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FEATURED TEXTS, RESEARCH PAPERS OR PROJECTS | Editors Ana Miriam Rebelo, Maria Neto

Vol. 2 No. 1 (2024): scopio Magazine AAI-Exploring Contemporary Realities

Blind man’s bluff with open eyes

  • Johannes Binotto

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Abstract

The text reflects on the experience of participating in Lukas Sander’s video walk, comparing it to the childhood game “Blind Man’s Bluff.” In the game, being blindfolded transforms familiar surroundings into an unstable and disorienting landscape where the central question shifts from “Where are the others?” to “Where am I?” The author argues that Sander’s work induces a similar disorientation, paradoxically enacted “with open eyes.” Guided solely by a disembodied voice through headphones, the participant navigates urban and semi-hidden spaces, experiencing uncertainty, vulnerability, and a regression to a childlike state of dependence and unsteady movement. The loss of auditory self-awareness intensifies the destabilisation, prompting even attempts to record one’s own footsteps as a form of reassurance or self-preservation. Throughout the walk, reality becomes ambiguous: sounds blur between environment and recording; spaces feel at once familiar and estranged. By the time the participant returns to the starting point, the landscape is unchanged, yet the experience has altered the self. The text thus explores how Sander’s work transforms perception, orientation and identity through deliberate sensory displacement.