Rehearsal of a Performance that Will Never Happen treats rehearsal not as preparation for a finished artwork, but as the artwork itself. Across three performances, material is repeated, altered, abandoned and reconstructed, allowing failure and uncertainty to actively determine what happens next.
At the centre is the relationship between Norman Mine and Dino Desica. Norman attempts to direct and construct the work while Dino resists, misunderstands and destabilises it. Their competing intentions expose the tension between artist and fictional persona: who is directing whom, and at what point does the character begin to acquire an agency of his own?
The architecture of The Albany Studio became part of this instability. A large wall mirror reflected Dino, the audience and the performance simultaneously, collapsing the separation between performer and spectator and multiplying the act of watching.
By withholding the promised final performance, the work leaves itself deliberately unresolved. Rehearsal becomes a continuous state of becoming, where repetition, failure and improvisation are not obstacles to completion but the conditions through which the work exists.
Performance: Dino Desica
Presented at: Deptford X Fringe Festival, 2019
Venue: The Albany Studio, London
Photography / Video: Lori E. Allen & Prasanth Visweswaran
Sound: Doug Haywood & Lottie Loupoulet
