According to the PQ statute, our prizes are awarded by the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic at the recommendation of the international jury or of the Organizer of the PQ, except for the PQ Children's Award which is awarded directly by child audiences.
The International Jury recommended the Minister of Culture of the Czech Republic following awards:
Golden Triga PQ 2015 for the Best Exposition
Estonia: Unified Estonia
This outstanding project has already won the award for the most innovative approach to performance design and the impressive way in which it was realised caused it to be mentioned for several other categories as well. In the exhibit here for the PQ, the original project is presented using performance and design to extremely good effect and thus further reinforcing the ways that design and narration can be fused. The project has far-reaching implications for what it is possible to do with performance design when we take the essence of theatre and apply it to the social and the political.
For Golden Triga were also nominated: Latvia: The Submission and Finland: Weather Station. Staging Sound
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for the Best Exhibition Design
Belgium: MovingLab.be
This exhibit is a novel and stimulating way to present the development and realisation of performance design ideas in collective contexts. The idea of a laboratory combined with a performing machine is an engaging way to present the way that collective collaboration produces invention and reflection. The exhibit provokes curiosity and draws the viewer into a process that merges performance, space and design.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Curatorial Concept of an Exhibition
The Netherlands: Between Realities: Fight, Flee, Shelter, Negotiate or Surrender
The jury were impressed by the complexity of this concept. In essence, performance design is being used to understand the city, and this in turn challenges us to think again about what performance design is and what it can do. The documentation process will allow this project to have a continuing influence beyond the period of the PQ.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Performance Design
Gao Guang Jian for Cai Fuchao: Throughout the Empire All Hearts Turned to Him (National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing/Beijing Opera Theatre), 2012, China
This is another example of how contemporary visual style can come together with traditional principles of classical theatre to produce outstanding results. The abstraction and purity of the central image is striking and profound. The manipulation of scale and the restrained use of colour is also noteworthy. The design stimulates but also leaves room for the audience's imagination.
Honorary PQ 2015 Award for Performance Design
Liu Xinglin for Wang Renjie: The Peony Pavilion (Beijing North Kun Opera Theatre), 2014, China
This design distils traditional Chinese architecture to its essential elements and uses a contemporary visual style to manipulate those elements to excellent effect. The restraint and control that are demonstrated here result in an elegant and beautifully balanced design.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Sound Design
Agnieszka Jelewska-Michaś, Rafał Zapała, Michał Krawczak, Paweł Janicki and Michal Cichy for the exhibition of Poland: Post-Apocalypsis
The jury was impressed by the inventive use of sound that is subtle but deeply affecting. The responsive and interactive nature of the soundscape reflects contemporary ideas about the relationship between nature, human beings and technology as part of a hybrid communication system. The installation invites the visitor to listen carefully in inventive ways.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Use of Media in Performance Design
All the works in the exhibition of Finland: Weather Station. Staging Sound
Although sound is the focus of this exhibition, the jury was struck by how sound, video, still images and material objects are combined here, as a way both of documenting as well as creating work. This provides a rich and complex communication of ideas and a sophisticated appreciation of what media in combination can do.
Finnish project Sound of Music (In a Box) in public space
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Performance Architecture
Slovakia: Reflection of an Image. Milan Čorba
The jury responded to this exhibit as a temporary architecture that uses architectural sensibilities. It is a poetical intervention in a space. The nature of its construction and its placement within the existing architecture of the church sets up a series of images and reflections between the viewer and the surroundings. This allows the full impact of the ideas of the costume designer Milan Corba to be appreciated.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Use of Space for Performance
All the works in the exhibition of Croatia: Intangible
This award recognises the consistently creative exploration of the potential of architectural space that all the work shown in the Croatian exhibition demonstrates. The documentary film makes clear how the work selected responds to both theatre and public spaces with rigour and inventiveness. The work here displays a profound dialogue between performance space and the content of the work.
Gold Medal for Total Performance Design
Latvia: The Submission
The jury appreciated how this exhibit reflected the total performance design of the original production of Miss Julie but here creates a new work; a piece of performance in its own right. The balance between object, body and sound within the space of the installation is beautifully realised. Each element retains its integrity whilst being incorporated into the whole.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for the Best Exposition in the Student Section
Finland: The Other Side
In this exhibition we admired the bold choice of a single material that has the capacity to reveal many aspects of performance design. It is a responsive material, inviting visitors to touch and feel. It is playful and interactive but it also establishes a really interesting dynamic between the visitors and the unseen operators; in that it has the potential to speak about the unknown and otherness.
