CONFIDENCES / ORACLE by Ivan Cheng

Oracles don’t require belief—they now theatrically suspend disbelief. No longer advisors of world policy, they run Locus Solus, a town that has come to ramble around an eponymous theatre and chocolate factories. Theo, a centuries-old vampire intent on remaining contemporary through performance, visits Locus Solus, which is hosting Praise Estate, an international theatre festival. He uses the festival as an opportunity to stay with Gean, his oracle boyfriend, who is there visiting family. Theo has a fetish for the future, fixated on the one thing he is in no shortage of.

Confidences / Oracle is a lover’s trip to a weeklong theatre festival. A vehicle for recontextualising recent performance scripts and texts, Oracle is the third instalment in Ivan Cheng’s Confidences series, which intertwines vampires and performance as sites for circulation and recognition. The publication is published by OCT0, Marseille, and designed by Sabo Day (assisted by Augustinas Milkus). Confidences / Oracle features a cover image by Hyun Lee, HMU by Carly Lim, thanks to Antoinette Barbouttis. Taking a different format and a different host, it is preceded by Confidences / Baseline (TLTRPreß, 2021), and Confidences / Majority (After 8 Books, 2022), and will be followed by Confidences / Production (MUMA/After 8 Books, 2024) later in the year.

Ivan Cheng (b. 1991, Sydney) works with genres, languages, and their readings. He produces video, objects, performances and publications alongside complex and context specific spectacles. His background as a performer and musician form the basis for using performance as a critical medium. He has initiated project space bologna.cc in Amsterdam since 2017.