Out of The Box – projects designed for the public space
Four Days in the frame of Intersection – Prague Quadriennale of performance design and space 2011
The art projects from the areas of theatre, dance, and the visual arts presented in this section work intensively with place, responding to the architecture, scenography, and design of public space. The selected artists address the subject of architecture and urbanism in a city where one can be an active participant, spatial catalyst, and true spectator of a new image of scenography. The selected projects present various different artistic approaches and ways of working with public space – site-specific projects, interventions, improvisation, performance art, or installations. The project’s main dramaturgical theme is playfulness, the tracing and exploration of the city’s iconography, and a shared interest in communicating about public space primarily with the city’s inhabitants.
Program coordinator Out of the Box – Projects for Public Space: Denisa Václavová
––
16 June at 6 pm OPENING from 17 till 26 June daily
STAGING // TOMÁŠ SVOBODA – installation
parking on Národní třída (corner of streets Mikulandská and Národní)
Using simple installation elements, the project presents everyday life on the stage, subjecting it to the viewer’s exploration. It enables us to rearrange a situation in order to be able to perceive what we see as theatrical. Tomáš Svoboda studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and the State Academy of Fine Art in Karlsruhe. He helped co-found the Display gallery, today called tranzitdisplay. Svoboda works with non-narrative text and its ability to convey information, as well as with the relationship between text and image. He does not, however, ignore social topics, media critiques, or various forms of commercial information. His installations and videos address themes related to the transformation of the environment and shifts in stereotyped ways of seeing. Exploring the possibilities of abstract narrative, he develops situations where the key component of the message is transferred onto the viewer.
––
17 June at 6 pm
VOICEQUAKE / ACTION CHOIR // STAGE CODE & LA GRANDE BANDE & GUEST
meeting at Piazzetta of the National Theatre, city walk
Prague’s Old Town today has been almost completely stripped of authenticity, a place haunted by tourists and the “services” that accommodate their needs. It is also a picturesque arena full of architectural gems, a thousand years of history, and the imprint left by multitudes of past and present lives. Walking through Prague’s centre, at every turn you will cross paths with countless Mozarts, knights, and street vendors from all corners of the world. The cheap globalized made-in-China glitter, underscored by international pop music, combines to create a sublime operatic scenography. And still, all of this somehow blends with normal, everyday life.
Voicequake invites you on an unusual journey to various corners of the city, brought to life by our imagination. The voices of the past contrast sharply with the songs of the future, dreamy visions do battle with commercial hyper-specificity, the city’s Czech essence evaporates in global gibberish; words, song and movement create idiotic, logical, priceless and absurd phenomena and structures. Voicequake uses voice, audio, performance, and elements of the flash-mob.
Free entrance for a limited number of visitors. To make reservations, please send your name and the number of tickets requested to denisa.vaclavova@pq.cz
Production Team
- Stage Code & La Grande Bande & Guests
- idea and dramaturgical development: Daniela Voráčková, Philipp Schenker
- music/choir: Matěj Kroupa / La Grande Bande
- artistic collaboration: Rasťa Juhás, Magdalena Prousková
- final directing/dramaturgy: Philipp Schenker & co.
- production: SPREAD O.S.
STAGE CODE // The Stage Code theatre group, founded by Daniela Voráčková and Philipp Schenker, has been active in Prague since 1999. In collaboration with various Czech and foreign artists, the group creates theatre projects in a diverse range of genres (visual theatre, object-theatre, site-specific, street theatre, cabaret, dramatization of texts, and children’s theatre, etc.). Stage Code’s work is organized and produced by Spread, o.s.
LA GRANDE BANDE // La Grande Bande, led by composer and violist Matěj Kroupa, was founded in 2004. The choir has a broad repertoire of songs, including works by eminent Czech and international composers, and works composed by its choirmaster. The choir performs at a diverse range of events, including gallery openings, but also gives its own concerts; it regularly sings during mass at the Church of St. Stephen.
20 June all day (00:01-23:59)
HANDA GOTE // URBAN CAMPING
the Piazzetta of the National Theatre
A non-violent intervention in what remains of a public space
A 24-hour camping experience on the National Theatre’s piazzetta
The Handa Gote performance ensemble will spend 24 hours camping on the National Theatre’s piazzetta in homemade ceremonial masks and clothing. Relaxation, conversation, and games; a further unspecified ceremony; the erection of a portable temple for further unspecified godheads; cooking food and whiling the time away by playing on homemade instruments, through song and dance, the creation of arrowheads and other practical tools using available materials (glass from bottles, replacing the more difficult-to-find obsidian or flintstone), and a two- to three-hour ritual invocation of money.
The camp’s participation will in no way accost passers-by or onlookers. Their form of communication with be the radical absence of any outwards signs of belonging to majority society. These nomadic artistic homeless won’t have anything to be afraid of, either. They, too, know that it is normal to adapt. Inadaptability goes against the natural order and against culture itself.
Any gathering of people is legitimate, even if it has no aim of achieving a specific goal.
