PQ 011_day one

After the initial disappointment of arriving in Prague too late to register for the Scenofest workshops, the first real day of PQ11 got off to a good start with the sun out and a proper czech buffet breakfast. After topping up on sun cream I headed for walking to the Veletrezni Place HQ (the whole day was on foot due to a europe-wide public transit strike).

The national expositions inside the modern art gallery (of which I saw only 6) were fairly big budget pavilion-type structures, and generally either celebrated a range of recent (avant garde) national performers or attempted to give a more general impression of the country's culture through performance / architecture. Im looking forward to finishing the rest along another day, as the time came for the first scenography talk to kick off the rebranded 'Quadrennial of performance design and space'. Arnold Aronson described how the new name for 2011 represented the recent blurring of boundaries in theatre and scenography and the intersection of many other disciplines. He went on to argue that it wasn't theatre that changed in the last 10 years but audiences; the cardinal technology of the internet, hypertextuality, and visual bombardment has redefined our concept of reality, therefore new audiences have a different set of expectations for what (a) theatre should/can be. Jane Collins of Wimbledon College of Art then gave a whirlwind tour of the theories associated with scenography and performance (essentially a long book plug but well presented and useful nonetheless).

Due the transport situation, the next destination was the architecture section- a long and very sunny walk away, but there were plenty of distractions as I crossed the Vltava into the narrow twisting streets of the old town. The exhibtion and 'open spatial lab' above are housed in a fantastic refurbishment of st Annes church, a deconsecrated building tucked away in a private courtyard at the original crossroads of the city. Commissioner Doritta Hannah of Wellington University introduced the concept for the section and broad theoretical grounds to be covered during the 10 days of talks, workshops and symposium. One key contested point was the statement that theatre really had 'left the building', and following the talks there was a lively debate, which gave the impression that theatre makers were much more keen on the idea of found space while architect-practioners were suspicious and much more keen to design specific buildings for them. We then heard Omar Khan of Buffalo University talking about designing for (rather than trying to control) the agency of crowds as well as rolling out the much-hyped Tahrir / facebook link. Jane Rendell was not in attendance but a lecture delivered on her behalf covered the spatiality of language both in her own practice of 'site-writing' as well as highly relevant theoretical ground of Bhaba and

Benjamin's Arcades (the dialectical image). Finally Andrew Todd tried to cross theory and practice and posited the notion that something is lost when the theatre building leaves the civic centre. He certainly would lose - as his practice has collaborated on a number of high-profile new and refurbished theatre projects.

Crossing the Letenske park (with an ice cream) to the last third main event of the day I passed Claudia Bosse's billboard installation; 'The Tears of Stalin'. I was responding to an open call to a rehearsal for the second and third parts of the same performance event, which involved a mass occupation of a 'public space'. The major road bridge into Prague was due to be closed to cars, and participants would descend upon it en masse, standing silently for 50 minutes before whispering secrets to the passers-by/audience. Unfortunately for Claudia, the people of prague / PQ did not seem to be quite as keen on participating, and for a whatever reason only around 30 turned up- bit of a disaster as she was genuinely planning for 500 (!). After some interesting discussion about this gap between utopian expectation and reality, why people in prague dont use their public spaces, why people in general dont want to take part in this sort of collective art/protest, and what alternatives could be offered (500 empty chairs was a popular idea), the PQ organiser began to get stressed about all of the expense and effort they had taken to close the bridge and book the hall for rehearsals etc. From a research point of view the whole thing turned out to be quite good, but in the end we had to choose whether 30 of us should try and do something different (whisper through megaphones from a boat?) or whether just to call it off, which descended into an argument in czech (not translated by this point) so I chatted with the artist for a bit, wished her luck and left!