Monika Dubiel

As part of my residency at WOK, I would like to research the intersection of disability, art and accessibility in the Polish context. I plan to use an ethnographic method based on interviews with artists and their collaborators and observations of their working techniques and final works. I am particularly interested in how artists use their disability as a creative resource and the practical, subversive potential of disability. I am interested in how the disability of artists and audiences can challenge the norms of cultural institutions and help to develop new, more welcoming ways of engaging with art. The support I need is primarily technical. As a blind person researching the performing arts, I often need a sighted person to assist me during an event and narrate what is happening visually.

I am a psychologist and Spanish philologist, and I am blind. I received my PhD in Cultural and Religious Studies from the University of Warsaw in 2023. My research interests revolve around disability in culture, especially Latin American culture. In my dissertation I researched the works of visually impaired artists in Mexico. I am also researching the accessibility of culture for people with disabilities in Poland. I have presented the results of my study at numerous national and international conferences. I have also published in recognised academic journals, including Qualitative Sociology Review and Social Inclusion. I work as a consultant for accessibility solutions for visually impaired people and as a trainer providing training in audio description, accessibility and savoir vivre towards people with disabilities. From 2017 to 2019 I worked at the Foundation for Culture without Barriers. Since 2019, I have been working as a freelancer in the accessibility industry. I have worked with, among others, the Warsaw City Hall, the Lublin City Hall, the National Centre of Culture, the National Institute of Museology and Collections Protection, the Silesian Museum in Katowice, Zachęta – National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, the Asia-Pacific Museum, the Labyrinth Gallery in Lublin, the Gustaw Holoubek Drama Theatre in Warsaw, and the Museum of the Arts in Warsaw, Kwadrat Theatre, Syrena Theatre, TR Warsaw, Rampa Theatre, Rozrywki Theatre in Chorzów, Stanisław Wyspiański Theatre in Katowice, Juliusz Osterwa Theatre in Lublin and Nowy Theatre in Warsaw. Since 2020, I have been managing (until 2023 together with Mikołaj Jabłoński) the VIP team social media channels, where I popularise knowledge on the functioning of visually impaired people.

I took a postdoctoral position shortly after defending my PhD and was considering what to do next. Should I apply for significant grants or leave academia altogether? I hesitated because, on the one hand, what I was doing in my PhD was very interesting, and I wanted to continue. Yet, on the other hand, I was terrified of the vision of a huge bureaucratic, scientific machine. The Warsaw Observatory of Culture (WOK) residency was the golden medium as it enabled me to do something during the residency, but in a safe and cosy atmosphere, not in the cogs of the university administration.

The topic I wanted to develop during the residency was similar to that of my PhD project on visually impaired artists in Mexico. After the defence, I decided it was worth checking out what it was like in Poland.

In the beginning, my topic was vague. I just knew that I wanted to find out what disabled artists do in Poland, how they work here in general and what the relationship between artists and institutions is like, for example, regarding accessibility. I was interested in what they do, how their work is perceived, and where they stand in the art market. I was unsure whether my research would take the form of ethnographic interviews with specific individuals, more of a general ethnographic study of the institution, or perhaps just an analysis of the work.

I had to start from scratch because there are not many studies on the subject, so I spent several months creating an archive of art and disability in Poland. It also became clear that I needed to acquire a lot of theoretical knowledge, and the residency allowed me to do that—I consulted someone who works on performing arts in Poland.

I focused on performing artists, actors, and performers working in the field. It was great to be able to look after myself – I had the opportunity to further my education and broaden my horizons in the subject I needed. Then, there was an ethnographic component because I got to talk to the artists – it was a wonderful experience. I did not ask them about their life stories or thoughts because that was not essential in the context of my project; I just wanted to know the story of their work. So, I felt more like a reporter than an ethnographer. Throughout the residency, I felt  comfortable with not having projects chasing me and distracting me from what I wanted to do.

It was also invaluable that I could allocate the production budget very freely – there was no strict list of costs that the residency grant could cover, as is the case with most research fellowships. My needs, do not usually fall into the prescribed cost categories, so the fact that everything was so flexible was significant to me. As I am visually impaired, a lot of my needs are accessibility related. For example, when I see a play, I need an audio description of the show. Sometimes, in certain theatres in Poland, an audio description is provided, but not every night. I needed to be able to see the performances I included in my study within the duration of the residency, so I required audio descriptions at a particular time and in a specific theatre.

It was fantastic to be able to use the residency budget for this purpose. It allowed me to pay for someone to come to the show with me and provide audio description of the performance. This was very important because it allowed me to participate in the arts in a dignified way, as I often have to rely on other people’s help, and they help me as a favour. In this case, for the first time, I could pay for the work that someone was doing for my benefit. This was important because it made me feel like a person who could pay for the service I was receiving.

I find it difficult to decide whether this residency was a break or a breakthrough for me. I would say it was both but on different levels. It was a break from the academic pursuit of points – you always have to make up time, publish, and produce results in academic work. It was such a pleasant break from work and a breakthrough in the sense that my thinking changed slightly. I had always felt guilty about working so slowly and focusing so much on research rather than producing a product. Thanks to the residency, I realised that this was not necessarily a bad way of working and that it was simply my pace. The atmosphere surrounding the residency was very accepting and supportive, and together with the other residents, we constantly received signals that the way we work is acceptable as long as we are happy with it.