Rethinking the Role of the Deaf in an Art Institution: Experience at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

Lyudmila Luchkova — inclusive programmes manager
at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art

This essay is dedicated to reflecting on the creation of new social roles and, as a result, of new aspects of identity for deaf/Deaf visitors to Garage Museum of Contemporary Art from 2016 to 2020. Based on personal experience working in Garage’s inclusive projects department and unstructured interviews with deaf/Deaf individuals, the author analyses the process of reimaging deafness/Deafness as a leading factor in determining identity and uses examples of deaf/Deaf visitors taking on new social roles in art institutions to search for the connection to their own sense of self.

This article was published in Issue 1 of Accessibility and Inclusion in Contemporary Art: transitory parerga [Dostupnost’ i inklyuziya v sovremennom iskusstve: transitory parerga], edited by Vlad Strukov.

In the summer of 2016, I had my first experience working with a group of deaf/Deaf visitors: I was a mediator for YES, a project by contemporary artist Urs Fischer. Over the course of the project, the artist gave anyone who so wished the opportunity to make gigantic art objects or small plaster sculptures, thereby making the participants in YES his co-authors.

The project took place a year after Garage Museum of Contemporary Art opened the first inclusive programs department in Russia. As part of the department’s activities, Garage first started organizing various events adapted for people with disabilities in February 2015. Among them were tours for deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors with Russian Sign Language interpretation and accessible masterclasses for deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing schoolchildren. Just a year after the department’s creation, the Museum transformed its understanding of inclusion from creating separate events for people with disabilities to crafting a shared museum experience accessible to all visitors. As a result of these changes, the inclusive projects department stopped organizing separate events for people with various disabilities and instead began adapting all exhibit and public projects to include them. True inclusion means giving all categories of visitors the ability to participate equally in events, and in this sense, Urs Fischer’s project can be considered both inclusive and participatory: park visitors joined the artists in participation, automatically becoming co-creators of the artworks within it. It was possible to include Deaf visitors in YES thanks to Vlad Kolesnikov, the first hard-of-hearing manager of inclusive programs at Garage, as well as his personal contacts and experience conducting regular tours in sign language. Organized groups of deaf/Deaf and blind/Blind participants as well as individual deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors participated in the project. The appearance of the first individual deaf/Deaf visitors just a year after the creation of the inclusive programs department was an important indicator of the deaf/Deaf community’s interest in the art of today and confirmed that the Museum’s strategy of engaging them through feedback and a constantly updated contact database was on the right track. Going forward, personal communication with visitors became one of our priorities: for example, we created separate social media accounts and a newsletter called “Garage for the Deaf” [Garazh dlya glukhikh].

As far as Urs Fischer’s project is concerned, deaf/Deaf visitors who agreed to participate were offered the chance to become co-authors of a collective work of art through mediators with a knowledge of sign language. I was one of these mediators. The role of intermediary between the hearing at deaf/Deaf worlds is a familiar one for me: I learned sign language for family reasons (I grew up in a family with deaf/Deaf parents, and Russian Sign Language was my home language), and it influences my identity as well. My experience working on Fischer’s project came at an early stage in my professional development and as an employee of the Museum’s inclusive programs department, but it confirmed the main principle of the work for me: being an intermediary in an art institution, where my role is to offer visitors various options for interaction. As I went on, I expanded the scope of my work: I became a sign language interpreter, a teacher with knowledge of sign language for children’s events, and an assistant at all activities that were accessible for deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors. In taking on such varied roles, I constantly reflected on how an art institution can influence an employee’s understanding of their role in the organization, the transformation of that role and, as a result, the adoption of new aspects of identity by that employee. This essay is dedicated to my reflection on how an art institution can  aid visitors with disabilities in taking on new social roles and how that process can influence their identity. As a case, we will examine Garage’s experience interacting with deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing visitors. Having become one of the first spaces in Moscow for the discussion and realization of inclusive projects, Garage bases its work on the concept of diversity, presuming that each person is unique and has their own unique traits, while any disability (or lack thereof) should not affect the Museum’s openness or accessibility to its visitors. In this essay, I will analyze how the museum environment can help create new social roles for deaf/Deaf individuals and track the journeys of inclusive program participants from consuming a cultural product to actually creating it.

My analysis is based on my experience working in the inclusive programs department at Garage, as well as special non-structured interviews with deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing people. The choice of case is grounded in the author’s work in this field within Garage’s inclusive programs department and direct work with Deaf people in various aspects of her work.

