hylozoic/desires
2025
‘Microfictions’ by Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser
Commissioned Live Performance Installation
Collaboration with Fremantle Biennale
Commissioned Live Performance Installation
Collaboration with Fremantle Biennale
Renowned international duo Hylozoic/Desires, Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser, transformed the Naval Store with Microfictions, a mesmerising live performance installation, presented in collaboration with Fremantle Biennale.
A constellation of poetry, performance and sound, audiences recline in hammocks to witness a sand mandala of shifting topographies made from salt, sand and stone.
The exhibition had really qualitative visitation, with an average time for visitors of <30 minutes, a sign of appreciation and real participation in the themes of the show.
Presented as part of the Fremantle Biennale, it was a shared commission and collaboration to maximise impact.
We acknowledge the Whadjuk Nyoongar people and Elders, past, present and future, on whose land and with whose blessing this piece has come to be.
Exhibition text: Step into an unfurling cosmos of sound, movement and poetry in Microfictions— a major new commission by internationally acclaimed duo Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser), in collaboration with Vessel Contemporary. Occupying Fremantle’s iconic Naval Store, this live performance installation is a slowly shifting meditation on land, love and deep time.
Audiences are invited to recline in suspended hammocks — floating, as if in the ocean — while a sand mandala in the form of a topographical map morphs slowly beneath them. Charting a course from the ancient supercontinent Pangea to the speculative future of Pangea Ultima, performers trace the outlines of the evolving continents with materials native and invasive — white sand, crushed limestone, salt, even flecks of gold, camel hair and cuttlefish— shaping and reshaping borders in an eternal drama of impermanence.
Tapping into planetary turbulence, Microfictions is a poetic and sonic meditation on weight — what anchors us — and lightness — what defies gravity and how we drift. Accompanied by a score for upright bass, electric harp and percussion, recalling the tectonic rhythms and rumbles of the Earth, Microfictions traverses oceans, continents and hemispheres imagining futures of intermingling cultures and languages, ecological entanglements and human-nonhuman dependencies. This is a powerful call to the intimacy of deep memory and land both as displacement and reconciliation.
Hylozoic/Desires’ expansive and celebrated practice has been presented at leading institutions including the Serpentine (London), Desert X (California), Shanghai Biennale, Venice Biennale, Sharjah Biennale and the Swiss Institute (New York). Microfictions marks their much-anticipated Australian premiere.