Microfictions
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.
Date and Time
Opening event:
Fri 14 Nov, 5-7pm
15-30 Nov
3-7pm (THURS-SAT)
11am-3pm (SUn)
Artist Talk:
Sun 16 Nov, 3pm
Location
NAVAL STORE
Entry
Free
Presented in collaboration with Vessel.
Image Credit
Hylozoic Desires Artist Portrait, Rann of Kutch, 2022; Hylozoic Desires, Pink Lake, 2024, video still; Hylozoic Desires, Namak Nazar, 2023 installation views at Desert X, Image courtesy DesertX Lance Gerber; Hylozoic Desires, The Hedge of Halomancy, 2025 Courtesy the artists;
Hylozoic/Desires (Himali Singh Soin & David Soin Tappeser) is an artist duo whose work combines poetry and music to conjure speculative futures and multiverses. H/D aspire toward a flat ontological ether in which all forms of life—stone, spirit, machine or human—are equal. They skew the linear imagination of time and space to produce divergences that elicit critical wonder. H/D’s research orbits around (non)place and histories of migration, transnationalism and environmental cosmism to learn from the multiple materialities of contemporary existence. They are concerned with the (poly)rhythms of love and the bea(s)t of belonging. Hylozoic/Desires use metaphor as an event, as a force of attraction that holds otherwise distant entities together.
Hylozoic/Desires work has recently been exhibited at Serpentine, London; Desert X, CA; Shanghai Biennale; Biennale Gherdeina; Haus Der Kunst, Munich; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Swiss Institute, NYC, Bukhara Biennale and Sharjah Biennale among others. Their recent solo exhibitions at Somerset House and Tate Britain in London, currently touring at the Bhau Dadji Lad Museum in Bombay, explores the metaphysics of salt.
Himali Singh Soin is a writer and artist based between London and Delhi. She uses metaphors from outer space and the natural environment to construct imaginary cosmologies of interferences and entanglements.
In doing this, she thinks through ecological loss and the loss of home, seeking shelter somewhere in the radicality of love.
David Soin Tappeser is a drummer, composer and performance artist based between London and New Delhi. His practice explores socio-eco-spiritual-tempo-somatic dimensions of sound. His performances and compositions use rhythm to unearth, manipulate and deconstruct linear perceptions of time, interdependence and alterity. They hint at intercultural entanglements, parallel histories and extra-human frames of reference while thinking about environmental destruction and sociopolitical fissures.
Vessel is a new interdisciplinary exhibition space and contemporary arts organisation (located at The Naval Store, Fremantle) that explores and generates new ideas of change through art, creativity, experimentation and societal exchange.
Naval Store
141 Queen Victoria St,
Fremantle
Duration: 60 minutes, looped
Event Information: This event is held indoors and undercover. The performance can be entered at any time during opening hours.
Food and beverages will not be available at this event.
The Naval Store is located at: 141 Queen Victoria St, Walyalup.
Public Transport: When possible, we encourage you to catch public transport, there is a bus stop located right out the front on Queen Victoria St (Stop ID: 10280).
Parking: Vehicle parking is located on Tuckfield St, and Beach St.
The Naval Store is fully accessible, there are two ACROD parking bays located on Tuckfield St, there is a ramp access from this parking to our gallery entrance on Canning Hwy. Accessible toilets are located inside the building.
