Judd Morrissey in response to Goat Island

The Last Performance [Dot Org]

The Last Performance [dot org] is a collaborative website created by Judd Morrissey in response to the Chicago-based performance collective Goat Island and its decision, after more than 20 years of practice, to create a final work, The Lastmaker. 

The visual and structural principles of The Last Performance [dot org] are taken from Goat Island's research into ‘double buildings,’ a phrase used by the company to describe spaces that have housed and survived multiple historical identities. The central structure of The Last Performance [dot org] is a virtual dome, based on the cupola of the Dzamija (Croatian word for mosque) in Zagreb, Croatia. The Dzamija is a round building that began as a museum, was converted to a mosque during World War II, and then was turned back into a museum. The cupola of the Dzamija consists of an arrangement of 4,680 circular glass pieces resembling lenses and was used as a score to create the long “architectural dance” in The Lastmaker.  

The public is invited to participate in the dome’s construction and respond to The Lastmaker by submitting texts and media files to the site installed in the Arnolfini reading room. The lenses of the Dzamija are here transposed as writing spaces, and the construction of the virtual dome will be complete when the project has received 4,680 submissions. 

The print accompanying the web site is a visualization of all the uses of the word “last” in The Last Performance [dot org]. The visualization algorithm used to create the print is also based on Goat Island’s research on Byzantine and Islamic architectural patterns.  The project is accessible online at www.thelastperformance.org. 

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