CONFIDENCES / BASELINE by Ivan Cheng
with live reading + a special *shop music* playlist in the store
Thursday May 13, 8pm‘Confidences / Baseline’ plays with the vampire novel like a dollhouse. Characters who variously believe in the power of theatre and performance become entangled with grief, desire, and the unknown. What does a rehearsal come to mean when a vampire lives forever?
Baseline is the first in a series of books that fetishise nightclubs for their inaccessibility. Deluded realities anticipate the transformative sensuality of penetration. In his second novel, artist Ivan Cheng maintains his fixation on structures for audiences between public and private.
The book is published by TLTR press, designed by Sabo Day with a cover image by Özgür Kar.
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‘No Rave: Wagon Wheel Metatheatre’ — a zine made by Ivan Cheng with contributions from Özgür Kar, Spencer Lai, Mire Lee, Magdalena Mitterhofer, Dominic Rich, and Yashi. In February, Cheng commissioned these artists to render some version of his performing body based on a synopsis and an outline of characters from his then in-progress book, ‘Confidences / Baseline’. The result is an approximation of a performance for print. This full colour, glossy, 44 A4 page print is the standalone edition from the project, commissioned for Zürich Moves, a performance festival that celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2021 by taking form this year as a magazine.
‘No Rave: Wagon Wheel Metatheatre’ will be exclusively at San Serriffe on the occasion of the launch of ‘Confidences / Baseline’ in a package of book + zine for €20.
The performances of Ivan Cheng are incomplete, failing, desperate, and riddled with absence. They use his variously trained performing body, incanting texts that foreground subjectivity in monologues and dialogues. Identities of other interlocutors become embedded through rehearsal, dialogue, and entrustment. Without deluded presupposition of being for everyone, Cheng’s practice is invested in questions around publics and accessibility.
