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Terry Fox: The Labyrinth and Other Works  from the catalog essay “Terry Fox” by Constance Lewallen*
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Another European installation/performance, called L'Unita, or Azione per uno Bacile (Action for a Bowl), took place at the Modern Art Agency, Lucio Amelio’s gallery, in Naples. The Naples piece was particularly notable for being one of the last in which Fox manipulated organic materials in performance and one of the first in which he referred directly to the labyrinth of the Cathedral at Chartres. The labyrinth, which Fox encountered in the summer of 1972, was to dominate his thoughts until 1978.
The labyrinth is made of blue and white paving stones set onto the stone floor of the cathedral. It is a unicursal path winding in thirty-four turns through eleven concentric rings to the center. It is 12.87 meters in diameter and has 552 steps following its course from the entrance to the center: Although it exists physically, on the floor of the cathedral, it is not really an object at all; it is a metaphor (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982). The unicursal labyrinth dates from ancient times and, unlike a puzzle maze, which has dead ends, it is undeviating: The center is reached inevitably. Medieval worshippers are presumed to have traced the 180-foot path of the Chartres labyrinth on their hands and knees until they reached the center, thus symbolizing the difficult progress along the path to Heaven. For Fox, the labyrinth’s metaphorical implications were stunning: This labyrinth was a revelation to me in many ways. I had undergone cycles of health, sickness, health, sickness, with attendant hospitalization, release, hospitalization for eleven years. The thirty-four turns leading to the center of the labyrinth also corresponded to these cycles. I had just gone through a major operation that finished once and for all these cycles, and seemed to have reached the center of the labyrinth. My energies up to this point had been involved in reaching this center; and I decided to reverse this process and work my way out by basing all my future work on the labyrinth at Chartres (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982). Back in San Francisco, Fox began intense work on a series of labyrinth-inspired works that he eventually showed in 1977 at Site, a local alternative space. All the pieces relate to specific aspects of the Chartres model. The sheer formal variety of these works, all made from humble materials, testifies to the fecundity of the labyrinth metaphor. Fox subtitled the ensemble Metaphors for Falling, and insisted that “all the pieces are such metaphors, just as to walk the actual labyrinth would disorient you, make you dizzy or even, perhaps, fall. The completely uninitiated might even trip on the piton at the entrance to the labyrinth. Only the steadfast can persevere” (quoted in Knute Stiles, “Terry Fox: Meanders,” Artforum, summer 1977). The key work of the series, called, simply, A Metaphor, and representing the cathedral itself, is composed of two identical wooden stools stacked feet to feet, one round seat forming the base, the other, the top. Suspended from a string between them is a diagram of the labyrinth and nailed to the wall is a copy of San Francisco magazine, with the following text by Fox:
In order to grasp this object. you need to make a few visual adjust- ments. Imagine the lower stool to be half-embedded in the earth. and pretend an underground river flows along the floor and through the center of the stool. A well rises from the river along the string to ground level, halfway up the stool. This well is covered by a dolmen made of large stones. Its vertical stone walls support a single massive stone as roof under such tremendous pressure that it is taut and resonant. The dolmen is, in turn, covered by an enormous mound of earth whose apex lies under the object at the center of the string.