Questions of identity for deaf/Deaf individuals

The identity of a deaf/Deaf person can be examined as an inextricable part of what it means not to hear and to be deaf/Deaf. As part of deaf/Deaf Studies, a person’s identity was for a long time traditionally defined based on the binary of “disability” as “belonging to a special cultural group” (Davis 2002). From this perspective, the identity of a deaf/Deaf person is most often formulated as a disabled, deaf  person or as a deaf/Deaf person with a difference (Davis 2002). This approach presumes that for deaf people, there are only two possible identities: a person who writes deaf with a lower-case letter and identifies themselves with the loss of hearing (meaning deafness in a medical sense) and a person who writes Deaf with a capital letter, affiliating themselves with a special group of people who are united by a shared Deaf language and culture (Woodward 1972)—and that all deaf people belong to either one category or the other. The preservation of such a harsh opposition was called the “first wave of Deaf identity politics” by Leonard Davis (Davis 2002: 10). In accordance with that binary approach, deaf people can choose spoken and signed modes of communication connected with the established antagonism between the medical and social constructs of their identity (Reagan 2002; Valentine and Skelton 2003). Davis (Davis 2002) also notes that this binary approach has dominated in deaf education politics in the past 130 years. Besides this, Deaf people usually use standard shorthand from first-wave medical or social rhetoric for describing their identities and call themselves deaf/Deaf or hard-of-hearing (Leigh 2009). In the Russian experience, such distinctions in written speech have yet to be observed, but academic works have been published (Bolshakov 2019) on questions of the transformation of deaf/Deaf identity and, as a result, of the correct and acceptable terminology used by the deaf/Deaf about themselves. Based on what has already been crystallized in Russian Sign Language, there is a widespread gesture among the younger generation of deaf/Deaf individuals: “yaG.” It literally means “I am Deaf,” and the simultaneous display of the dactyls (letters in the alphabet of finger speech) for “ya” (I) and “G” (Glukhoi, or Deaf) shows a person’s belonging to the community.

The second wave of deaf/Deaf identity politics, according to Paddy Ladd (Ladd 2003), was heralded by the acceptance of the concept of variation within and among deaf/Deaf and hearing communities. Shirley Schultz-Myers and Jane K. Fernandes (Myers and Fernandes, 2010) presume that the study of deaf/Deaf identity and education should better reflect the complexities in a deaf/Deaf person’s life and transcend the strict opposition between deaf/Deaf and hearing people, as well as between signing and speaking languages. The binary model in deaf/Deaf education is problematic because, as noted by Brenda Brueggemann (Brueggemann 2009), it is based on an opposition to the hearing world and the rhetoric of self-isolation. One consequence of this is that deaf/Deaf people are often inclined to remain isolated (Myers and Fernandes 2010).

Novel research by Yael Bat-Chava (Bat-Chava 2000), dedicated to deaf/Deaf identity, demonstrated the existence of four static clusters of identity among deaf/Deaf people. Aside from the aforementioned deaf and Deaf, Bat-Chava defines two more types of identity: ambiguous identity and bicultural identity. Similarly, Stein Erik Ohna (Ohna 2003) defined four steps in the development of deaf/Deaf identity: taken for granted, alienation, affiliation and bicultural “deaf in my own way” (Ohna 2004). She notes that “deaf in my own way” is a new type of identity and is a result of the postmodern philosophical orientation (Solomon 2000), which opposes the widely accepted conceptualization of the two approaches to deafness/Deafness: the medical and the social. “Deaf in my own way” presents deaf/Deaf identity as bilingual and bicultural, capable of fitting into both worlds as necessary.

In this way, the medical model of understanding deafness dominated until the final third of the twentieth century. With the development and study of sign language, this model transformed into a social one, where the identity of a Deaf person and their membership in a socio-cultural minority, with its own language and culture, took the fore. Developing this thought, we can assume that the bilingual and bicultural identity of a Deaf person, or “deaf in my own way” (Ohna 2004), is a new stage in the development of the social model, presuming a contextual understanding of deafness/Deafness. In other words, the identity of a deaf/Deaf person is defined in this essay through various social roles which that person plays in various areas of life. As a result, the mastery of new social roles by a deaf/Deaf person within the art industry can affect the formation of new aspects of identity.

