Performance / Hurry, 591 BC–2007: The Musical, with Kit Downes, Myra Eetgerink, Fernanda Farah, Hannah Hurtzig, Nina Katchadourian, Michelle Madsen, Augustin Maurs, and Sally O’Reilly
Date: Friday, 24 July 2026, 8–9 pm
Location: Lettrétage @ ACUD, Veteranenstr. 21, 10119 Berlin (map)
Tickets: 8€ / 5€ for students and those experiencing financial hardship. Advance purchase here
On 24 July 2026, a team of writers, musicians, and artists will gather at 10 am in Berlin to attempt to make a musical in ten hours flat. Their aim will be to investigate the plausibility of taking Hurry, 591 BC–2007, a title from the Webster’s Timeline Histories series, as the subject matter and sole research tool for a creative endeavor. The one-time-only performance that very evening will present a history of “hurry” made in a hurry.
There are some ninety thousand titles in the Webster’s Timeline Histories series. Published by the mysterious Icon Group International, Inc., each book’s topic is explored through a bewildering mélange of chronological quotations chosen algorithmically and without human oversight—all before 2011. Pick any adjective, noun, or verb, and Icon CEO Philip M. Parker and his team are likely to have generated a book-length timeline of that term.
Cabinet no. 70 was dedicated to understanding what it would be like to spend time with these books. We invited writers, artists, and a pub quiz master to find out, and the issue presented their experiences delving into Webster’s-approved subjects such as wallpaper, trade secrets, grumbling, and John Smith. This musical is the final installment in a pan-disciplinary assessment of the usefulness of early AI.
Hurry, 591 BC–2007: The Musical will be devised and written through collaborative methods involving seats of pants and quick-drying gloss. The breathless, white-knuckled team comprises Kit Downes, Myra Eetgerink, Fernanda Farah, Hannah Hurtzig, Nina Katchadourian, Michelle Madsen, Augustin Maurs, and Sally O’Reilly.
This event is conceived and produced by Sally O’Reilly.
You can read an interview with Sally O’Reilly about the musical here.
About the Participants
Kit Downes is an ECM recording artist, composer, and performer based in Berlin. Winner of the BBC Jazz Award and the Deutscher Jazzpreis, he has toured the world playing piano and church organ with leading artists from the classical and jazz idioms. For more information, see kitdownes.com.
Myra Eetgerink is a multifaceted performer and maker. After studying physical theater at École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, she trained in contemporary dance in France, Belgium, and later in Berlin, where she is based. She has acted and danced in several German and international film and television projects and is currently making her own work, which incorporates dance, theater, and elements of contemporary circus. For more information, see myra-myra.com.
Fernanda Farah’s practice spans contemporary and experimental music, theater, performance, and dance, with a particular focus on language and voice in relation to the body. She collaborates frequently with Dorky Park dance company, was artist-in-residence at Art Omi: Music (Ghent, New York) and at Q21, MuseumsQuartier (Vienna), and co-curates the experimental music and performance series “Labor Sonor” at Kunsthaus KuLe (Berlin). For more information, see vimeo.com/user5138418.
Hannah Hurtzig founded the Mobile Akademie Berlin (MAB) in 1999, which has since then produced experimental academy models, architectures of knowledge and non-knowledge, essayistic installations and performances, and analog and digital archive units. The MAB’s best-known format is the Market for Useful Knowledge and Non-Knowledge, which has been performed over thirty times internationally since 2004.
Nina Katchadourian is an interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin and New York. Her work includes video, performance, sound, music, sculpture, photography, and public projects. For more information, see ninakatchadourian.com.
Michelle Madsen is a Danish-Argentine multidisciplinary artist working between Berlin and the UK. Her work spans poetry, theater, clown, field recording, tarot, and printmaking. She is a co-director of the award-winning international performance company Bait and part of the Make-Up project space collective in Berlin. For more information, see baittheatre.com.
Augustin Maurs is a musician and interdisciplinary artist who focuses on the processes of music making as such, often within their historical, social, and political contexts. His frequently collaborative projects combine music with performance and installations, or take curatorial forms. For more information, see written-not-written.com.
Sally O’Reilly is a writer based in London. Recent projects include the performance collective Big Throw (2024–present), the novella Help in Cucumbers (JOAN Publishing, 2023), and Where They Gather (October House Records, 2022), a spoken-word and music album with Kit Downes. For more information, see sallyoreilly.org.uk.