Richard Downing's Spacelab workshop at the Prague Quadrennial, 2015. Starting from scratch and with no previous experience, 18 participants aim to construct a 'Fishli & Weiss' rhythm of animate objects across two rooms and an adjoining staircase, in just 8 hours. In the demanding, challenging, frustrating and ultimately obsessive process, the roles of 'maker', 'performer' and 'spectator' begin to merge.

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'This workshop explores the potential of objects to play and perform according to principles of musical composition. This may be more than a matter of sound. Notions of tempo, rhythm, counterpoint and juxtaposition may be equally applied to the physical and visual as well as the aural, reminding us that scenography is as much a temporal art as it is a spatial one. Consequently the workshop is highly playful in approach, inviting participants to look closely for the possibilities of objects to act, individually and collectively, in time. Along the way, this will involve an increased awareness of how utterly alive the apparently inanimate world actually is – the violin is forever seeking to be out of tune. A heroic attempt will be made to harness and sequence some of these possibilities at the end of the day but, for once, failure will be applauded as the vital parent of creativity. Without the right to get it wrong we make nothing.'