As part of a three-month residency in October 2015, the artist brought together two performers (grunge-rapper Astronautalis, and dancer / choreographer Vânia Gala) to lead an improvisation workshop with the art students at the Villa Arson in Nice. This was their first time working together. In the proceeding days, they encouraged a cohort of international students to express themselves freely through improvised performances, games, dance movements, and social interactions with the aim of achieving bodily and linguistic emancipation.

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Curated by Sophie Orlando, the resulting nine-channel installation, Paper Tiger Whisky Soap Theatre (Dada Nice), gains its title from one of the first filmed exercises explored during the performance.

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The Circle documents this exercise. Aware that the student cohort represents many nationalities and that they are all multi-lingual; (French, English, Korean, Portuguese, Swedish, Arabic, etc.), Astronautalis gathered everyone in a circle and asked the person beside him to listen to five words repeated over and over again: paper, tiger, whisky, soap, and theatre. These words are repeated and then translated into their mother tongue to pass on to the next person for them to translate. If the person receiving the words is unable to comprehend what they are told, they are instructed to ad-lib. The initial whispers transform into a joyous cacophony and the whole experience becomes a Dadaist performance where words and language lose their meaning to engender a sense of nervousness, freedom and collective joy.

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As part of the installation, the artist also used the footage to create hand-drawn wallpapers of repeated patterns derived from the various exercises explored during the workshop encounters and incorporating the titles of popular songs, plus songs from film-musicals, about restrictions, movement, and freedom.