The Blue Description Project

On 19^th September 1993, Derek Jarman screened Blue on Channel 4, an epoch-defining account of AIDS, illness and the experience of disability in a culture of repressive heteronormativity and compulsory able-bodiedness. Blue was screened in cinemas, simulcast on television and radio, released as a CD and published as a book, creating opportunities for many different kinds of sensory abilities - visual, aural and textual - to experience the work.

Conceived by artists and writers Christopher Jones, Liza Sylvestre and Sarah Hayden, The Blue Description Project creates a new, experimental iteration of Blue.

Access takes centre stage as the film offers creative captions and audio description edited into the main soundtrack of the film. As such, the audio description will be played aloud rather than through headsets so that all audience members can experience it. During the screening, the space will be dimly lit with only in-person BSL interpreters illuminated.

The screening will include descriptive subtitles, audio description and BSL interpretation.

The discussion after the screening between Sarah Hayden, Liza Sylvestre and others TBC will be live-captioned and BSL-interpreted. BSL provided by Michelle Wood and Peter Abraham.

Thanks to everyone who so generously contributed their descriptions to The Blue Description Project. Warm thanks to Elaine Lillian Joseph and Corvyn Dostie. Special thanks to JamesMacKay, Basilisk Communications and Zeitgeist Films.

The Blue Description Project (BDP) is produced by Liza Sylvestre and Christopher Robert Jones (Crip*—Cripistemology and the Arts) in partnership with Sarah Hayden (Voices in the Gallery). BDP is made possible by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, with support from the College of Fine and Applied Arts at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and additional support from the Southampton Institute for Arts and Humanities HEIF Research Stimulus Fund.