The Honourable Elizabeth A. Baker is a self-described new renaissance artist whose practice spans from visual and cinematic works to electroacoustic music with custom-made instruments and notation systems. Speaking from her home in Florida during our recent interview, she explained: “I’m not trying to fit any certain mold or rules or sort of things that I think many people allow to influence their work.”
In her ever-expanding practice, Elizabeth seeks to offer space for dialogue and self-inquiry. This partially stems from her experience in academic and institutional spaces where there is both a perceived in-group, and a group of people who are largely excluded from those inner circles of belonging. To encourage a greater sense of connection in the concert experience, she writes music that purposefully lacks narrative.
“The intimacy of connection between the people on stage, and even the people in the audience is lost in that… Anyone [who] is not part of that who comes into the performance loses the connection to the work on stage.”
A major sector of people who find themselves on “the outside” are those with chronic illnesses and disabilities. At the heart of Elizabeth’s work is a desire to facilitate accessible community environments. As an artist myself who navigates dynamically disabling symptoms, I also spend a large amount of time considering disabled voices, and accessible practices and spaces to model in my own work – it was revitalizing to speak with Elizabeth about her experience losing and regaining her vision in the past nine months.
Elizabeth was catapulted into the realm of disability justice amidst her own medical crisis. In November 2023, she woke up with distortions in her eyesight. She did several treatments over the course of a month before an ophthalmologist told her that she was going blind in both eyes due to particularly difficult retinal detachments. After an array of surgeries and procedures, it’s a miracle she has regained compromised vision at all.
Elizabeth A. Baker — Courtesy of Artist
The experience illuminated inequities in live performance that are neglected: “The ritual of music in a concert setting is so visual that many people have not considered how to make that land accessible to people who have low vision, compromised vision, or are blind.”
There is still a bout of stigma around chronic health issues; it should not be taboo to discuss how tough it can be for people to manage their physical, mental, and emotional energy while living with disability. It’s a frustrating experience – and quickly became Elizabeth’s everyday reality.
“If you imagine being in a pandemic situation where you can’t leave your house, but you also have very limited access to social media or any way of communicating with other people, that is basically what I endured for literal months at a time.”
Often, when arts organizations are discussing outreach, they speak about serving their community, but it’s really about the ways that organizations take part in the community. When it comes to considering the needs of our audiences and colleagues, Elizabeth urges those involved in new and contemporary music to think about how we’d care for and advocate for our own family members.
“I think people think about accessibility as a checklist that they have to get done. Then they also think about it as ‘look how good we are because we have done this thing.’” she asserts. “Accessibility is the bare minimum for care for a community that you are a part of.”
But aside from wheelchair accessibility and maybe ASL translation, there is little being done. There are no accommodations for the visually impaired, both in-person and for live streams, which could include something as simple as announcing piece titles between works. Performances also frequently lack flashing light warnings, masking and air purification, and free water stations. Even the performers themselves would benefit from added accommodations, including shorter rehearsal blocks and more frequent breaks for people with fatigue or who need to take medication at certain times; and even consideration of font sizing for scores.
Elizabeth A. Baker at Woodberry Poetry Room — Courtesy of artist
Arts institutions need to better understand the needs of their community members, be genuinely open to critique, and be willing to grow. Otherwise, organizations will continue to make people feel burdensome, or like they are inconveniencing everyone by communicating their needs. It is imperative to advocate for ourselves and our disabled comrades; and to organize in order to implement structural changes. Elizabeth reminds us that these changes are possible.
“I think a lot of times we think about the top-down of the organization, and then the individuals, because it always seems like the organizations have so much power. But in fact, the power is within ourselves… It’s the individual changes that create an atmosphere that is conducive to the support and true community feeling that makes all of this work for everyone.”
The conversations that need to happen go beyond questions of aesthetic accessibility. Who can even be in the room to have these experiences? How do we make everyone truly feel welcomed in an artistic space? With the emergence of COVID, there was a brief emphasis on accessibility, but as soon as the government declared the pandemic “over” in favor of economic interests and individual comfort and (non-)accountability, all mitigation efforts went out the door. But Elizabeth calls us to continue showing up for each other in sustainable ways.
“People who are sick, people who are going through difficult times, whether it is homelessness, whether it is sickness, whether it is a mental health issue… Someone showing up is so deeply important.”
Similarly, there is an overwhelming misunderstanding that when people get sick, they are presumed to eventually “get better.” For a good deal of people, illness becomes chronic, and we are forced to adapt to an entirely new lifestyle. Things cannot simply go back to “normal,” and maybe they shouldn’t anyway. In order to shift paradigms, we as a community must dream of better ways of existing with and caring for one another.
“The only way to do that is if we break down these conventions that we’ve had for so long. The assumption that everyone is neurotypical, everyone is able-bodied… It’s another [kind] of revolution. It’s just a much quieter revolution than I think people realize.”
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
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