Prepared and performed by: Handa Gote research & development and guests
Tomáš Procházka / Robert Smolík / Pasi Mäkelä / Martin Janíček / Miloš Šejn / Jan Dörner / Jakub Hybler
production: jedefrau.org Cavina/Kalivodová
photo: Martin Vosáhlo
The artistic group Handa Gote research and development is a conceptual post-dramatic theatre ensemble working with audio installations, movement and dance theatre, live music, visual theatre, and technology. Its performances are characterized by a hidden poetics and a unique aesthetics, influenced by minimalism, eastern philosophy, the Do-It-Yourself movement, and the combination of old and new on both the technological as well as mental level. Handa Gote mixes Czech do-it-yourselfism, the reuse of objects and technologies, and inspiration from Japanese wabi-sabi aesthetics.
––
June 21, Tue 10 pm
Contemporary Czech Video Art Evening
the Piazzetta of the National Theatre
The evening programme will focus on the most outstanding young as well as established Czech visual artists. The selection of presented videos shows the diverse range of approaches and different subjects found on the Czech art scene: site-specific works, video performances, video installations, visual intervention and conceptual, political and social documentary video art. This presentation of Czech video art focuses on the most interesting artistic creations and presents the rich and diverse possibilities offered by the artistic use of this medium.
Prepared by: Denisa Václavová, Four Days
Length of screening: ca. 60 minutes
Featured artists:
Dušan Zahoranský // Tomáš Svoboda // Zbyněk Baladrán // Eva Jiřička // Jan Nálevka // Adam Vačkář // Aneta Mona Chisa + Lucie Tkáčová // Jakub Nepraš // Sláva Sobotovičová // Radim Labuda // Ondřej Brody // Michal Pěchouček // Jan Pfeiffer // Martin Kohout // Marek Ther
Detailed programme:
Zdokonalení/Improvement, 2009, Adam Vačkář
délka/duration: 5 min.
Fly, 2009, Tomáš Svoboda
délka/duration: 3,57 min.
If not us, who? If not now, when?
living sculpture/performed in Komarno, Slovakia, 2010
Anetta Mona Chisa & Lucia Tkáčová
délka/duration: 3,30 min.
Ayahuasca, 2007, Jakub Nepraš
délka/duration: 2 min.
40 000 000, 2010, Zbyněk Baladrán
délka/duration: 7,23 min.
Part I., 2008, Dušan Zahoranský
hudba/music: Jiří Bezděk
délka/duration: 3,08 min.
Našla jsem v lese/Found in the Forest, 2006, Eva Jiřička
délka/duration: 2,40 min.
All Together Now, 2007, Jan Nálevka
délka/duration: 4 min.
Tajemství tiché pošty/The Silent Post Secret, 2003, Michal Pěchouček
délka/duration: 7,4 min.
5A Untitled, 2011, Martin Kohout
ukázka ze 40min. videa / sample from 40min long video
délka/duration: 2,22 min.
Předpoklad III./Prevision III., 2009, Jan Pfeiffer
délka/duration: 2,39 min.
Jak to bolí, 2009, Sláva Sobotovičová
délka/duration: 1,11min.
A ty se ptáš, co já?/The winner takes it all, 2003, Ondřej Brody
délka/duration: 5,15 min.
Vestido Nuevo (Nové šaty/A New Dress), Madrid, 2008, Radim Labuda
délka/duration: 5,40 min.
Burger und Ther (American Period), 2004, Mark Ther
spolupráce/in collaboration with: Gebrant Burger (NL)
délka/duration: 3,21 min.
––
26 June at 8.30 pm
JAN LEPŠÍK / EGON TOBIÁŠ // OCTOBRIANA VERSUS GAGARIN // a puppet comic strip
the Piazzetta of the National Theatre
The theatre performance Octobriana versus Gagarin involves several theatre methods and techniques. Some parts of the play are presented through puppetry, performed in a public space while at the same time being projected on a screen. This approach allows the performers to combine sequences of puppet animation with live action. The entire play is accompanied by live music and something that might be called a specific form of dance. An important aspect is the energy of the performance, its unrestrained improvisation, the resultant adrenaline, and the entire piece’s meticulous visual form. The creators definitely deny the possibility of their work being puppet pornography.
Octobriana: You’ve really never heard of me?
Gagarin: No…. nothing…. I spent X years locked up in Star City. I made friends a little with Neznaika, Ponchik, and Knopochka… All in all, I don’t really know anyone.
text: Egon Tobiáš
puppet and set designer: Jan Lepšík, Jan Kačena
directed by: Jan Kačena
performers: Jan Lepšík & co.
Jan Lepšík is a graduate of the Department of Alternative Theatre at the Theatre Faculty of the Academy of Performing Art (DAMU). Since 1995, he has been an actor at the Ústí nad Labem Drama Studio, where he worked with orphanages as a theatre workshop director, and also with Roma children as part of the Bareder papežis theatre project. In 2005, he shifted his activities to Prague, where has worked with the Theatre on the Balustrades, the Řeznická Theatre, La Fabrika, and MeetFactory. Since 2007 he has co-taught (with Viktoria Čermáková) of the main acting course at the College of Acting in Michle. He is also involved with the Mezery civic association, contributing to Porta apostolurum, Leave Fidel Alone, Good Luck, To the Jews and other theatre projects.