Oltre l’accesso. Vocalità, ascolto e corpoliteracy come critica istituzionale

Abstract

This article investigates how contemporary artistic practices and museum dispositifs are reshaping regimes of listening, perception, and participation within cultural institutions, drawing on Jonathan Sterne’s Phenomenology of Impairment, Brandon LaBelle’s reflections on sonic agency, and the notion of crip time. Through a comparative analysis of three case studies – Infinite Ear (2018), Delinking– Relinking (2021–2026), and aneducation (2017) – the article examines how sound, vocality, and divergent temporalities operate as critical tools for rethinking the sensory and political hierarchies that structure museum experience. The aim is to show how these practices not only deconstruct the assumption of a universal, able, and readily available perceptual subject, but also open up multisensory, relational, and situated forms of knowledge capable of transforming the museum from a site of transmission into a space of co-production of knowledge. This is not merely a matter of including new voices, but of transforming the very conditions of institutional listening: the capacity to welcome uncertain, non-standardized voices that diverge from normative codes of clarity or authority.