CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — It is noon on a cool, gray early spring day on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus. I am breathless, surveying my fellow travelers who, like me, have hiked up a winding staircase to a fourth-floor landing in the Architecture Building.
We sit quietly on benches, awaiting instructions from our host, Vancouver-based social practice artist Carmen Papalia.
We are here for an hour-long walking tour, the participatory performance artwork “Blind Field Shuttle.” With our eyes closed, we will follow a route the artist has been engineering all week.
Papalia’s socially engaged art addresses access to public space, art institutions and visual culture. The focus is on unlearning visual primacy and reconsidering our preconceptions and biases.
Papalia lines us up in single file and tells each of us to touch the shoulder or arm of the person in front of us. We must follow their lead and let them know when we need help.
Papalia walks down the line and gently slaps the outstretched hand of each person who has agreed to relay the words of caution that he'll shout out.
His instructions begin to shift our attention from visual to non-visual perceptions. The most important one is the last: “Keep your eyes closed for the entire walk.”
The line begins moving and we struggle to find a pace to keep us connected.
I can't tell if we are on a stairwell or in a room. Papalia's walking stick leads the way. He repeatedly bangs it against a metal can and calls, “Obstruction to your left!” Every other person in the line shouts, “Obstruction to your left!” I am near the end of the line, trying to hear my cue to yell out the words of caution while not falling over.
Tap, tap, tap; we follow the sound of Papalia's cane.
"Low branch!"
"Loose cement!"
"Obstruction on your right!"
The words echo back through the wobbly line.
We shuffle along, expanding and contracting like an accordion, tugging at each other’s shoulders and arms, cooperating, trusting and mumbling our fears of tripping.
Someone yells that there is a split. Papalia reconnects the members of the broken line and says, “We are a self-healing organism!”
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
We keep moving,
but at a slower pace.
What a spectacle we must be making, I think. We’re like a giant moving snake sculpture. As we progress, we become more aware of the work needed to keep this organism alive.
We hear a skateboarder skimming by us on the left. They seem dangerously close.
The sun comes out. Its brightness warms my face, followed by a light misty rain. What a moment to be alive, I think.
Soon we are told to open our eyes. We are in a circle under the McFarland Carillon bell tower on the South Quadrangle. We warmly clap, smiling at each other.
There is light chatter among us as we leave. An educational designer who creates software for low-vision learners tells me the experience will transform his work.
I am impressed by how the artist transformed us into an interdependent organism, engaging in the collaborative use of our exquisite human tools of attention, time, trust and imagination.
Participating in the artwork was uncomfortable. It challenged our perceptions and inspired compassion for those with other abilities and ways of being. Upon further research, I learn that Papalia considers the walks an equalizing gesture, introducing participants to something of potential value.
He says that it is empowering how the walk disrupts public space, and I agree with him. "Perceptual mobility" is a liberating experience of space.
We are not the first group to perform this piece, nor, thankfully, the last.