As an example, we can look at the case of Lisbon’s Museu Calouste Gulbenkian. An article by Patrícia Roque Martins (Martins 2016) examines the tools with which museums can engage deaf/Deaf visitors in creating programs and projects for their community. In particular, the author notes the use of sign language in the museum and the integration of a deaf/Deaf team member in the development of content for deaf/Deaf audiences as one of the main conditions for engaging those deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences. The museum organized a working group of researchers, employees of its education division and representatives of the Portuguese Association of the Deaf—specifically, a Deaf guide named Antonio. In working with the museum, Antonio developed a special tour for deaf/Deaf visitors in sign language, which was simultaneously interpreted into spoken language. The Deaf guide was also responsible for choosing the artworks presented on the tour. For instance, when suggesting one work from the Roman collection, Antonio justified his choice by stating that “the Romans inherited their love for physical perfection from the Greeks, and the Deaf community should understand that in the Roman period, children were deprived of the ability to live for any physical deficiencies” (Martins 2016: 204). In this way, Antonio used works from the museum’s collection to offer deaf/Deaf visitors the opportunity to discuss the evolution of rights for people with disabilities and cultural minorities, among other subjects that are relevant to the community. Antonio’s tours were experienced both by members of the deaf/Deaf community and hearing students for whom a sign-language tour from a native speaker was the best way to immerse themselves in that linguistic environment. The author of this article is convinced that by creating a bilingual environment at various stages (tour guide training, meeting the working group and its deaf/Deaf members, and the organization of the tour itself), museums acknowledge the importance of sign languages and aid in the development of the deaf/Deaf community’s identity. In addition, the researcher wishes to stress that the presence of deaf/Deaf employees within the museum influenced the entire museum team from within and may play an important role in the attitude within the institution towards people with disabilities on the whole. The integration of sign language and the engagement of deaf/Deaf guides with tours that they themselves develop, including references to theories on the representation of individuals with disabilities and parallels with the unique nature of deaf/Deaf people’s world, did not simply make the museum more accessible for deaf/Deaf visitors but also offered them the opportunity to try on new social roles: consumption of cultural products and participation in their creation. The case of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian shows that deaf/Deaf people turned into active actors in socio-cultural processes—in other words, the engagement of deaf/Deaf audiences was not limited to conducting tours or translating written texts into sign language.

The author of this article has not found any understanding of the concept of deafness/Deafness as a kind of “social context” in Russian scholarship. Russian and Soviet research practices regarding the deaf/Deaf and their changing social roles have remained outside the boundaries of this review to this point simply because, until the 1990s, only the medical concept for understanding deafness/Deafness existed in Russia. As a result, deaf/Deaf individuals were initially seen as a group of people with a hearing impairment and disability, while society had to “reform” them into “normal” Soviet citizens, for which they had to be “taught to speak,” first and foremost (Bolshakov 2016: 168). This paradigm of understanding deafness/Deafness can be seen in work by sign language teachers and speech pathologists: Karl Mikaelyan (1959), Fyodor Rau (1946), Alexei Dyachkov (1946), Rakhil Boskis (1963a, 1963b) and others. It was only in the 1990s that the vector of research changed towards understanding deaf/Deaf identity through the social model of disability, thanks to researchers of deaf/Deaf sign language, culture and history Galina Zaitseva (2000), Vladimir Bazoev  (2002), Viktor Palenny (2011), Anna Komarova (2007), and others who dedicated their work to reviewing international research on the socio-cultural analysis of the deaf/Deaf community. Since 2015, to encourage work in the interests of the deaf/Deaf community, museums in Moscow and around Russia have been creating programs for deaf/Deaf visitors. In particular, it was important for Garage’s program that visitors themselves shared ideas that would help develop their individual social positions within the Museum. Garage’s methodological publication on working with deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors (Sarycheva 2019) devoted a great deal of attention to the cultural and social foundations of working with deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, actualized the notions of the “deaf/Deaf community” and “deaf/Deaf culture,” and offered readers a chance to learn about the development of Russian Sign Language. It was these topics and their exploration that were fundamental in understanding the nuances of work with deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors, as well as for the formation of an inclusive agenda.

