CARTOGRAPHY

CARTOGRAPHY CONNECTS AUDIENCES TO REFUGEE STORIES THROUGH INTERACTIVE TECHNOLOGY AND STORYTELLING

CARTOGRAPHY, a “stunning” (The New York Times) and timely theatrical work that follows five young refugees searching for a new place to call home, was created in collaboration with The company of CARTOGRAPHY (L-R) includes Janice Amaya, Noor Hamdi, Malaika Uwamahoro, Mason Artist-in- Vuyo Sotashe, and Victoria Nassif. Residence Kaneza Schaal and writer/illustrator Christopher Myers, drawing on their work with refugee youth from around the world. The interactive performance on October 2, 2021, at the Center for the Arts combined visual arts, storytelling, filmmaking, sound sensor technology, and even audience members' cell phones. Embedded at Mason for the week before the performance to engage with Mason students and the greater community as part of her residency, Kaneza Schall explained, “CARTOGRAPHY grew out of our work in Munich 2016 with young people who came to the city on their own from around the world. Earlier that year, The New York Times had reported 30,000 people were arriving in Munich each day. We asked ourselves what we had to offer, as artists, to this moment. We worked with kids from Mali, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Eretria, Nigeria, and Syria. They had crossed oceans on inflatable rafts, walked through forests, hidden themselves in the holds of cargo trucks.” Schall said at the end of their work with those students, “We asked the group what should we do next, what do they want from us? They said, 'We want a place to be seen.' After spending so long having to hide, where invisibility was part of survival, they said we should create places for kids like them to be seen.” Of CARTOGRAPHY’s combination of conventional storytelling with interactive video and sound technology, Schall explains,

“For the children and families who have migrated, especially those criss-crossing the Mediterranean, the sea itself functions as a mystical, untethered character like the unpredictable gods of Greek tragedy. We understand the ocean itself as a character and embody it onstage, having actors control the intensity of the waves and wind with the timbre of their voices and movements, thus inverting the experience of most migrants who find themselves tossed about by the sea.”

And whereas many performances request for cell phones to be shut off for the duration, Schall notes the importance of the technology’s specific integration into their storytelling. "Cell phones have become increasingly integrated with the fabric of everyday life, from mapping to financial institutions, from being in constant contact with loved ones to finding resources in resourcepoor environments. Nowhere is this more evident than in the lives of contemporary migrants who may do without food or water but need their cell phones as a resource before all others.”

“With the Interactive Media Laboratory at the AbuDhabi Arts Center, we built an interactive mapping platform that allows the live audience to map their own personal histories of movement onto our stage through a closed network server. Thus, every member in the audience is invited to consider their own family’s history of movement, whether recent or generations removed, in the ongoing continuum of migration.”

During her time in residency, Schall also worked with Mason’s Game Design Program and Virginia Serious Game Institute (VSGI) to develop technology for a new performance piece, which premiered at the Walker Arts Center in January.

Through CARTOGRAPHY, Schall powerfully reminded audience members: “Whether recent or many generations past, we are all part of the history of human migration which has brought us to this historical moment.”

Co-creator of CARTOGRAPHY and Mason Artist-in-Residence Kaneza Schaal