When Accessibility Becomes Performance: Performativity as an Element and a Carrier of Accessibility in Sign-Language- Interpreted Music

Dr Angela Tarantini: When Accessibility Becomes Performance: Performativity as an Element and a Carrier of Accessibility in Sign-Language-Interpreted Music.

 

Accessibility has always been central to interpreting practices. The importance of equal access not only to information, services, and media, but also to the arts has recently gained more attention (e.g. Greco 2017). In order to provide access to music to Deaf and hard-of-hearing signers, a generation of interpreter-performers started to embody nonverbal elements of the ‘text’, such as rhythm, pitch, tempo, etc., when translating a song into sign language (Galloway Gallego 2016, Clementi 2020). With my research I aim to show that performativity as intended in Translation Studies (Baldo 2019, Bermann 2014) and Performance Studies (Grant 2015, 2013) is a key element and a carrier of accessibility.