Lykourgos Porfyris: Blind Wise Man

In recent years, a discussion on creating accessibility modules has started in museums, galleries, and performing art centers in order for them to become more inclusive towards marginalized groups. What if we were to imbue accessibility into our artistic practice?

“Blind Wise Man” is a stage performance/ musical monologue that treats accessibility as embedded in the artists’ practice rather than as an addition of accessibility modules. The performance reveals discriminatory stereotypes concerning disability and seeks potential methods of resistance against ableist neoliberal systems.

The work is a timeless and spaceless fiction following the journey of a visually impaired albino into past, present and future landscapes of oppression. The performance questions: How does religion demonize the “other” and impose politics of control on marginalized bodies? How does technology and medicine work on “fixing” and normalizing non-conforming bodies instead of developing more accessible platforms? How do western societies marginalize groups by deeming them monstrous in order to establish their humanistic ideas?

Through these questions, the artist is seeking to find forms of resistance and alternative ways of seeing, escaping, and uprising against heteronormability.

During my two-month research period at Onassis AiR, I developed the first two chapters of “Blind Wise Man”: “The Time and The Space” and “The Holy Cow and The Filthy Pig”. “The Time and The Space” starts with an exploration of the concepts of darkness/blindness and sightedness/light in religious scripts, examining how religious leaders have used these concepts to enforce politics of control against marginalized bodies. The goal here is not to criticize faith itself but to shed light on how religious scripts have been wielded by those in power to instill fear. Have these superstitious politics of fear evolved into the eugenic politics of the humanist era? In “The Holy Cow and The Filthy Pig”, I examine disability, blindness, and monstrosity, exploring how liberal and neoliberal societies have established humanism through the demonization and/or fetishization of the “other”. I draw on critical disability theory and personal experiences, in order to understand the differences and similarities between these two forms of marginalization. How do they shape the way others view disabled bodies, and how do we, as disabled individuals, perceive ourselves through the lens of ableist scrutiny? Finally, I pose the “classic philosophical” question: Is the monster charming or disgusting? Or could it be both?

The research is activated through a musical performative installation, which consists of a multichannel soundscape and a video projection of large subtitles illustrating the narrator’s storytelling and singing. The sound is combined with blinding or dim atmospheric lighting synchronized to the sound and the text. In this work, I used accessibility strategies as an integral part of my practice and not as a mere module to seem accessibility-friendly. This approach allowed me to be more honest, both to myself as a person with impaired vision and to my community. The sound serves as the primary tool for illustrating the landscapes and timescapes depicted in the work, while the lighting responds to the audio, offering an abstract image of the narrated situations. The large subtitles follow the narrator’s voice but also act as a protest against the current trend in contemporary film, where text is often minimized for aesthetic purposes.

Since sound is one of the most guiding elements in this piece, I chose to blend old and contemporary sonic elements in order to evoke the effect of a timeless soundscape. I merged futuristic synthesizer tones, commonly heard in contemporary pop music, with traditional instruments and polyphonic or Byzantine-style choral singing. For the narration, I opted for a low-toned voice to create the sense of an intimate space, while introducing the audience to the unintimate soundscapes and landscapes that unfold within the work.