another time: to begin again? | Raffia Li | Hotel Maria Kapel | 2023 | NL

Artist Raffia Li is 'wearing' a ladder as they hunch in front of stairs. They are weaving a red thread through the holes of the steel stairs.
White steel stairwell, a green plant on either side. The stairs are covered with grey pillows, the tough white steel material is padded by the artist.
Four people on a video call. One wears black shirt, glasses, a ladder and baseball cap. One wears red shirt, head phones, is mid sign language. One person wears lilac shirt, black cardigan. One person has red hair, shirt with pink palm trees.

How do we make/meet in another “time”?

The ableist structure of a standardized time directed towards productivity often leaves too little time for the access making of public spaces to bodies that have different needs, rhythms and temporalities.

To start this research-based residency, Raffia invited two collaborators, Sandra Lange and Yunfan Tian. This opening dialogue on the notions of time, body, and space/access making, is based on their lived experiences.

During a residency at Hotel Maria Kapel, Raffia is in the space moving along/against its many stairs with a ladder, while Sandra and Yunfan each join from their respective homes in Zwolle, and Suzhou.

They chose an online format for this meeting because it could potentially bring people in, regardless of the inaccessible architecture of HMK. However, they will also investigate the scores of moving together in this online space, facing how the accessibility tools like the Zoom auto-captioning function keeps failing.
Or at least now we turn the mistakes into poetry? 

Whether online or offline, moving together means to constantly make new rhythms and navigate through the space together. How can we make shared spaces that welcome constant changes? What questions need to be asked before we feel ready for those possibilities?

The Hotel Maria Kapel is a white structure with red doors and yellow columns next to entrance. The building itself is inaccessible, due to grey stone stairs in front of it. Written on stairs with chalk in English Dutch Mandarin: how to build a ramp?
photo's: bart treuren  |  Raffia Li  |  private collection
Written on stairs with chalk in English Dutch Mandarin: how to build a ramp?
Person with hoody on, glasses, black hair is taking a picture of themselves and a blond dog gthat is curiously sniffing them during a car ride.
Set table with home cooked Chinese dinner in colorful dishes, bowls and frying pans.
A detail of two hands touching. On the foreground an undetermined reflection in a window.
Person wearing a white ladder on a white steel stairs, wearing a black shirt a baseball cap and glasses.
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