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art’s experience

Garage was the first art institution in Russia to begin supporting the development and spread of Russian Sign Language as well as bringing to the attention of the local art community questions of deaf/Deaf identity as more than a medical diagnosis. Since 2016, the Museum’s inclusive programs department has regularly conducted courses on the fundamentals of Russian Sign Language for museum employees, with the primary goal of attracting the museum community’s attention to the problem of creating accessible environments for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors as well as the significance and uniqueness of a deaf/Deaf visitor’s experience. The course’s primary goal is to dispel the myths and stereotypes associated with deafness/Deafness and offer museum employees the ability to establish a dialogue with a new group of visitors. Based on course participants’ feedback, it is clear that museum employees have started to reevaluate their relationship to deaf/Deaf visitors: “In my opinion, the museum community should join together in order to increase museums’ role in integrating deaf/Deaf people in the work and education process” (Savina 2020, personal message). In seeking to draw the professional community’s attention to this matter, Garage organized an international training seminar called Experiencing the Museum [Muzei oshchushchenii]. With specialists from various Russian museums participating, the training session was dedicated to the development and adaptation of programs specifically for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors. The first day of training, for instance, was devoted to theoretical aspects, covering the nuances of the deaf/Deaf community, the history of Russian Sign Language, the unique nature of information perception, and the foundational conceptions of understanding disability. Below I will track how five years of work with Garage’s deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors, while constantly expanding the opportunities for them to take on various social rules, served as a starting point for their transformation from mere viewers into joint participants in processes taking place in an art institution, thereby allowing these people to take on new and different aspects of identity in addition to being Deaf.

In 2016, when Garage’s inclusive program was only beginning to develop, deaf screenwriter Polina Sineva became one of the co-curators of the Co-Thinkers [Edinomyshlenniki] exhibition: she participated in its creation alongside other co-curators. Polina conceptualized the exhibition space through “text,” taking visitors of all categories on unique tours with spoken Russian interpretation. As a result, after the exhibition closed, Garage invited Polina as a lecturer in the participatory project Translation Bureau [Byuro perevodov] (2019) and as an independent discussion moderator after a screening of the documentary Poor Folk: Kabakovs [Bednye lyudi. Kabakovy] (2019). All the while, she remained firm in her identity as a Deaf person from the perspective of her native language and culture: her lectures and tours were all conducted in her mother tongue, sign language. However, Garage and its multifaceted work became a place where Polina could shine in new social roles as a co-curator, lecturer, tour guide, and teaching expert. According to Polina, Co-Thinkers was her first time trying on the role of curator for size. Before that, she had only ever been a visitor at a museum (in her free time) and had no idea of the amount of work that had to be done in order to make an exhibition a reality. Being a screenwriter, she was able to encapsulate the essence of the exhibition in a short dialogue. Here is how she described this experience:

“Expanding the range of my opportunities, both professional and personal. The profession of a screenwriter is a fairly closed-off and lonely one: the lion’s share of your time is spent at a screen (of course, that would make us all ‘screenwriters’ now, but that’s temporary) with all of your discussions taking place over instant messenger. Participating in Garage’s projects, though, gives me a sense of balance: I come into contact and work with real people in real-time using sign language. Delivering lectures, conducting tours, participating in discussions—all of this keeps me from growing fur and fangs” (Sineva 2020, personal message 7.).

The logical continuation would be a review of the full spectrum of social roles that Garage offered deaf/Deaf visitors, transforming their identity from “viewer” to “participant,” with a direct path to becoming authors of various practices within the institution. Gradually, work with hearing moderators with a mastery of sign language and translators for all tours, masterclasses, and press conferences with deaf/Deaf journalists were augmented by deaf/Deaf and hard-of-hearing teachers who not only conduct events in Russian Sign Language independently but also create new formats of interaction with deaf/Deaf visitors themselves. Giving deaf/Deaf visitors the opportunity to try on roles was a conscious step for the institution towards developing a systematic approach toward future projects not just for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors, but together with them. This strategy was directed towards forming and actualizing various identities for the deaf/Deaf, irrespective of the inclusive programs department’s existence.

This is how the idea to create a training course for deaf/Deaf tour guides came to be. The one-year course, developed by Garage’s inclusive programs department, was launched in November 2016 and consisted of five educational modules, alongside field experience in Moscow’s leading art museums. Graduates of the course independently conduct tours in sign language in various cultural institutions and popularise art among the deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing communities. In correspondence, one of the course’s graduates, Svetlana Bobkova, noted:

“Before I participated in the deaf/Deaf tour guide training course, I felt like I hadn’t found my professional niche in life. My art education, love for museums, and creative abilities couldn’t be applied anywhere. I don’t want to say that deafness got in the way, but I’m afraid that that was exactly the case. Garage’s project, without a doubt, made me into a new person, opening doors for me that used to be closed. Thanks to Garage’s projects, not only do museums look to me as a person who can help them, but I discovered new aspects of myself: a tour guide, a masterclass designer, and a museum teacher. The projects that I developed for Garage, a series of masterclasses based on Japanese painting for adults and an ‘Arts and Physics’ course for high school students, were a unique experience where I was inspired by both the preparation process and the feedback from other participants. This is what I’ll remember, just like I remember a great trip. They are becoming a part of my personality and some of my best memories, and they’re motivating me to create” (Bobkova 2020, personal message 8.).

