Constructing the brief

The National Exhibition for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance design and space

http://www.pq.cz/en/-space-exhibition.html

About

The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space is the largest scenography event in the world and explores a wide range of scenographic practices – from stage design and costume design to lighting design, sound design and new scenographic practices such as site-specific, applied scenography, urban performance, costume as performance, and more. PQ continues to expand the territory of performance design and space as it includes performance art practice and performative environments along with the scenographic and theatrical: the Prague Quadrennial 2015 (PQ15) invites participants to explore scenography as a performative environment and shared space.

Innovations for PQ15 include the requirement for National exhibitions to address one of three themes – Music, Weather or Politics; and the move of the Quadrennial into the urban centre, within a range of historic or gallery spaces. As part of a series of workshops national curators will receive detailed information about the sites in an April 2014 workshop in Prague. New Zealand’s National, Student and Space exhibitions will all address the theme of weather, Ahua o the Rangi.

Space Section

The Space component of the quadrennial addresses the symbiotic relationship between performance and the constructed environment. The Space commissioner, Serge von Arx, describes the exhibition as located “not merely at the meeting point of architecture and performance but where the two fields penetrate each other.”

New Zealand’s entry to Space is focused on developing Weather as a volatile set of engagements between the human body and designed space. It sees the relations between space, the designing of space, and its sensorial engagement as a curious and particular weather system. It asks how we engage with this unpredictable atmosphere in Aotearoa, how it influences our thinking about space, and our performances in relation to it. The Āhua o te Rangi contribution to Space seeks work that develops this crossing of the human body, time and material space.

New Zealand Architects, Designers and Artists, are invited to submit projects – architecture, spatial structures, spatial events – that consider questions of Pacific weather. (They may expand on the invisible performances behind the designing of space, the potential for built space to be responsive and perform, the potential for the body to influence the material reality of space; they might be in the form of buildings, installations, performances or works of scenography. They will be works that “are experiential, involving all the senses and relate distinctly to the specificity of the site they occupy for any duration of time” (Serge von Arx). A curated selection of projects will be displayed at the New Zealand Space exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial 2015.

Basic Requirements

- One dance performance (contemporary)

- One physical costume

- Seven objects or artefacts from performance (props/models on set/objects on display)

- 10 screen works, preferably interchangeable (iPads/projectors)

- One sound work