Big Screen Pong
When: 14 September 2012
Big Screen Pong by The Disabled Avant-Garde (Artists Aaron Williamson & Katherine Araniello).Tate Britain, Millbank, SW1P 4RG, Manton Foyer and Manton Studio.
The Disabled Avant Garde’s hilarious ‘crip humour’ delivers a serious satirical response to ‘sporting excellence’ in tehe Summer 2012, with their proposed new sport, Big Screen Pong: a fully interactive and accessible sport based on the 1970’s TV video game, ‘Pong’, which took the world by storm. The big screen version, premiered at Tate Britain invited the audience to challenge the artists to a specially adapted giant version of the game.
The performance was followed by a panel discussion considering issues to do with the representation of disability in art, sport and the media chaired by Tony Heaton Director of Shape with: Lois Keidan Director of Live Art Development Agency, Marie-Anne McQuay Curator of Spike Island and The Disabled Avant Garde (Aaron Williamson & Katherine Araniello).
‘Bite the Hand that Feeds’ a new Disabled Avant Garde DVD featuring 17 short films made up of performances for camera and documentation of live performances including invited commissions and uninvited interventions, produced by The Live Art Development Agency was launched and shown in the Manton Studio following the panel discussion. ‘Bite the Hand that Feeds’ is a Live Art Development Agency on-demand DVD, published by the agency and available through Unbound.
The Disabled Avant-Garde is a satirical arts organisation formed by the disability artists, Aaron Williamsonand Katherine Araniello, concerned with creating contemporary art informed by the social model of disability. Deliberately creating confusion or inspiring debate through humorously subverting the traditional medical model stereotype of disability, The Disabled Avant-Garde’s work fits the category of ‘crip humour’, that is both pitch-black and self-knowing.
