“Care is a relationship” - Johanna Hedva

On 4th March 2024, Hosting Lands invited all of our project collaborators, contributors and co-hosts to come join with Johanna Hedva on a discussion on access and care riders. Hosting Lands has been trying to work with access riders for all of our contributing artists, and we thought who better to learn about the process of working with access riders, and its many needs layers, and iterations, than with Johanna Hedva. While this was an internal workshop, below are some of our workshop notes that we thought might be important to share with everyone.

As Hedva took us through their access rider - link here - they mentioned, that the body needs care all the time, and therefore, it is almost impossible to meet that constant need. Care is always too much, Hedva said, and yet it is never enough. A giver and taker, mean opposite ends of an exchange or a spectrum, and yet, attached to care, a care-giver and a care-taker become one. Hence it becomes important to think about the exchange of care, the giving and taking of it, and the many negotiations involved. The access rider demands that collaborators figure out together what is possible (and not), and negotiate the possibilities. The body needs all the time and therefore it is almost impossible to meet that constant need. Care is always too much, they said. Yet it is never enough. Care is often beyond what one can give.

Access or care riders carry a certain tone in them. There is a fine balance between firm, realistic, affirming and calm. More fundamentally, the document carries an impossibility, and the imperfection. Not all demands of the artist, or contributor, can be met by institutions, but the document allows for the artist to negotiate, and demand, basic access needs necessary for them. Some of those access demands could include - wheelchair or ASL needs, diet considerations, or even working hours or conditions. There is an inherent contradiction the document produces. That is, they do not trust the institution to meet their needs - but they need intimacy and invitation from the institution in order to demand, and say, how they can be cared for.

Access riders for Hedva, is a relationship, and not a demand, afterall. Institutions and collaborators need to collaborate, and dialogue, as the document gives the platform to discuss, push, and make visible disability and access rights. Access riders initiate in practice the question: what is it that we need to get together? How can any work be accessed by the audience, how can the work be entered, and how can the organizer become a good host? Hedva furthered that it is ok that we do not know how to do it together, but important that we try and do it together. It is ok to be messy, it is just like how democratic decisions and processes are messy and slow. It is important that there is space for mistakes for not saying the right things and for figuring out a language and a practice of language.

While we spent a great deal of time discussing how to offer, write and negotiate our access riders, both with institutions and within para-institutional projects like Hosting Lands, what we concluded with was that the art world has big imagination and big dreams with resources that do not meet those visions. We must stay humble in order to reflect and practice accessibility. As Hedva concluded, there is something beautiful about those big dreams: How can we try to do this thing while we can all come together and do something that was never done before.

PS - The workshop took place as Hedva’s show was cancelled in lieu of their support to the liberation of Palestine. Read their full statement (now public), - here