Also nominated – Russia: Do you want to speak bad English with us about art? Experimental course of stage designers in the Department of Directing at the Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS) and Slovakia: The Aura of Scenography
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Promising Student Talent
All the students participating in the student exhibition of Latvia: The Beginning
Also nominated – Czech Republic: 2/2 + 0,5°. A joint exposition of scenography students from DAMU and JAMU and Poland: The Boundaries of Landscape
This award recognises how the Latvian student exhibit demonstrates a sense of a journey of learning, from first year undergraduates to MA level which takes place within a clearly defined pedagogic environment. The work on show is exquisite in the way that the concepts are distilled into striking visual statements. The set of objects together show a discipline and clarity of visual thinking that is outstanding.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Innovative Approach to Performance Design
Unified Estonia, Theatre NO99, directors: Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo, 2010, Tallinn, Estonia
This production expanded the idea of what theatre can be through performance design. Design and narration are completely fused. Rather than simply mirroring reality, theatre here became reality. In doing so it transformed theatre into politics and revealed the power of political manipulation and the dangers inherent in populism.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Provoking a Dialogue
Mia David, curator of the exhibition of Serbia: Power(less) – Response(ability) and curatorial team of the students exhibition of Serbia: Process, or What DOES Matter to Me - Tatjana Dadić Dinulović, scene design theorist; Oliver Frljić, theatre director; Marko Lađušić, sculptor; Janko Ljumović, theatre producer; Sanja Maljković, architect and scene designer; Vesna Mićović, photographer; Dobrivoje Milijanović, sound designer, and all the participating artists and students in both exhibitions
Serbian artists and Serbian students have a wholehearted commitment to the idea that art and artistic process are connected with social, political and economic realities. Both of these exhibitions demonstrate a palpable sense of a sustained interaction between the participating artists and the students. It is a scenographic dialogue that draws in visitors and operates both through visual and spatial means as well as through discussion.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Best Performance Design Photo
Iren Stehli for the photos of 'Wenceslas Line' installation in the exhibition of the Switzerland: Under the Tail of the Horse
This beautiful set of photographs documents the installation of the Wenceslas Line in such a way that, as well as revealing the process of installation, we are able to grasp the context of the site and the potential of the installation. The images have a theatrical sensibility in the way they pinpoint moments of feeling and meaning between people moving through Wenceslas Square.
Gold Medal for Best PQ 2015 Publication
'Meyerhold's Dream' by Polina Bakhtina and Yan Kalnberzin for the exhibition of Russia
The jury felt that this publication complements and extends our understanding of the exhibition installation in a way that is true to the spirit of Meyerhold. Using a comic strip approach, it deals with the serious and foundational ideas about scenography in a humorous and playful way.
Special PQ 2015 Jury Awards
Special award for the United Kingdom: Make/Believe - UK Design for Performance 2011 – 15
This award recognises the richness and diversity of an exhibition that shows high quality work from across the spectrum of contemporary performance design - in a variety of venues, and embracing space, light, media and costume. The complexity of the selection shows scenographers working in many different ways and, importantly, a confidence in the way scenography can shape productions and engage audiences in multiple ways.
Special award for best shared space for student exhibition of Austria: BAR III / VI
This prize is awarded for the most complete realisation of a very particular place of encounter between audience, performers and scenography. The realisation and animation of the space by the student performers is striking and affecting. This simple but uncompromising concept is pursued is such a way that it speaks eloquently to a central question of scenography; the blurred line between real and imagined space.
Special award for the best shared process for student exhibition of Russia: Do you want to speak bad English with us about art? Experimental course of stage designers in the Department of Directing at the Russian University of Theatre Arts (GITIS)
This award recognises the genuine sense of the invitation to visitors to become part of the process of scenographic invention. It also rewards the courage and energy of the students. Sitting around a transplanted design studio table, visitors can immerse themselves in a space of collective design process. Amidst the apparent anarchy of the installation a strong sense of creative encounter emerges.
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Costume Design - not awarded
Honorary PQ 2015 Award for Costume Design – not awarded
Gold Medal PQ 2015 for Lighting Design – not awarded
After a lengthy consideration the PQ2015 jury regrets that it is unable able to recommend awards for the best costume design or the best lighting design.
Although the jury recognises that there is some excellent work in both these categories in some of the projects that are included in PQ2015 exhibition, too little of it has been presented in ways makes it possible to appreciate the quality of the work in terms of its contribution to the experience of performance.
In the category of light, we did not find enough evidence of the way it performs as a dramaturgical component of theatre or the way light is being used to animate performance space.
In the category of costume design we did not find sufficient evidence of presentation that shows the materiality and movement in performance; how costume lives.
The jury would like to propose that PQ, curators and designers re-think how costume and light is presented at future PQs to ensure that these important elements can be given the recognition that they deserve.
Prague Quadrennial 2015 also awards
Scenography Mentor Award
Andris Freibergs
We award Andris Freibergs with the Scenography Mentor prize for work that has inspired generations of scenographers. For many years we have constantly seen good work coming from this one mentor. The work of Andris Freibergs and his students is always inventive, live, poetic and daring, combining the best of scenography for stage with new influences - scenographies that are strong both as concepts and installation art.
PQ 2015 Best Scenography Publication Award
Brack, Katrin. Katrin Brack Bühnenbild / Stages. Berlin: Verlag Theater Der Zeit, 2010. Print.
The award is bestowed on this publication in recognition of the fact that performance design can be presented in a language different to that of the live event and still demonstrate its power. Katrin Brack's work is shown through the pages of this book / catalogue, overflowing with life and personality, and through the selection, editing and quality of accompanying images, both in terms of the scenographic aspect of the content and the publication's graphic design. It is also important to highlight that the winner of the award was chosen not by accident, but with the intention of placing the work of performance designers at the centre of the PQ.
Honorary PQ 2015 Scenography Publication Award
Marinescu, Sabine, and Janina Poesch. PLOT #9, PLOT #10. Stuttgart: Die Macht des Klangs, 2014. Print
The magazine PLOT is worthy of the award, first, due to the issues the publication addresses and for the relevance of its content, which encompasses the various areas of scenography while taking a more global interpretation of the term to include theatre, virtual reality, exhibition, art installation, and others, as well as associated fields and current technologies related to sound, light, and costume / image design. Second, but no less importantly, the bestowal of the award recognises that PLOT is a publication that is most in tune with current directions of theatre production and performance. We hope the award will act as a stimulus for the magazine's increased accessibility through publication (at least in part) in a world language (English), as well as an inspiration for other potential publishers in other languages and contexts.