Balancing Form and Function: The Politics of Access Aesthetics

This article explores how access intervenes in and inverts the usual administrative protocols of art, theatre, and performance. An aesthetics of access foregrounds the potential of access to contribute artistic and sensory meaning to an artwork or performance. Such creative engagements with access, which shift access from being a purely functional mechanism into something that is incorporated into the artistic fabric of a work, are an important way of intervening in modes of artistic creation and production that might otherwise be exclusionary to diverse or non-normative bodyminds. They also situate access as an evolving and relational practice, countering the idea that access can be achieved by completing a series of discrete tasks. Alongside an appreciation of its creative potential, however, it is necessary to recognize the politics of access aesthetics, which are deeply rooted in disability culture and activism.