MAYMA AWAIDA

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TONY SARRE

Mayma Awaida is a first-generation Lebanese producer and artist interested in community-engaged creative practice. Tony and Mayma have been collaborators for two years, wherein their work has centralised accessibility in the arts. As a team, they consider how art and writing are embodied experiences; specifically, they interrogate how to treat audio description an element of narrative style, rather than as a mere adjunct.

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[Image description: pale pink block with text overlay which reads: '“This is a logo for the Interface-D podcast series; it is a pale pink rectangular block with text overlayed, describing the image in left-aligned, black, size one-hundred and fifty, italic serif font“]

[Image description: block red square logo with white capitalised text reading ‘The Other Film Festival’]

Interface-D

Interface-D is a disability-led, Perth-based collaborative accessible audio project, responding directly to the creative sector in Western Australia, and centralising the place of audio description as an active, visceral, and fluid language for reading art.

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The Other Film Festival

Since 2004, ‘The Other Film Festival’ has been an agent for change and the first international disability film festival in Australia.

[Image description: left to right; Mayma, Tony, and Seeing-Eye Dog Paddington (aka Paddy)]

Perth Festival

Tangential to the Perth Festival Visual Arts program, the inaugural Visual Arts Writing Group brings together seven artists, writers and thinkers to respond to the program through text. Tony and Mayma were selected as collaborative applicants to the Writing Group, in which they generated an audio conversation responding to John Prince Siddon’s major solo exhibition, ‘All Mixed Up’. Tony and Mayma were later invited to facilitate a lab around accessibility and art speak through the Festival’s Connect program, at the Fremantle Arts Centre. Their work later culminated in a group panel discussion, ‘Linguistic Hardcore: Adventures in Art Writing’ at PICA.

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[Image description: illustration of an old Australian Roadhouse]

Objectivity & Language: The power of empathy in audio description

The pilot in a multi-part audio series, ‘Objectivity & Language: The power of empathy in audio description’ contemplates the place of audio description within contemporary arts, and more widely, within the culture of disability arts in an Australian context.