deaf*—Towards Cripistemological Captions

Towards Cripistemological Captions is a feature-length experimental documentary project exploring the historical lineage of creative captioning praxes and the generative potential of deaf* positionalities—developing and enacting ‘cripistemological captions’ as a methodology that emerges from a multiplicity of non-normative experiences, vantages, and epistemologies in/around aurality, orality, communication, and listening. The term “creative captions” has circulated as a broad way to describe work by artists, designers, and other cultural practitioners who engage with the formal and methodological potentials of captioning.

Towards Cripistemological Captions begins by charting the use of these creative captions in contemporary art discourse, exploring their contributions to a general awareness of disability-inflected art and discussing their critical limitations. Though an increase in the general appreciation of captions and captioning has had a positive impact in the form of basic d/Deaf accessibility awareness, much of the work on creative captions is overly concerned with sound and how to translate it for a d/Deaf audience. This is an ableist premise that reinforces a belief in d/Deafness as an inherent lack. If captioning, as a marginal practice, is delimited by a primary artistic experience (such as transcribing the auditory content of a film), it remains secondary or supplemental to the source material. But if captions are detangled from a primary source document, their potential as an artistic medium expands proportionally.

We ask: Who are captions for? Do they exist to entertain an able-bodied audience, or to educate them about d/Deaf experience, or to reinforce the belief that sound can effectively and objectively be made universally accessible? What might be possible in captioned space if it is imagined differently? Who or what might captions be of? Towards Cripistemological Captions develops “cripistemological captioning” as a term and creative methodology to describe and delineate captioning praxes that critically engage the ableist framework of captioning conventions. Where creative captions seek to appease and entertain, cripistemological captions chart a radically ulterior path where subject matter and methodology work interdependently—to interrogate and critique.

As a project, Towards Cripistemological Captions seeks to develop a working method that responds to principles of deaf* multiplicity, interdependent collaboration, and networks of support—in order to honor and facilitate what theorist Roderick Ferguson described as minority difference/culture’s ability to function as “…sites of dissensus with the potential to create fissures and to make room for the inadmissible.” We endeavor to create a feature-length experimental documentary project that is both about and of cripistemological captions—using strategies and principles drawn from deaf* cultural formations, creative access discourse, and applied research. This working method will include conducting participatory captioning workshops for deaf* participants to contribute to and define what cripistemological captions are/can be, visiting and documenting sites of deaf* cultural significance, working with archives that document and preserve deaf* language and communication practices (including insurgent languages), and communicating with and gathering response from artists, writers, designers, filmmakers, and other cultural practitioners that work in/around aurality, orality, communication, and listening.