ABSTRACT
‘Let us imagine a museum as a site that invites public and staff alike to blunder into a dustcloud of sensorial improvisations, translations, and conversation’. This is a provocation I have presented to numerous institutions of art that have commissioned me to develop artworks, installations, performances, exhibitions, collections interventions, and curatorial research workshops. Blundering – etymologically, to stumble blindly – is one of a suite of methods that I have evolved that value blindness as a generative perceptual position, from which to innovate creative and curatorial practice. This chapter introduces blundering, and other methods related to audio description and sensorial translations, that may be useful to museum professionals who wish to rethink access beyond baseline compliance. Through examples of a range of hybrid artist-curatorial projects, I position access as an ethos of welcome, a platform for generosity, and as a catalyst for creative experimentation.
