Creating 4 Feet in the Dark

A transcript:

Ari Kerssens, in collaboration with sound artist Tash van Schaardenburg, was the recipient of the Whakahoa Kaitoi Whanaketanga PAK’nSAVE Artist Fellowship 2022, presented by Arts Access Aotearoa.

Their audio work ‘4 Feet in the Dark’ plays over a blank black screen.

Ari Kerssens: We've blacked out all the windows in here and a big part of that is kind of making the statement of the non-visuality in opposition to how in the arts and in a lot of life we tend to privilege the visual and to kind of operate in a visual-first paradigm. 

And so, that creates a lot of accessibility, systemic kind of barriers for people who aren't visual. A core, kind of, concept for me is sort of flipping that on its head. 

Um, you know, we talk about the ableist architectures of everyday life, the artistics, and everyday life is generally for me, is, like, a non-visual person in a visual world.

And so we're sort of flipping that on its head and creating a non-visual world to hopefully give

visual people at least some semblance of, you know, that experience.

Tash van Shaardenburg: We did like two hours of interviews. Hours of interviews going through Ari's experience of blindness and memories, and thoughts and feelings.

And I'd sit there and interrogate you, like: How do you feel when you hear your cat?

Or like when’s it quiet? Or like: When do you, like … all these sorts of ideas of, when's the first time you used it [your cane]? We went really in-depth.

Ari Kerssens: I think it's going to start a whole lot of conversations amongst people that may have not been drawn either to, like, a sound art kind of deep listening experience or to a disability-themed event.