Mistranslation Laboratory is an intimate interactive performance work that was performed at set times over four days of The Performance Arcade 2017, creating miniature performances for (and with) audiences of around ten people at a time. It was then performed as part of the Sur Sur group show at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chile, and in Lecture Demonstration format at conferences in the Azores, and in Lisbon, Portugal.

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Three fallible, dreamy and untrustworthy “choreographic scientists” prepare a buffet of experiments from a menu of 10 works with titles like 'Rainbow Taming', 'Salt Harbour Tuning Dance Laboratory', and 'Making Rubbings of Real Emotional Things'. Groups of participants will chose three pieces for their experience, which were shuffled into any order. Their research is made available as performances and tasks for all ages. 

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Audiences of no more than eight people at a time are offered a series of miniature performances. From a menu of 10 works, they collaboratively choose three pieces, which can be made to order in response to audience desire. When the wee theatre is at rest, the  Mistranslation Laboratory is open to all. An ongoing installation accumulates throughout four days. Data collected in their theatrical experiments is carefully curated as works-on-paper, sound installation, and interactive sculpture. Join them in their experiments, to encounter these nervous, coastal cities from skeleton to skin...

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The book unfolds a body of creative materials developed in the Mistranslation Laboratory, a performance experiment sliding through 2016-2019 in various locations and in various cities. 

 

Hundreds of participants created the artworks that fold through the book, too many to even attempt to collect the names, as the lab was, at times, continuously open for 12 hours at a stretch, at times with a constant flow of emotional-scientist-artist-volunteers.