Louise Hickman is a disabled deafblind researcher, activist and scholar of communication currently based at London School of Economics and Ada Lovelace Institute in London who will work with New York-based media artist and disability activist Shannon Finnegan. Their film will explore the complex human-machine interactions shaped by the production of live text captions, pushing and experimenting with boundaries of coding of spoken speech to explore alt-captions (the experimental medium of captions). www.louisehickman.com & shannonfinnegan.com

Nina Thomas a visual artist, using the mediums of video, photography, artist publication and site-specific installation. Much of her recent work has focused on her experience of becoming deaf and subsequently seeking to understand deaf histories and experiences. She has exhibited at venues such as Tate Exchange, St. Margaret’s House and HeART in Chatham. She is a founding member and project coordinator at The Film Bunch (a deaf and hard of hearing film organisation) and trustee at Stagetext. Her project will be a visual poem examining concepts of silence from a deaf perspective, including references to an oralist education: an education which assumes speech to be superior to sign language and forces deaf children to lip read and speak rather than sign. The film will offer a quiet meditation on silence, not as deprivation but as an embodied experience and as a site of repair. www.ninathomas.org

These commissions are part of a new ongoing series exploring access in artists’ moving image, not as an afterthought, but as a creative impetus which does not presume sighted or hearing audiences which began in September with an exhibition and events series catalysed by a new moving image work by artist Jenny Brady, Receiver which considers how we both speak and listen, and the question of who has the right and capacity to be heard.

This project is supported by Art Fund and On & For Production and Distribution

logo of on and for production, two intersecting circles with a t shape in the intersection

On and For Production and Distribution is initiated by Auguste Orts (BE) in collaboration with Kaunas International Film Festival (LT), LUX/LUX Scotland (UK), and Nordland Kunst -og Filmskole (NO). With the support of the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Supported by Art Fund

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