Devlieger 2011
Devlieger, Patrick J. ‘Blindness/City: The local making of multisensorial public spaces.’ In Senses and the City: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Sensescapes, edited by Mădălina Diaconu et al. Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2011, pp. 87–98
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Page 89 —3. Looking back: two examples of historical dialoguing with the blind, leading to particular representations
Before entering into the specific dialogue that we favored in our workshop, I would like to focus on two examples that I have also discussed in our book Blindness and the multisensorial city (2006, 28-29). The examples come from paintings, the aura of which, according to Benjamin, comes from an involvement betweena spectator and the producer of the painting.
The first example is a 1998 painting by the Australian painter Susan Dorothea Whyte, entitled The Blind Woman of Annandale (acrylic on panel, 112 x 112 cm, for a reprint see Devlieger et al. 2006). In this painting we see central in the picture an old woman depicted in three different positions, pointing with a white cane and holding a shopping bag in her other hand. The outer points of the cane are connected with a dark blue. I interpreted this painting as the possibility of this blind woman, and blind people in general, as their capacity of making spaces. In this I was inspired in what I had read for the first time in an article by Constance Classen (1998) on lessons in aesthetics from the blind. In this article she points to the ways knowledge is built up cumulatively. The common example is that for example in the perception of a park, for a visually oriented person a picture of the park is given as far as the vision of the park reaches. From an overview of the park it is then possible to focus on particular details. For a blind person however, the here and now of the park happens. For the blind person sitting on a bench in the park, the park gradually happens as she feels with the coldness and humidity of the bench, the temperature with the skin, and the wind on the face. The sounds of the park reveal passers-by, children, etc.
However, when I entered in an email conversation with the artist and asked about the interpretation of the painting, I heard a story that spoke of admiration, compassion, and sadness. The artist explained that she had met the woman at a street crossing. Apparently, the woman had lost her orientation as she had gone out for a shopping trip and asked the artist whether she could tell her the name of the street crossing. The encounter had filled the artist with both admiration for the fact that she was independently going on a shopping trip but also intense compassion and sadness. As she depicted the woman in different positions, she took the limitations to be central, thus showing the person in a cloak, imprisoned, not being able to get out, while surrounding her life is passing by and rather unreachable. The delicate flowers, the cityscape, and even the letters written to her would not be reachable for her, while her own house attests to a destiny of poverty.
Before entering into the specific dialogue that we favored in our workshop, I would like to focus on two examples that I have also discussed in our book Blindness and the multisensorial city (2006, 28-29). The examples come from paintings, the aura of which, according to Benjamin, comes from an involvement betweena spectator and the producer of the painting.
The first example is a 1998 painting by the Australian painter Susan Dorothea Whyte, entitled The Blind Woman of Annandale (acrylic on panel, 112 x 112 cm, for a reprint see Devlieger et al. 2006). In this painting we see central in the picture an old woman depicted in three different positions, pointing with a white cane and holding a shopping bag in her other hand. The outer points of the cane are connected with a dark blue. I interpreted this painting as the possibility of this blind woman, and blind people in general, as their capacity of making spaces. In this I was inspired in what I had read for the first time in an article by Constance Classen (1998) on lessons in aesthetics from the blind. In this article she points to the ways knowledge is built up cumulatively. The common example is that for example in the perception of a park, for a visually oriented person a picture of the park is given as far as the vision of the park reaches. From an overview of the park it is then possible to focus on particular details. For a blind person however, the here and now of the park happens. For the blind person sitting on a bench in the park, the park gradually happens as she feels with the coldness and humidity of the bench, the temperature with the skin, and the wind on the face. The sounds of the park reveal passers-by, children, etc.
However, when I entered in an email conversation with the artist and asked about the interpretation of the painting, I heard a story that spoke of admiration, compassion, and sadness. The artist explained that she had met the woman at a street crossing. Apparently, the woman had lost her orientation as she had gone out for a shopping trip and asked the artist whether she could tell her the name of the street crossing. The encounter had filled the artist with both admiration for the fact that she was independently going on a shopping trip but also intense compassion and sadness. As she depicted the woman in different positions, she took the limitations to be central, thus showing the person in a cloak, imprisoned, not being able to get out, while surrounding her life is passing by and rather unreachable. The delicate flowers, the cityscape, and even the letters written to her would not be reachable for her, while her own house attests to a destiny of poverty.
