In Spring 2011,

120 models with distinctive visual personalities will be assembled together as a living, breathing image. In an event at once performance, party and experiment, Sarah Small and collaborators will once again assemble a tableau vivant of Small’s still photographic series The Delirium Constructions. Small’s ongoing still project brings models into improbable, close interactions to examine the social and graphic contrasts of youth and experience, hysteria and discipline, tragedy and hilarity, and sexuality and desexualization.

The first tableau vivant, held in spring 2009, featured thirty-five models, from distinguished elders to willowy ballet dancers arrayed on platforms. Many models were nude, while others were styled in clothing donated by Jean Paul Gualtier. After a processional entry, the models followed Small’s live direction to enact a series of ‘living pictures’ in which the hundreds of attendees were immersed. The event transitioned from performance to experiment as models were prompted to abandon stillness and improvise with one another, further embodying their visual characters. The evening crystallized a collision between human experiences which are rarely allowed to intersect.

The next tableau vivant will continue on the same path, on a grander scale and with new axes of experimentation. Tableau II will feature vastly more models and a larger audience, and introduce musical elements in collaboration with Shara Worden of the acclaimed My Brightest Diamond, The Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens, recently featured with David Byrne, and the haunting Black Sea Hotel, Brooklyn’s Balkan a Capella quartet. Using original vocal arrangements, the artists will provide live soundscapes interplaying harmony and dissonance within the visual experience. As interesting opportunities for collaboration emerge, other Tableau elements may include costume and styling, industrial design, and technology. Sparking a tradition of continuity and evolution for all of Small’s future tableaux vivants, some past models will be enlisted to choreograph select parts of the performance under the direction of the creative team.

Small is currently direct a series of Mini-Tableaux Vivants, leading up to the main event, to study individual components of the evolving art piece.