Looking at life from a different perspective

VISUAL ARTS: Three works by three artists - Reading Beethoven by Amanda Coogan, Location by Corban Walker and Playforum by Peter Kearns - make up what can best be described as a Web-based exhibition organised by Fire Station Artists' Studios in Dublin, writes Aidan Dunne.

The project developed out of a discussion about arts and disability involving Tony Sheehan, then the director of Fire Station, and several artists a few years ago. As Kearns notes, usually when the arts are mentioned in relation to disability, it's to do with questions of access. If it is in terms of arts practice, it's usually in a therapeutic context. These considerations are, Sheehan points out, important but "complementary to the most important access issue for artists, which is to be artists". Walker's Location is, he says, "a straightforward artwork". It derives from his recent work exploring "ways of looking at one's surroundings - which is extreme for me because, from my height of four feet, I'm usually looking up at an angle or my view is blocked, or blurred or impeded in some other way".

His piece presents us with a series of photographic images of Japanese gardens and architectural environments, all of which are dynamically and ingeniously fractured or obscured as we try to get a sense of what we're looking at.

We are frustrated by being unable to grasp the whole picture. "I think it conveys something of those feelings of dislocation and claustrophobia that would be familiar to me," as Walker says. He decided against sound, because the silence "adds to the feeling of displacement". He took the photographs when he was working on a site-specific project in Japan for a Mitsubishi Corporation building.

He very much enjoyed being in Japan. "I found people there incredibly hospitable. There is sense that everyone has respect for everyone else, that you always make sure the other person is OK. I found it overwhelming to be in that kind of culture for a while." He hopes his work will encourage people to a heightened awareness of their surroundings and personal space.

"When Tony approached me," Coogan recalls, "my reaction was, well, I don't have a disability. But then I do have the experience of living in a community that is a linguistic minority." That is, Coogan's parents are deaf, and she grew up with signing as her first language. Also, she is pushing for official recognition of Irish Sign Language, "the third indigenous language of Ireland". Her work usually consists of live performance, video and photographs. Reading Beethoven is a video performance involving a ferociously physical response to the exhilaration of the second movement of the Ninth Symphony. She chose the Beethoven because it doesn't overtly refer to the politics of deafness. But of course Beethoven is universally known as the composer who became deaf - and raged against his deafness.

Her alarmingly violent movements are contrasted with the sedate frame within which they occur: the ornate oval frame of a mirror in a neat domestic setting. In her jagged choreography, a "translation" of the sound into physical movement, there is an implicit connection between the extremity of Beethoven's music and his frustration at his loss of hearing. And, we can infer, the frustrations of being within a minority community.

She likes the fact that access is not really an issue for a Web-based project. "Even for someone who is not totally computer literate, like me. It's also truly international, because you can access it from anywhere." As for all three, it was also a huge learning curve. Originally, she had in mind using the entire second movement, something like a 10-minute-plus video piece. "Tony Kenny, who technically oversaw the project for all of us, said: 'OK, but no one will ever see it.' " It would have been too hard to download.

Kearns's background is theatrical, and in Playforum he has made an elaborate interactive theatre piece. Built around a simple scenario, involving a disabled person being turned away from a nightclub by a bouncer, the piece continually prompts viewers to situate themselves in relation to the action and characters on screen.

"Normally, theatre provides a passive experience," he says. "You sit there and watch. Here you have to pick an identity." You have to identify yourself, in effect, which colours the way you perceive the narrative.

As in Rashomon, we see the same story from several viewpoints and, consequently, are invited to explore the attitudes and assumptions that underlie each character. "Live theatre is different each night, and this piece is live to the extent that it is interactive. The audience has some control over the narrative, and every person who sees it will experience it differently, depending on the choices they make."

The process can be humorously subversive of our assumptions and self- images, something that is true of all of these very different works.

You can view the three Web-based works at www.firestation.ie/beethoven, www.firestation.ie/location and www. firestation.ie/playforum