On top of this mound is a huge stone bell, the cathedral at Chartres, whose vault reaches to the seat of the stool. The string connects the vault with the water table of the underground river. In the center of the string, exactly thirty-seven meters from the top of the vault and thirty-seven meters from the water table of the well, is the labyrinth. This labyrinth is connected by the string to the powerful currents both in the underground river and in the atmosphere surrounding the roof of the cathedral. These currents pass as vibrations along the string from both ends to the center of the labyrinth. . . . There is a piton connected to a metal ring embedded in the first step of the labyrinth and a red Maltese cross painted on the vault above. Movement through the labyrinth forms a pattern in the air, tracing a triptych of interconnected crosses (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982). Fox believes the architects knew of the underground river and calculated the height of the cathedral accordingly, since the water table is precisely the same distance below the ground as the top of the cathedral is above it. Following this logic, the labyrinth could also represent the radiating circles caused by a stone dropping in the water. The piton (a metal spike with an eye, through which a rope can be secured) was represented in the exhibition by an eyebolt and ring embedded in the wood floor. As at Chartres, this marked the beginning of the journey. Fox set this trap for unsuspecting spectators so that, in tripping over the ring, they would be shaken into a new awareness, in preparation for experiencing the full installation. Pendulums, which resemble the movement and rhythm of a labyrinth, figure throughout the series. In one work, a lead ball hangs on a string from the ceiling, barely touching a half*#45;filled glass of water on the floor. When the viewer swings the pendulum, it rotates closer and closer to the glass, and, as it runs down, gently hits the glass with a bell-Iike tone. Hugging the glass, it then switches directions over and over again in reversing arcs, like the Chartres labyrinth. In another, the largest piece in the series, a lead-ball pendulum on a wire makes electrical connections with eleven electrical points on an inclined arc, each of which activates a motor that shakes an attached rattlesnake’s rattler. Fox once called this work The Warning Sound of the Shocked Labyrinth. Thus, sound, too, plays a role: the snake rattle, the warning, and the musical clink of the ball against the glass of water—a gentle finale to the voyage of the pendulum. Still another piece included a small pendulum on a table, like a miniature fishing pole, along with a drawing of a circle in four quadrants and a book open to an explanation of how the spectator can use these devices for autosuggestion. Fox experimented in drawings with alternate configurations of the labyrinth: changing the turns to ninety-degree angles, which opens up the pattern and forms three crosses; drawing it linearly on a long piece of adding-machine paper; and so on. These drawings were scattered on the floor of the gallery, to be picked up and examined. He also portrayed the geometric pattern of the path on a transparent cylinder, and placed it in a jar. Fox further explored the motif in several video and audio works. A sound work, The Labyrinth Scored for the Purrs of 11 Different Cats, which accompanied Metaphors for Falling, is one of two scores Fox has created to date. The idea of describing the labyrinth through cat purrs may seem an absurd interpretive reach, although completely consistent with Fox’s other variations on his theme. In the tape, the rhythm of the breathing purrs echoes the rhythm of a slow walking pace: For this tape, I recorded the continuous purrs of eleven different cats. These eleven tapes were then mixed (joined) to follow the exact path of the labyrinth. Each cat represented one of the eleven concentric rings. The steps into the labyrinth were changed into ten-second segments of purring. The thirty-four turns were changed into ten seconds of overlapping purrs as the path moved from one cat (ring) into the next. The tape exactly follows the path of the labyrinth, and moves into stereo to the right or left speaker as the labyrinth path swings right or left. The center is the simultaneous purring of all eleven cats (Terry Fox: Metaphorical Instruments, 1982). To make Two Turns, a video installation that curator David Ross commissioned for the Long Beach Museum of Art, Fox scratched the labyrinth onto a blackened plate of glass. Fox placed his videocamera four feet away from the etched glass in a dark box. He then directed the beam of a slide projector through the glass labyrinth at the camera lens again and again, until he burned the pattern onto the vidicon tube of the camera. The labyrinth image thus is superimposed on everything Fox shot and is more or less apparent, depending on the light value of the background. The tape is divided into two parts. In each, the camera, pointing downward, records a descent downstairs, a walk outside, and a return to the starting point. After the first walk, in daylight, there’s a scene of rising smoke, which makes visible the sunbeams shining through the etched labyrinth plate that was set into the window of Fox’s loft. The second walk, taken at night, is followed by a close-up of water dripping into a basin, reflecting the leaking rafters, the source of the water, and the sound of rain. The critic Michael Welling compares Two Turns to Fox’s other work in video: “The rising smoke, expanding ripples, falling light, and cascading water exteriorize a kind of video ontology. Each phenomenon is like or demonstrates video process. Where the performance tapes, Children’s Tapes, and, partially, Incision refer to actions outside the eye and vision, Two Turns implicates and embodies vision created with process and consciousness(MIchael Welling, “Terry Fox Videotapes,” Artweek, March 1975).” Fox’s obsession with the labyrinth came to a formal conclusion in a piece made for the Podio del Mondo per l’ Arte, in Middleburg, Holland, in 1978: This is an open structure consisting of thin pillars with a roof over a part of the old town market square. The floor is of the same paving stones as those of the open-air market. The labyrinth of the cathedral at Chartres was cut into a large stone by a local stonecutter. A local dowser dowsed in a tightening spiral around the Podio until his willow rod discovered moving water beneath the stones. At this point, the stonecutter placed the labyrinth stone into the pavement, where it rests permanently (Terry Fox, unpublished notes, University Art Museum, Berkeley). Constance Lewallen’s essay “Terry Fox” includes
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