Event Description
Blind Field Shuttle is a non-visual walking tour in which participants line up behind the artist, link arms, and agree to shut their eyes for a roughly hour-long walk. Papalia describes the experience as an opportunity for the participant to unlearn visual primacy and use their non-visual senses as a primary way of knowing the world. The project grew out of the artist’s choice to describe himself as a “non-visual learner” and exists as one in a series of related works that highlights the unseen bodies of knowledge in non-visual spaces.
Please register for this event by March 17: go.illinois.edu/Papalia
Access Notes: Please wear comfortable walking shoes. If you cannot participate due to an impairment that makes it difficult for you to hold onto the person in front of you, please email elizas2@illinois.edu to coordinate an alternative experience with Carmen during his residency. ASL interpretation will be provided. Please email elizas2@illinois.edu if you have any additional access needs.
About the Artist: Carmen Papalia
Carmen Papalia is a non-visual social practice artist with chronic and episodic pain. He uses organizing strategies and improvisation to address his access to public spaces, art institutions and visual culture. His work, which takes forms ranging from collaborative performance to public intervention, is a response to the harms of the Medical Model of Disability. Papalia has exhibited and performed internationally at venues such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, Tate Liverpool, and the Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity.