Performing Formats: HYPERLANDS

Abstract

This text discusses format as agent. It considers a "performing format" as a multiplicitous subject that "performs" a work’s context and constructs its situation in an expanded choreography of contingency, within specific frames of time and space. This text thinks through three main works of art in its analysis: curatorial project M.I/mi1glissé, also known as Groups and Individuals, directed by Australian, Berlin-based curator Joel Mu; [musical.(function Transform(){blau}*(euph.OR.i.[a](NGE)))], directed by sound and visual artist iruuu in Berlin; and TRANSCENDING, for Peace by Israeli choreographer-performer Lilach Livne, presented in the 20th Biennale of Sydney. These three projects—curatorial, theatrical, choreographic—relate through their multiple realisations as unending performances, the diverse forms of ‘landscape’ they become and how they reformulate themselves in ways that blur separations between their materials, thus producing generative questions for their visitors and performers, equally. This text asks how a work’s format can transform beyond its conventional boundaries, and considers that through a "hyper" relation to conventions, a work may open into a "hyper" space, beyond—yet from within—its limits.