Dark Play

Invisible labyrinths via text and colored PVC cones.

Size variable

Invoking the metaphor of labyrinths—spatial experiences where there are no choices to make, only a path to follow—Dark Play uses the everyday wayfinding objects of traffic cones to move viewers through a series of impasses in reproductive and sexual justice, staging law's dead ends as walkable choreographies.

The work consists of three invisible labyrinths. Each explores a set of contradictions related to reproduction and is marked by a different color cone. Cones like these are used in various contexts to give direction, draw attention, or give warning. To walk the labyrinths, follow the numbers sequentially one color at a time.

Labyrinth 1, the black cones, explore the relationship between speech action, performative enactment, and spells. Labyrinth 2, the white cones, examine the contradictions of the medical term “pre-pregnant.” And Labyrinth 3, the red cones stage the legal relationship between reproductive care and sexual assault.

Dark Play takes its name from a concept in performance studies coined by Richard Schechner, in which the performer knows she is performing but the audience does not. The term also invokes the “dark arts” or clandestine powers attributed to witches as reproductive criminals: women who, as described feminist theorist Silvia Federici, not only often helped others manage their reproductive health, but whose speech—insofar as they possessed the power to cast spells or curses—possessed the power to act.