This event is part of our public + programming
Blind Field Shuttle (2010–present) is a collaborative walking performance in which Carmen Papalia guides large groups of participants on a non-visual walk through urban or rural environments. Standing in a single-file line behind the artist, participants hold onto the arm of the person in front of them and agree to keep their eyes closed for the duration of the roughly hour-long walk. An extension of Papalia’s personal walking practice, the performance invites participants to exercise their non-visual senses while collectively negotiating movement, obstacles, and the cultural context in which vision is dominant. As participants move together, the work reveals both the barriers created by visual primacy and the interdependent support networks that underpin disability culture. Blind Field Shuttle challenges assumptions about disability and accessibility by treating disability as a revelatory, valuable experience and accessibility as a “temporary, collectively-held space.”
Participants meet at the MAI Café – Walking circuit to be determined.
Participant accessibility:
You must wear comfortable shoes suitable for walking over varied terrain and be able to walk in a single-file line while holding onto the arm of the person in front of you. A secure area is available at the MAI where you can store bags and personal items during the performance.
If you are a Deaf or D/deaf participant, ASL interpretation can be provided (please fill up the registration form and specify your needs).
Participants who use mobility devices or who cannot participate in the single-file walking arrangement will be offered an alternative one-on-one or small-group, non-visual experience of the work.
ABOUT+
Carmen Papalia is a nonvisual social practice artist whose performances, public interventions, and curatorial projects explain aspects of disability culture, such as interdependence, de-medicalization, and creative accessibility. His practice enlivens his 2015 Open Access manifesto—a set of guidelines that undermines dominant institutional frameworks by approaching accessibility as a “temporary, collectively held space.” Often emphasizing the possibilities of living on one’s own terms, his work offers a remedy for the complications of cultural ableism.
Papalia’s performances, videos, installations, and curatorial projects have been presented across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Korea, and Japan. He is a recipient of the 2020 Sobey Art Award.
His current work includes Up in the Clouds, Down in the Valley, a full-length documentary about creative accessibility and disability culture that he is co-writing with Vancouver filmmaker Carmen Pollard. The film follows Papalia’s activities between 2022 and 2025 and is set to premiere in fall 2026.