The five years of work by Garage have resulted in a pool of deaf/Deaf educators and mediators who work on all adapted events. In and of itself, the institution does not merely work with deaf/Deaf people as part of their audience, but now as members of our larger professional team. Another example of acquiring new roles within an art institution—and, as a result, new aspects of identity—is the inclusion of deaf/Deaf people in artistic processes. For example, from September 2019 to January 2020, two Deaf artists, Natalya Romanova and Adil Aliev, were selected as residents in Garage’s art studios. In addition to this, a basic Russian Sign Language course was held for artists who did not know it previously, as well as lectures on Deaf art from Deaf historian Viktor Palenny (2011). All the while, sign language interpreters were present at all joint meetings and workshops. In this way, the institution tried to create an inclusive environment for development, communication and the sharing of skills, knowledge and contacts. As an illustration of this practice, I will share Adil Aliev’s opinion:

“We can say that the model of inclusion in museums is succeeding, thanks in particular to Garage, who began this bold and necessary project. Now we need to adapt for inclusion in other spheres, including artistic processes themselves—I’m completely in favor of this. As Deaf creatives, people can now judge us for our personal qualities rather than to simply show how much they like us. Deaf people need their heroes. I won’t be bothered if people see me as Deaf in the social sense if they still recognize my qualities as a person and an artist. Especially since contemporary art has no limitations—that should help remove our ‘disabled’ limitations in every aspect” (Aliev 2020, personal message9.).

This quote offers a new way of thinking: do we always need to choose which identity is key (being deaf/Deaf or being a part of contemporary art) if there is a party or institution that can create conditions for various aspects of identity to exist.

Does an institution have limits for engaging deaf/Deaf visitors? Perhaps they do, since a great deal in the art institution depends on a curator’s vision, which is not always beholden to the inclusive context. For instance, curators of the Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art in 2020 decided to give the artists of the previous Triennial (2017) the right to choose the artists who would participate in the exhibit. This decision left deaf/Deaf artists, little known in the Russian contemporary art scene, without an opportunity to participate in a large Garage project. The deaf/Deaf artist community is not very large and relatively insular. Most often, they study at the only university in Russia that offers a classical art education (the Russian State Specialized Academy of Arts), and the chances of hearing artists recommending one of their deaf/Deaf colleagues are quite slim. As a result, such a curatorial decision can leave an artist without any connection to the art world of hearing artists and without an opportunity to be represented in the art institution.

On the other hand, an example of a curatorial decision that allowed deaf/Deaf individuals to take on new roles in the institution was the exhibition Infinite Ear [Bezgranichnyi slukh], organized by Garage in 2018. Council, the curatorial group that created the exhibition, included deaf/Deaf mediators in the performative component of the project from the outset, and artist Tarek Atoui chose not only professional musicians but also Deaf student Aleksandr Olifir, a participant in Atoui’s pre-opening masterclass for deaf/Deaf children, for his final concert with members of local communities. Aleksandr, a Deaf student at Technological College № 21, performed alongside other musicians as an author and performer—first at rehearsals and then at the final concert.

One other project that engaged young deaf/Deaf individuals as authors is the Signing Museums for Kids app, the first children’s Russian Sign Language dictionary of contemporary art terms in Russia. The working group for the project was made up of deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing children from Moscow’s Schools for the Deaf Nos. 1529, 30  and 52, all of whom went through free-form interviews with museum employees during the project’s research and preparation stages. This allowed each of them to take on the role of expert in the project and consult the employees of the inclusive programs department. Each of the children was shown a word relating to contemporary art and asked what it means and whether they knew a gesture for the word. Among the various problems experienced by certain deaf/Deaf children participating in the project (ranging from 7 to 10 years of age) were difficulties in understanding and reading written Russian: when they read words, no concept came to mind. For instance, when reading the word “architecture,” children could not understand what it meant because that word had never been visualized either in their experiences or in their family’s experiences. Each word was broken down in Russian Sign Language by an inclusive programs manager and a sign language interpreter, then explained until the children could explain the concept in their own words. As a result, though these children and their parents were not aware of many concepts from the art world at the outset, Garage brought an additional educational component to their families. These same children would go on to take part in filming educational videos in Russian Sign Language, which their peers could watch and learn more about Garage and the world of art in general. After the project concluded, many of them spoke about how the filming and consulting experiences were very difficult and perhaps even stressful for them, but that the sense of belonging to the museum brought them all together.

Conclusion

To conclude these thoughts, I would like to return to the hypothesis that the mastery of various social roles within the art institution influences the self-determination of a deaf/Deaf visitor and, as a result, their identity. The examples mentioned above, taken from Garage’s own work, demonstrate that the acquired social roles of a tour guide, teacher, expert, or lecturer can, on the one hand, expand the social connections of deaf/Deaf people. For instance, the events that they conduct at Garage are attended by people just like them—deaf/Deaf native speakers of Russian Sign Language—which reinforces and develops a sense of belonging and identity. On the other hand, the opportunity to participate in organizing and holding events at Garage gives deaf/Deaf people an additional opportunity for professional self-actualization. For example, some of the deaf/Deaf people mentioned above speak at conferences, hold training sessions and seminars outside Garage and participate in cultural projects. We are left to hope that the Russian art world will begin to accept and integrate the pluralism of voices both within the art industry and outside of it.

In connection with this, I would like to touch on the question of the role of the inclusive programs manager. The role of an employee who works specifically with inclusive programs in the institution is to initiate dialogue and act as a mediator between the institution and its deaf/Deaf audience, while also translating their social and linguistic values within the institution. An inclusive programs manager in an art institution becomes a kind of aggregator of initiatives: every deaf/Deaf visitor that we mentioned above brought their own unique contribution to Garage’s development. Access and inclusion are not just the new norm for a museum’s operation, but they are fundamental to a critical analysis by all interested parties of the specific nature of their work while assessing the needs, wishes, and abilities of a wide variety of audiences. In my work, there is a strong sense that this is only the beginning of the art institution’s long path toward inclusion. Among the challenges inherent to the art institution, we can note that a limited part of the museum team is often engaged in direct communication with the deaf/Deaf community—those that are directly connected to the institution’s inclusive projects. Besides this, we have yet to witness the appearance of a new type of curator from within the deaf/Deaf community, capable of becoming an agent of social changes in the museum, have the opportunity to influence decisions within the institution and emancipate and represent deaf/Deaf people without intermediaries (such as inclusive program managers or adaptation specialists). Perhaps Garage is preparing such an agent within its visitor community, unbeknownst to them. 

1. Project by Urs Fischer, YES (June 1 –21 August 2016), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, https://garagemca.org/ru/event/ urs-fischer-yes (26.10.2020).

2. Savina, М. (August 16 2016) Personal communication, correspondence, response from a participant in the elementary Russian Sign Language course.

3. Training session: ‘Experiencing the Museum: Deaf’ [Muzei oshchushchenii: glukhie] (20–21 September 2016), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, https://garagemca.org/ ru/event/experiencing-the-museum-deaf-visitors (26.10.2020).

4. Exhibition, Co-Thinkers [Edinomyshlenniki] (July 7 –9 September 2016), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, https://garagemca.org/ ru/exhibition/co-thinkers (26.10.2020).

5. Lecture by Polina Sineva, “Tell Me a Story” [Rasskazi mne istoriyu] (March 28 2019), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, https://garagemca.org/ ru/event/tell-me-a-story-a-lecture-by-polina-sineva (26.10.2020).

6. Special screening of Poor Folk: Kabakovs [Bednye lyudi. Kabakovy] and discussion for deaf/Deaf and hard of hearing visitors (February 21, 2019), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. https://garagemca.org/ru/ event/special-screening-and-discussion-of-poor-folk-kabakovs-for-deaf- and-hard-of-hearing-visitors (26.10.2020).

7. Sineva, P. (May 26 2020) Personal communication, email correspondence, Co-Thinkers.

8. Bobkova, S. (May 26 2020) Personal communication, email correspondence, deaf/Deaf tour guide training course.

9. Aliev, A. (February 5 2020) Personal communication, Garage studios.

10. Exhibition Infinite Ear (June 8 –2 September 2018), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. https://garagemca.org/ru/ exhibition/infinite-ear (26.10.2020).

11. Final concert as part of Infinite Ear (September 1 2018), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. https:// garagemca.org/ru/event/final-concert-of-the-exhibition-infine-ear (26.10.2020).

12. Presentation for the Signing Museums for Kids app (September 15 2019), Moscow, Russia. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. https://garagemca.org/ru/event/launch-of-the-signing-museums-for-kids- mobile-app (26.10.2020).

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