The countdown is on for Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art! As always this award winning festival promises to delight and dazzle, presenting bold new works by acclaimed artists from Australia and the Asia Pacific at Carriageworks between 18-28 October.

For ten days you will get the chance to wade through wet foundations, get lost in otherworldly landscapes, witness bodies laid bare and broken, silently embrace strangers and escape to a visionary world led by women of colour.

We chatted to Performance Space Artistic Director Jeff Khan to get his top picks for this year’s stacked line-up. Whether you want to laugh, cry or be transported out of this world, Jeff gives you the inside track on which acts to look out for so you can curate your own personal Liveworks experience.

1. Return to Escape From Woomera

The work that will leave you asking the most questions

JK: Return to Escape from Woomera by Applespiel asks questions about the role of art in politics, and about our ongoing complicity in the refugee crisis.

In a revived iteration from fifteen years ago, Return to Escape from Woomera is a live gaming experience that places audiences in the shoes of refugees held in detention. Alongside the gameplay a live commentary will be taking place from a panel made up of human rights activists, the artists and refugees about the ongoing crisis of refugees and need for intervention.

Duration: 180 mins | When: Oct 24-28 | Price: $20 | Tickets

2. xhe

The work you are going to get completely lost in

JK: xhe by Daniel Kok and Miho Shimizu is a 5-hour-long hallucination of sculpture, electronic music and dance that you can come and go from as you please, but that will definitely hook you in for the long haul.

Xhe takes audiences on an immersive dreamlike journey in search of the everpresent xhe – neither he nor she, nor it, xhe is described as an ongoing flux, “something between a square and an octopus…” Together, performers and audience may themselves become xhe.

Duration: 6:30pm – 11:30pm | When: Oct 19 & 21 | Price: $40 | Tickets

3. Rest Area

The work most likely to make you breakdown and cry

JK: Rest Area by SJ Norman is such a beautifully melancholic experience.

Rest Area is set in the back of a station truck where artist SJ Norman lies in waiting in a makeshift bed. Norman invites audiences into her bed simply to do one thing – to hold one another. Surpassing the constructed barriers between performer and audience, this unifying, emotional, transient embrace explores the confines of loneliness, intimacy and the fundamental desire for human connection.

Duration: 15 mins | When: Oct 24-28 | Price: $20 | Tickets

4. Infinity Minus One

The work that will leave you terrified and questioning everything

JK: Infinity Minus One by the incredible Taiwanese artist Su Wenchi consists of multiplying lasers, throbbing live music and hypnotic dance reminding us how tiny we are in relation to the infinite scale of the universe.

Infinity Minus One asks the big questions about time, space and existence. Informed by research from CERN, this interdisciplinary show will take you on an all consuming sensory overload about who we are, where we come from and where we could be going.

Duration: 55 mins | When: Oct 24-26 | Price: $40 | Tickets

5. Day For Night

The work you’re going to have a straight-up blast with

JK: Day for Night of course! 12 ridiculously wonderful hours of queer performance and party culture featuring a truly phenomenal lineup of artists.

Day for Night is a fun, sexy, debaucherous throwdown celebrating decades of diverse queer culture in Sydney. Including – but not limited to – a huge dancefloor, an interactive installation of sex toys, storytelling and live cooking, Day for Night features a raging line up of emerging, mid-career and established queer artists among the likes of Radha La Bia, William Yang, FAFSWAG and Glitta Supernova.

Duration: 12 hours | When: Oct 27 | Price: $40 | Tickets

For more info about Liveworks Festival of Experimental Art 2018 head to the Performance Space website.