Blind Field Shuttle with Carmen Papalia

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. The walk is organised in collaboration with the University of Zurich.

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.

This event is in collaboration with the research project “Rethinking Art History through Disability” at the University of Zurich: www.disability-arthist.net.

• Please register for this event by October: kunstvermittlung@mgb.ch
• Please wear comfortable walking shoes.
• Please email: info@migrosmuseum.ch if you have access requirements.
• The walking tour will start at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst.