Duration 56 is a performance installation by Frank Camilleri. Initially designed in 2008 within the ‘Queen Project’ of Icarus Performance Project, it has since been developed with various collaborators in various contexts, mainly in Canterbury (UK). It is a major research branch of Icarus Project that has led to the identification of 'habitational action'.
The piece explores the concept and practice of duration, repetition, and improvisation within a simple structure of actions and tasks performed within an installation-type setting involving black benches and black mats, apples and pebbles, knives and toothpicks.
In 2008 Duration 56 signalled a new departure for Camilleri. Though the process underwent for the piece was located firmly in the rigorous physical and vocal formation characteristic of the Project’s performances to date, and though it emerged from the Project's performances of La Reina (2006) and RISK (2007), Duration 56 resists theatrical parameters.
The ‘Queen’ of Duration 56 can be said to be the temporal dimension of space and action shorn of considerations such as plot, character, and text. The piece was presented in the spirit of a durational installation with a human component.
Research on the core improvisation dynamics and mechanisms of Duration 56 is currently being developed within a new technical/experimental structure called Projections.
