Performance

Exploring Identity, Desire, Vulnerability

Dino Desica is a fictional performer and long-term persona developed through Norman Mine’s practice. Driven by the desire to become an actor, Dino has built a parallel life through auditions, self-tapes, acting classes, commercial work and live performance.
Through humour, vulnerability, improvisation and audience participation, his performances explore the unstable boundary between acting and everyday life, and the desire to be seen, recognised and loved.

19 June 2026 Performance

Self-Tape for a Self-Love – 2026

Chisenhale Dance Space, London · Live performance · 40 min

Self-Tape for a Self-Love follows Dino Desica through the repetitive routine of trying to become an actor: castings, auditions, recording self-tapes and continually presenting himself for the possibility of being selected. Moving between the formats of a workshop, stand-up comedy and instructional demonstration, Dino guides the audience through the process of making a self-tape. Acting exercises, scripted scenes, posing, physical routines and a cappella songs gradually disrupt the apparent structure of the demonstration. What begins as an attempt to show how a self-tape is made becomes an exploration of the labour and solitude behind Dino’s ambition. Prepared material collides with improvisation, failure and genuine responses, revealing the uncertainty behind continually constructing an image of yourself for someone else to assess. The work connects Dino’s professional desire to become an actor with a more personal search for visibility, recognition and validation. Concept: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Presented at: DIY Night, Chisenhale Dance Space, London Date: 19 June 2026 Duration: 40 min Photography: Pablo Larrosa

2026, The Divine, London, Live performance, 35 min  Performance

Loved by You – 2026

Marilyn Monroe, queer desire and the search for love in the age of apps

Loved by You begins with Marilyn Monroe, one of Dino Desica’s earliest queer inspirations, and her public image as a figure shaped by desire, vulnerability and the need to be loved. Rather than impersonating Monroe, Dino uses her as a point of departure to examine what the search for love looks like in his own contemporary experience. Structured around a live self-tape, the performance moves between personal material, improvisation and a cappella fragments of songs associated with Monroe. Dino speaks about encounters through Grindr, dating apps, social media and dark rooms, placing these contemporary spaces for intimacy and visibility alongside the romantic mythology represented by Monroe. The self-tape becomes both audition and confession: another attempt to make himself visible and to construct an image that might be desired. The audience is drawn into this process, and their presence continually changes the rhythm of the performance, allowing humour, awkwardness and vulnerability to interrupt its prepared structure. Through this collision of Hollywood fantasy and contemporary queer experience, Loved by You explores the difficulty of separating the desire for love from the desire for attention, recognition and validation. Concept: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Presented at: The Divine, London Date: 28 June 2026 Duration: 35 min Photography: Luka Xuan

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2025, Croydonites Festival, Croydon Performance

Four Rehearsals On One Stage – 2025

Live performance · 20 min · Four acts structured as rehearsal

Four Rehearsals On One Stage is structured as four acts, each presented as a rehearsal. Dino Desica uses scripts as starting points, but the material is continually disrupted by improvisation, personal memories and experiences drawn from his own life. Moving between theatre and performance art, Dino rehearses different versions of himself through stories connected to vulnerability, conflict, masculinity and his experience as an Italian immigrant in London. Influenced by Italian Neorealism, everyday experience becomes material for constructing and destabilising the character. Rather than using rehearsal as preparation for a finished performance, the rehearsal is the performance. Repetition, uncertainty and failure allow the boundary between Dino and the person performing him to remain unstable, questioning where acting ends and lived experience begins. Concept: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Presented at: Croydonites Festival, Croydon Year: 2025 Duration: 20 min Photography: Lukasz Izdebski

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4 to 6 September 2025, Amsterdam Performance

Will We Believe? – 2024

Collaborative performance · Magic, puppetry and the construction of Dino Desica

Will We Believe? was developed and directed by Rosa Doornenbal, who brought elements from Dino Desica’s existing persona and creative world into a collaborative performance. Rather than Dino simply taking on a role, aspects of his own fictional identity became material within the work. Structured around the language of a magic show, the performance moves between illusion and exposure, control and failure. Dino appears alongside a puppet that functions as a double, creating a split between himself and the image of himself he is trying to construct. Through this relationship, the performance explores Dino’s recurring longing for love, visibility and a place on stage. Concept and direction: Rosa Doornenbal Creation and performance: Clara Saito, Dino Desica, Natalie Price Hafslund, Rosa Doornenbal Light design / outside eyes: Vincent Riebeek Sound technique: Sven van Nimwegen Costume design: lambdog1066 Scenography: Rosa Doornenbal Presented at: Amsterdam Fringe Festival, Pleintheater, Amsterdam Dates: 4–6 September 2025

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2019 · Deptford X Fringe Festival · The Albany, London Performance

Rehearsal of a Performance that Will Never Happen – 2019

Three-part live performance in which each performance becomes the rehearsal for the next

Rehearsal of a Performance that Will Never Happen unfolded across three separate performances, with each one presented as a rehearsal for what would come next. The audience was repeatedly promised a final performance, but that performance never arrived. Across the three encounters, Dino Desica worked through repetition, preparation and improvisation, allowing each rehearsal to change in response to what had happened previously. Rather than treating rehearsal as a process leading towards a finished work, the project made uncertainty and incompletion the work itself. A large mirror occupied the performance space, reflecting Dino, the audience and the actions taking place. Performer and spectator therefore appeared within the same image, complicating the distinction between watching, performing and rehearsing. Concept: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Presented at: Deptford X Fringe Festival, The Albany Studio, London Year: 2019 Photography and video: Lori E. Allen and Prasanth Visweswaran Sound: Doug Haywood and Lottie Loupoulet

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2022, Brixton, South London Performance

In This Time I Reflect – 2022

Public-space intervention · QR posters · Four digital performances

In This Time I Reflect was created in the aftermath of COVID-19, when QR codes, screens and physical distance had become embedded in everyday life. Four posters were installed across Brixton, each containing a QR code leading to a short performance by Dino Desica that could be watched privately on a phone. Designed in the visual language of IKEA instruction manuals, the posters appeared functional and instructional, while the videos they opened onto were more ambiguous, intimate and playful. The anonymous QR code created a transition between public and private space: an encounter beginning on the street and continuing individually through the viewer’s screen. The project explores how digital technologies can alter proximity and participation, using the phone not simply to document performance but as the space through which the encounter takes place. Concept and video: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Location: Brixton, South London Year: 2022 Format: Four QR-coded posters and four short online performances

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2019, Disorder Live Art Collective Performance

I Perform the Performance – 2019

A live performance exploring the unstable space

I Perform the Performance explores the unstable space between live performance, acting and rehearsal. Dino Desica attempts to perform while simultaneously questioning what he is doing, allowing uncertainty, contradiction and self-consciousness to become visible rather than hiding them behind a finished performance. The work developed from an interest in what happens when the desire to perform remains present even when there is no clear role, narrative or statement to deliver. Dino moves between acting and being himself, exposing his own ambition, fear of failure and desire to be seen. Rather than resolving whether what happens on stage is acting or performance, the work keeps that distinction deliberately unstable. The process of trying to perform becomes the performance itself. Concept: Norman Mine Performance: Dino Desica Presented at: disORDER Live Art, London Year: 2019 Video and photography: Jacob Buraczewski

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