“All of us, you see, have two senses of sight, just as we have two senses of smell and taste and hearing. There is the outer sense, the highly developed one which we all use, and there is the inner one also. If only we could develop these inner senses of ours, then we could smell without our noses, taste without our tongues, hear without our ears and see without our eyes.”
– Imhrat Khan in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar by Roald Dahl
Without Eyes is an audio-sensory performance that employs verbal storytelling as a means to convey the potential possibilities (and limitations) of the written word.
Eight performers will read the same story through megaphones while sitting in a circle. Listeners must relinquish their sense of sight and agree to be blindfolded to participate in the event, where they can walk into the circle of readers and experience a chorus of voices from different vantage points within the circle. The resulting experience will force participants to navigate the space relying on their other—inner—senses as they experience the story telling of the readers. Onlookers will find the piece both odd and compelling, a multisensory experience for participants and viewers alike.
A graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design, Caitlind r.c. Brown is an artist and collaborator based out of Calgary, whose body of work encapsulates community engagement and reimagined public spaces. She is a founding member of WRECK CITY, artist-initiated project-turned-collective and curator of The House Project (2011). Brown is well known for her collaborations with fellow artist, Wayne Garret, in particular their collaborative installation CLOUD which has exhibited internationally as well as at Calgary’s Nuit Blanche, 2012.
Lane Shordee has collaborated with many artists, including Caitlind Brown, on projects including The House Project (2011), WRECK CITY (2013), Water Spiral (2014), and In the Belly of a Bear (2016). With a background in carpentry, construction, and landscape design, his practice spans the disciplines of painting, drawing, mixed-media installation, and video. Shordee was awarded a Visual Arts Grant by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in 2015 and received his BFA in drawing from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 2010. He recently completed a permanent public artwork with daniel j. kirk in Inglewood titled, Corridor.
Nikki Martens is a non-practicing artist, who spends her time teaching small humans about how great the world is (and isn’t). Receiving her BFA from the Alberta College of Art + Design in 2009, the majority of her career since has been in areas of facilitation, doodling, and Education.
Co-presenters
Community Partners
Without Eyes
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