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.