Carriageworks And Manchester International Festival Co-commission Major New Work, STUDIO CREOLE

Carriageworks today announced a major new co-commission with Manchester International Festival to present a transformative multi-lingual performance-based installation. Studio Creole is curated by award-winning author Adam Thirlwell in collaboration with Hans Ulrich Obrist, designed by world-leading architect Rem Koolhaas, and directed by US theatre director John Collins.

Leading authors from Chile, Croatia, Iceland, Japan, Kenya, Martinique and Palestine have been commissioned to write seven new short stories inspired by the subject of 'belonging,' which they will read aloud in their original language to a live audience. The stories will be simultaneously translated into English and interpreted by an actor on stage, resulting in a unique live performance that explores language, interpretation and globalisation.

Following its world premiere at Manchester International Festival this July, Carriageworks will present Studio Creole in April 2020 with the inclusion of a local actor and Indigenous writer as it is the intent of the curators to evolve the work as it tours internationally to suit each location.

Architect Rem Koolhaas has invited the architect Federico Martelli to collaborate with him to design a set that arranges writers, interpreters and actors and explores ideas of opacity and transparency. Working closely with director, John Collins, the architectural frame will transform the work from a simple storytelling session to a dynamic, multifaceted experience.

Carriageworks Director of Programs Daniel Mudie Cunningham said 'Carriageworks is proud to co-commission this ground-breaking work continuing our commitment to bring new work by International Artists to Australian audiences. This marks the second collaboration with Manchester International Festival after the success of 2016 Bj rk Digital.'

John McGrath, MIF Artistic Director and CEO, said: 'We're excited to be working with Carriageworks again on the wonderful Studio Creole. This is the first time at MIF that we have put literature, authors and their stories at the heart of a project. It's also a project that, particularly in the political moment we're in, celebrates the complexity of a multi-lingual world and the beauty of the many languages of that world.'

Studio Creole aims to transform the singular, monolingual act of reading into a polylingual collective experience, to create a multilingual anthology that exists only in performance. Based on the premise that in the age of globalisation, the work explores how a multilingual community functions and how a work of art is experienced in translation. Adam Thirlwell says: 'We no longer have permanent language; now we have mobile language. Everything becomes cr ole.'

Inspired partly by the immersive experience of sitting in the European Parliament with interpreters from every country creating a whispering hum that is almost orchestral the project is a celebration of language and the human ability to communicate through and across it.

Hans Ulrich Obrist said: 'Studio Creole is an exhibition about bridge building between languages and continents. It is an experimental group show curated with the celebrated novelist and writer Adam Thirlwell and the visionary architect Rem Koolhaas who began his career as a writer. The exhibition is about the 'creolisation' of the world and hence is a homage to the late Edouard Glissant who considered the blend of languages and cultures a decisive characteristic of Antillean identity. Studio Creole is about celebrating a world of many languages. In the words of writer and artist Etel Adnan, 'Thankfully, we are living after Babel, in a world of many languages that we can all move between. Our deepest identity is created from an infinite number of things, and every language is the door to a whole world.''

Studio Creole will premiere at Manchester International Festival from 12-14 July 2019. Carriageworks will present the Australian premiere with a strictly limited season from 2 4 April 2020.

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