Relational Stalinism – the Musical is an assemblage that uses many different registers of performance simultaneously. It mixes taiko micro-dance, exhausting feats of reading, experimental physical comedy, melodramatic operatic interlude, call-centre language-torture games, and satire of the Immaterial Turn. This performance is part of the Chinatown episode.

Michael Portnoy (b. 1971, Washington, DC, USA) is a New York-based artist. Coming from a background in dance and stand-up comedy, his performance-based work employs a variety of media: from participatory installations to sculpture, painting, writing, theater, video and curating. Portnoy is largely concerned with manipulating language and behaviour as a tool for world-bending – either in his "Relational Stalinist" game structures in which confusion, complication, and ambiguity are used to stretch participants' speech and movement; or his quest to "improve" existing breeds of art through re-engineering.

Originally commissioned by Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam, together with A.P.E. (Art Projects Era)