Infinite Rehearsal with Chris Emile and No)one. Art House

I know that in unravelling the illusory capture of creation I may still apprehend the obsessional ground of conquest, rehearse its proportions, excavate its consequences, within a play of shadow and light threaded into value; a play that is infinite rehearsal, a play that approaches again and again a sensation of ultimate meaning…

– Wilson Harris, The Infinite Rehearsal (1988)

In fall 2023, the ICA LA Project Room will be transformed into a space of continuous rehearsal. Conceived together with Los Angeles-based artist and choreographer Chris Emile, Infinite Rehearsal reimagines the gallery as a studio. Here, Emile and frequent collaborators from his movement-based collective No)one. Art House 8 will be invited to create, inspire, teach, and play, free from the expectations of an end result.

Based on the ethos “Not The Efforts of One,” the work of No)one. Art House is grounded in a commitment to community and to collaboration across creative disciplines, with a focus on performance. Performance art has always held a unique relationship to the politics of time—often disturbing its linearity, reimagining its rhythms, and rewriting its grammar through gesture and sound. In this spirit, No)one. Art House challenges capitalist notions of temporality and productivity, conjuring new forms of making and marking time through an emphasis on the iterative and the collective. Over the course of the exhibition, this group of dancers, choreographers, filmmakers, and musicians, will occupy the gallery with workshops and works in process, inviting viewers to witness artists and artworks in their various stages of becoming. In doing so, the exhibition also points to the infinite rehearsals of everyday life, mirroring the loops, pauses, glitches, and slips that haunt and shape our perpetual state of performance. When unoccupied, the gallery will be filled with the traces of bodies in motion—their scuff marks, soundtracks, and smells.

Experimenting with the possibilities and temporalities of an exhibition, Infinite Rehearsal foregrounds process over product, celebrating the site of the museum itself as a space of invention and revision.