Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space organized a large gathering of artists and experts that was open both for people directly connected to the PQ event, but also for other scenographers, theorists, and curators, to mark the beginning of the last phase of intensive preparations for the Prague Quadrennial 2015.
This aim of the symposium was to explore the curation of scenography exhibitions and scenography events – their systems, processes, problems, and concepts. The aim was also to explore the curation of scenography as a strategy that must find new approach for every exhibition, different language of telling a story about a specific scenographic project always anew. The symposium not only explored how to exhibit scenography but also how to exhibit with scenography. It looked into curating through space and design, and at space and design as curatorial tools. Scenography was not only explored as something we display but as a dramaturgical agent of an exhibit, a tool for creating performative spaces, specific environments for unfolding of the core idea of the scenographic project. Here the scenography curator is a storyteller, an editor, a dramaturg and of course a scenographer, but more than anything he is the person creating the dialogue between the stage and that what is absent.
"Theatre has often been described as the art of absence. The visible realm of the stage implies a vast absent world beyond. Theatre is about onstage and offstage – the visible and the invisible. […] It is the dichotomy of presence and absence that gives theatre its power. If the PQ is understood as performance, then the exhibition hall is its stage, the pavilions and their content its scenography. What is absent, of course, are the performances to which the exhibits refer, and there is thus a continuous discourse between the two. Without this dialogue, the PQ would be merely an exhibit of objects – fascinating or attractive objects perhaps, but objects nonetheless devoid of meaning."
Arnold Aronson, Exhibition on the Stage, 2007.
Large portions of the symposium was dedicated to detailed presentations of the concept of the Prague Quadrennial and individual exhibitions and projects by the PQ '15 Artistic Team, as well as sessions for curators and teams of the Section of Countries and Regions and the Student Section.
The program has also included sessions of other curators, scenographers, artists and theorists who were not directly connected to the PQ´15 but who have presented challenging ideas about scenography curating.
Concept of the Prague Quadrennial 2015 includes an exploration of scenography as a performative environment which influences not only the spatial relations of elements of performance but also determines mental relations (of narrative, social, past or future) as well as relations between the performance and audience in contemporary theatre. PQ '15 aims to explore scenography as SharedSpace – space that influences (designs) relationships between people, space that provides room for relating, and more than anything space that provides places for sharing – sharing of ideas, stories, and of social responsibilities. PQ '15 aims to discover invisible scenographies – environments that influence us deeply although they are intangible – through proposing Music Weather and Politics as main themes for the scenography exhibition of Section of Countries and Regions. PQ '15 will happen in multiple spaces in the very centre of Prague and it invites visitors to think locally (exploring the specific of the local) in the connection with the city, both when working on presentations from their country and when exhibiting in specific places in Prague.
Convener: Sodja Zupanc Lotker, PQ Artistic Director
Scenographers: Simon Banham and Richard Downing
Assistant scenographer: Dragan Stojcevski
Key speakers:
Simon Banham (UK), PQ Commissioner of the Weather Exhibition
Lieven De Cauter (B), Philosopher, Art historian, Writer and Activist
Aby Cohen (BRA), PQ Commissioner of the Politics Exhibition
Dorita Hannah (NZ/FIN), PQ Theory Curator
Jiří Heřman (CZ), PQ Commissioner of the Music Exhibition
Rebekka A. Ingimundardóttir (ISL), PQ Commissioner of the Makers Exhibition
Serge Von Arx (NOR), PQ Commissioner of the Space Exhibition
Tomáš Svoboda (CZ), PQ Commissioner of the Objects Exhibition
Moderated by: Martin Bernátek (CZ), Theatre Historian
If you missed the symposium, you can still check its FCB page SharedSpace: Spatial Curation Symposium, where we have posted real time information during the whole gathering.