Carolyn Lazard's Long Take at ICA Philadelphia critiques access tools through dance for camera

Carolyn Lazard's exhibition Long Take at ICA Philadelphia, on view through 9 July, critiques standard accessibility tools like subtitles as reductive. The show features three interconnected works: Surround Sound (2022) with vinyl-lined floors evoking a black-box theatre, Leans, Reverses (2022) with speakers playing breath and foot thuds, and Institutional Seat (2022) with a bench facing monitors. Dancer Jerron Herman's performance is translated into spoken word by poet Joselia Rebekah Hughes, captioned on screens. Lazard draws from dance for camera, a form from the 1960s and 1970s that archived choreography for film, to argue for access as true translation rather than mere description. Her practice, including A Recipe for Disaster (2018) which reworked Julia Child's The French Chef, historically addresses institutional failures in accessibility and chronic illness politics. However, the exhibition's focus on remediation obscures its theoretical framework, making the works emphasize process over potential. Lazard's broader aim is to reformulate artworks for diverse audiences without reducing their ambiguity.