Artist Statement

In 2021, Access in the Making (AIM) Lab’s talented designer Roi Saade created AIM Lab’s logo through an ongoing consultation process with the AIM crew. Over the course of six months, we collectively explored our values, imagined what AIM’s personality would be like, what kind of work we want to do at AIM, and who or what we want to work for and with. AIM’s logo (the image on the top/header of the page) emerged from this dialogical process. The image to the right shows Roi’s conceptualization of the logo. The audio-descriptions I offer relate to both, how I interpret the logo and the ideas behind it. - Arseli Dokumaci
ID: AIM logo concept art showing how the spacing between the letters was chosen.




AIM LOGO IMAGE DESCRIPTION AS POETIC WRITING 



Where are the missing letters?
Perhaps it was a Blind B. Perhaps it was a C with Crutches.
Perhaps it was a D with depression. Perhaps it was an E with epilepsy…

The letters of the alphabet are not enough to describe the unalike living beings we are…

Then who is missing in the worlds our words make?
Who is missing in the rooms we meet, in the stories we tell, in the joys we share?

Who or what has been erased? 
Who or what is being unheard?
Who or what is not even known to exist? 

If life is not something we are given,
But a recognition that we owe to one another, 

        Then:

How can we keep space for those whose needs we may never know?
How can we make room for those no room has ever been made?
How can we hold space open for those 
        who have been kept out of space?

                                                                    …

A fully accessible world will not come to be.
If it does, we all will be gone.

To search for something that we know we will never find
        Is not a surrender to desperation. 

It, instead, is the hope that keeps us going. 
        Aiming and dreaming…  


Arseli Dokumaci 
October, 2021 

This exhibition is generously supported by the Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies,
and in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.