What speed of carrier signal? If it is at the 38KHz or so that typical I remotes use then you could build your own op amp based amplifier to go behind a visible wavelength photodiode/phototransistor.
Or, you might look it to whether you can get hold of material, in the right form factor, which can fluoresce in IR when excited by optical wavelengths. That sort of stuff exists for turning UV in to visible wavelengths, like on the coverings of tube lights, I'm pretty sure there could be a visible to IR version, but it might be pricey or hard to find. Then you could just turn the visible signal in to IR to feed to a typical remote coontrol style detector.