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  • PQ11:a "still point of the turning world"
  • Natalie Rewa (bio)

The Prague Quadrennial has continually confronted the relationship between the ephemerality of design for performance and its exhibitability. Envisioned by its founders, in 1967, as an exhibit closely related to performance, the artistic presentation of scenography at the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) has always insisted on its inseparability from mises en scène. The PQ has never been conceived as an exhibition of an applied art. The early editions of the PQ favoured gallery/museum exhibition practices, combining panels and display cases,1 and the organizers selected a theme for each edition to unify the international competition. Initially a text or libretto, this modulated by degrees into topics from theatre practice. Changes in the conceptualization of the PQ over the last decade have aimed at the production of an intensely lively forum for designers—more of a performance lab than an exhibition. From 1999, the PQ engaged in reinventions that would usher in explorations by the national exhibitions of the cultural implications of design as a mode of performance—explorations that gave rise to an active intercultural dialogue. In 2003 and in 2007, the space that had once been allocated to major retrospective exhibits was reassigned to investigations of architectonics for performance as exploratory performance, bringing together the professional-design and architecture sections of the PQ. Moreover, for PQ07, Arnold Aronson as the artistic director invited national curators to delineate their own themes. In the PQ context, this was a bold move towards plurality, a definite departure from the imposed commonality of a unifying theme. Concomitant with these internal changes has been the most public one—that of a name change that accommodates critical understanding of the performative activity of designers across disciplines: visual, video, sound, and installation artists. As the "Prague Quadrennial for Performance Design and Space," the new PQ foregrounds the work of designers across disciplines who "transform the public domain with fleeting, time-based interventions that comment on our contemporary condition" (Hannah and Harsløf 12). By 2011, historical retrospection had been overtaken in all the sections—the national professional, the architectural, and the section devoted to schools' exhibits—by highly interactive interrogations of design.

Sodja Zupanc Lotker, the artistic director of PQ11, observed that "theatre has bravely struggled with the death of character, the death of narrative and other deaths in the family in recent decades" while, on the other hand, "some of the most interesting theatre artists today are spatial artists, and some of today's most important visual artists work with performance" (Lotker, "Artistic Statement"). She likened current approaches to performance design to T. S. Eliot's "still point of the turning world" as the defining mode of the PQ. This PQ edition was "not only exploring scenography as complex active performance environments, but also creating new contexts and connections for its exploration" (Lotker, "Opening Statement" 19). The visual concept for PQ11 inscribed this fundamental aperçu: Krištof Kintera's design featured this key quote from Eliot's poem Burnt Norton in small white letters on all the signature images for the PQ. [End Page 73]

In 2011, the PQ integrated itself in the city, reconfiguring itself as an active and significant interrogation of design for and as performance.2 The national exhibitions, both professional and student, took up residence in the Veletržní Palác (National Gallery); the downtown public space of the Piazzetta of the National Theatre became the site for Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle,3 an outdoor installation that challenged notions of white galleries and black-box theatres; and in the old city at the Prague Crossroads4—a social and cultural centre—was a hub for workshops and symposia addressing the architectures of performance design. Architecture Commissioner Dorita Hannah conceived of this section of the PQ as an "open spatial Laboratory, presenting theatre architecture now and what it could be next" in a series of direct and mediatized encounters "for expanding notions of performing arts architecture" (Hannah, "Now/Next" 75). Scenofest, the onsite design studios which team renowned designers with young professionals and students, was housed at DAMU (Divadelní fakulta Akademie múzických ume—the Theatre Faculty of...

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