What comes to mind when you think of a maze? An escape room? A cornfield? An experiment with mice? A recently launched interdisciplinary collaboration between the Art and Drama & Dance departments at UVA answers the question in a way that simultaneously incorporates and obliterates these traditional definitions. Working under the name nonhumanities, the collaboration began when UVA Studio Art colleagues Anna Hogg and Conrad Cheung decided they wanted to make work together and went looking for ways where their practices might intersect.  

“I’m not even sure where the maze idea first came from,” Hogg said, “but Conrad was interested in the maze as a spatial genre for investigation, and I was interested in the maze’s potential for multiple narrative pathways. As we thought more about it, we both felt strongly that the project needed an element of performance.”  

They found the perfect partner in Katie Schetlick (dance artist and Assistant Professor of Dance). “A lot of the work I have been doing recently involves thinking about performance spaces outside of your typical theatrical structure,” Schetlick said, “and particularly about performance spaces that are embedded in something like a maze.” 

After a short time of mining their common ground and disparate disciplines, a project that combines installation, video, sound, wearable elements, and performance was born. The group explored how familiar spatial genres like the maze might be reimagined as sites for alternative modes of sociality and embodiment, reconfigured dynamics of power, multiplications of narrative, processes of cooperation and community, and more.  

“What would it be like,” the collective’s description reads, “to suspend, for a moment, the knowability, nameability, and function of typologized spaces — parking lots, gardens, malls — so that forms of nameless playing, wandering, and communing might be allowed to flourish? Participatory performances that encourage, mirror, and archive the movement and interaction of attendees in and around the installation punctuate each iteration in the series.”

It would not be long before the trio would have to put their combined passion, inspiration, and a heavy helping of elbow grease together to put their ideas to the test in front of and incorporating audiences. After debuting an iteration for four days on the first floor of Ruffin Hall, the collective applied to and was accepted into the two-day InLight Festival in Richmond, which presented a whole new set of challenges and opportunities for re-imagination.  

They were shown a number of different spaces on Broad Street and chose a former auto body shop because of its size and because it is a rather curious Richmond spot on the National Register of Historic Places. “The way we had fantasized about this early on,” Cheung said, “was as a series of sites we could respond to where we would come across a certain set of conditions with real cultural and political specificity and ask what it meant to grapple in real-time with that.” 

The Broad Street site had plenty of grappling opportunities. Less suited than Ruffin was to a traditional maze due partly to its size, the abandoned shop called for an installation that, in many ways, stretched the maze concept. One way they accomplished this was by dressing performers in wearable costumes shaped like variously sized accordions and appendages that created a chain-like effect and then inviting the audience to join them in simultaneously creating and blurring the boundaries. 

“Katie would reach out a hand to people,” Hogg said, “and they would become a part of it. There was no way to predict what was going to happen – the bodies just became a part of this malleable structure. We even had a limbo going at one point.”  

We wanted to think about the ways that these performers could use their bodies to change some of the ways that mazes may appear,” Schetlick added, “so they could shift and be dynamic and be more in conversation with the bodies moving through them as opposed to restricting their pathways.” 

The performers, who were all paid for their participation, included a combination of UVA dance students and recent alumni. “It was really exciting to be able to pay them,” Schetlick said, “because as a minor, we are always looking for professional performance opportunities, and most times, we are limited to a theatrical environment. They really embraced and were energized by the opportunity to create in this nontraditional environment.”

Navigating space was not the only obstacle. It’s time-honored partner time pitched in as well. “We were notified by InLight in September,” Hogg said, “so we had a little under two months to build and move everything.” All hands were on deck, the group agreed, including students, friends, and family both on Grounds and in Richmond.  

Reflecting on the whirlwind experience, punctuated with two days of exhibition that drew impressive crowds and lasted late into each night, Cheung said, “It was a great example of how some of the languages we use in our respective disciplines may not be available to those working in others. For example, Katie has been working in improvisation for a long time. In Studio Art, we rarely talk in terms of improvisation. We started thinking about all the ways we could bring our respective languages to bear on the project.”

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overall project description from the artists:

point to touch, to touchpoint                                                                                                                                                                                                                      fall low up lands, low fall lands up                                                                                                                                                                                                        you resemble the wall, you resemble the garden

point to touch, to touchpoint... is a project series by nonhumanities (Conrad Cheung, Anna Hogg, Katie Schetlick). Through installation, video, sound, wearable, and performance, the series asks how familiar spatial genres like the maze might be reimagined as sites for alternative modes of sociality and embodiment, reconfigured dynamics of power, multiplications of narrative, processes of cooperation and community, and more. What it would be like to suspend, for a moment, the knowability, nameability, and function of typologized spaces — parking lots, gardens, malls — so that forms of nameless playing, wandering, and communing might be allowed to flourish? Participatory performances that encourage, mirror, and archive the movement and interaction of attendees in and around the installation punctuate each iteration in the series.

sound design by Adrian Wood; costume construction by Annie Temmink; assistant camera by Kaitlyn Paston

with thanks to many, including Lindsey Arturo, Jasmine Brown, Kathy Buchet, Unicia Buster, Nicole Chakeris, Emily Daniel, Kevin Everson, Robin Helme, Jay Hogg, Kate Hogg, Paula Hogg, Kellyn Kusyk, Rachel Lane, Hyebin Lee, Jolinna Li, Laura Mellusi, Adrian Moore, Neal Rock, Eric Schmidt, and Emma Todd