point to touch, to touchpoint

fall low up lands, low fall lands up

you resemble the wall, you resemble the garden

point to touch... is a site-responsive, reconfigurable installation by the artist collective nonhumanities.

Our aim is to produce a structure that looks but does not function like a maze: we wish to open up the maze's one limited mode of understanding and participation (i.e., single-narrative, goal-directed exploration) to allow for plural forms of understanding and participation. We also wish to undo the top-down design process of the maze by building into the structures modular and movable sections, such that the public is involved in the co-creation of the space, the co-shaping of multiple narrative pathways, and by extension the co-authorship of their fellow participants' experience. And finally, we wish to uncouple the key sensory tactic of the maze — disorientation — from the goal-directedness of the maze so that disorientation might instead be a productive vector for leisurely wonder, desire, and fantasy.

In addition to being participatory and reconfigurable, our installation is activated by a series of improvised performances sourced from the responsive and playful movement proposals of attendees in and around the ‘maze’. A sole performer moves throughout the space during the duration of the festival, confusing the boundary between reactor and actant inside the installation. The resulting durational performance simultaneously archives and stimulates emerging modes of gathering, inhabiting, and relating.

Embedded in the structure is a series of video installations of performances at two different maze sites in Virginia (Estouteville Farm and Luray Caverns), featuring processes of relation between human, nearly human, and nonhuman subjects. The videos critically engage with the varied histories of the maze, particularly its tie to moral narratives and its role in choreographing and thus codifying acceptable forms of human behavior and movement through space.

Our foremost desire for this installation and performance series is to propagate possibilities for unsettled gatherings. Through experiential, embodied engagement we aim to develop in participants new attunements to the ways spatial genres like the maze choreograph movement, curate behavior, promote or complicate sociality, express dynamics of cooperation and power, enable the imagination of narratives, and allow us to feel acute forms of alienation, community, tenderness, and play.

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nonhumanities is an art collective consisting of Conrad Cheung, Anna Hogg, and Katie Schetlick. nonhumanities works at the social and affective intersections of body, play, narrative, architecture, and interspecies living.

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Installations

Second Iteration:
InLight Festival 2023, Richmond, VA
November 3-4, 2023 

17 x 91.5 x 50.5 ft

existing architecture, pine, poplar, steel trusses, vinyl, acrylic sheets, printed spandex, polyester stuffing, projectors, speakers, HD videos (single-, two-, and three-channel), looped sound, performance score, cabling, hardware, lights

featuring performances by Sara Burtner, Elena Dimitri, Nandhini Kathiravan, Maya Koehn-Wu, Meixin Yu, Paige Werman, Gabrielle Richardson, Katie Schetlick, and various members of the public

sound design by Adrian Wood

costume construction by Annie Temmink

First Iteration:
Ruffin Hall, 1st floor, Charlottesville, VA
October 16-20, 2023

8.25 x 19 x 25 ft

existing architecture, pine, poplar, stainless steel, acrylic sheets, vinyl, silicone, printed spandex, polyester stuffing, projectors, speakers, HD videos (single- and two-channel), looped sound, performance score, cabling, hardware

featuring performances by Katie Baer Schetlick, Katelyn Hale Wood, and Rachel Lane
sound design by Adrian Wood
costume construction by Annie Temmink 

UVA Art Department
1708 Gallery
Lindsey Arturo
Jasmine Brown
Kathy Buchet
Unicia Buster
Nicole Chakeris
Emily Daniel

Kevin Jerome Everson
Robin Helme
Jay Hogg
Kate Hogg
Paula Hogg
Kellyn Kusyk
Rachel Lane
Hyebin Lee

Jolinna Li
Adrian Moore
Laura Mellusi
Kaitlyn Paston
Neal Rock
Eric Schmidt
Emma Todd