Intersection: Intimacy & Spectacle

As part of the next Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the world´s largest performance design event held in Prague once every four years, Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle will transform Prague, introducing to the city center an ephemeral artistic dwelling composed of thirty boxes. These boxes will be inhabited for the duration of the Prague Quadrennial from June 16-26, 2011 by performative projects realized and performed by scenographers, performers, choreographers, visual artists, film directors, drama theatres, installation artists, fashion designers, writers, and painters, etc… Thus suggesting an interesting cohabitation: where else could you find an installation gathering such varied artists as Romeo Castellucci, a major European theatre director and one of the key figures of the Avignon festival, Markus Schinwald, Austria´s representative at the next Venice Bienale, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, unmissable Ukrainian-born visual artists, Anna Viebrock, the famous German scenographer, Josef Nadj, choreographer and director of the Centre Chorégraphique National d´Orléans, and many others? This outdoor performing exhibition will be a journey for audiences, explained by Intersection Curator and the Prague Quadrennial Artistic Director Sodja Lotker, “It will all question one and the same thing: what is performance? And who is performing? Is theatre something theatrical – an illusion, a straight-forward lie? Or is theatre just one of the basic ways to express ourselves? …everyday“” Out of the boxes, the Intersection project will cover the entire city of Prague, thanks to various site-specific spectacles and installations, created by Árpád Schilling / Krétakör, Claudia Bosse / theatercombinat, and many others.

In the very center of Prague, just between the National Theatre and the New Stage (ex Laterna Magica) will emerge, during 11 days in June 2011, a surprising artistic labyrinth, unmissable by passersby. Oren Sagiv, Architect of Intersection, explains the structure of this ephemeral construction, “Addressing the intermingling of theater and visual art together with the concept of intimacy, the first image we have formulated was of several room-size black boxes and white cubes (micro ‘ideal theaters´ and ‘ideal galleries´) that are parked in the public square, each providing a compact interior for an intimate engagement with a work of art, often made for one viewer at a time.”

Passersby are invited to enter the complex and hang around, enter a box and be surprised, enter another and leave immediately, or stay in the next box for hours, slowly perceiving an artist´s thoughts or emotions, or interacting with a performer (many of the boxes will be “occupied” by a live performer, for example Josef Nadj will stay in his box personally throughout the event). Visitors are also welcome to come back a few days later, to spend time again in a beloved box. „It´s a live exhibition that will talk to you only if you talk back to it. This living and breathing exhibition will tell you stories, and the more time you spend there the more it will speak to you. It will require positioning and it will let you get lost. If you are afraid of intimacy – you better not enter.“ says Sodja Lotker. You might also have a drink at the bar attached to the dwelling, thus having a nice view of the entire installation, allowing you to observe visitors passing from one box to another, or the tramways passing by on the adjacent street. Or come back at night for the cinema freely accessible from the roofs of the construction. Thus this unique artistic event aims to interact with the everyday life of the city.

Continuing to walk around the streets of Prague will allow visitors and passersby to bump into more interesting situations, introduced by Sodja Lotker, “These might be some of the projects of the boxes that have spilled from the boxes and have gotten scattered around the public space. Some of them tiny – creating close intimacy in the public space, some of them more ‘grandiose´ – political, questioning, and irritating. This is what we call spectacular!“ . Spectacular will be, for instance, the Claudia Bosse and theatercombinat´s tears of stalin, an „explosion of silence“, an urban intervention gathering of over 500 people in the center of the city. Or Krétakör´s jp.co.de, a film and an installation including an experiment involving twelve people living for two weeks in the former headquarters of a printing house in the center of Prague – it is the first part of the Crisis trilogy, conceived by Árpád Schilling, and performed during 2011 in Munich and Budapest. A bit further in the city, in the former cooking area of the Bohnice mental hospital in Prague, you might hear Philip Glass´ opera Les enfants terribles, a site-specific performance directed by film director Alice Nellis for the National Theatre. Czech artists will also take up the city center. For instance, the Galerie2 will exhibit major Czech artists who will have the venue at their disposal for a period of twenty-four hours each, thus being forced to respond to the non-reversible changes caused by their predecessors. Lastly, the pioneer of modern stagecraft won´t be missed in the city since his works will be presented in the Space and Light: Edward Gordon Craig exhibition realized by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Participating artists Romeo Castellucci / Socěetas Raffaello Sanzio // Josef Nadj // Anna Viebrock / Till Exit // Nathaniel Mellors // Ana Borralho & João Galante // Markus Schinwald // Mareunrol´s // Brett Bailey // Hooman Sharifi // Ilya and Emilia Kabakov // Monika Pormale // Hans Rosenström // Josef Bolf // Guerra de la Paz // Monika Pormale // Terike Haapoja // Egon Tobiáš // Elevator Repair Service // Ioana Mona Popovici & Simon Vincenzi // Ulla von Brandenburg // Caroline Evans & Hansjorg Schmidt // Bohdan Holomíček & Eva Hrubá // Abbey Theatre // Harun Farocki // Dace Džeriņa // Paul Divjak // Dejan Kaludjerović // Kateřina Fojtíková // Tomáš Vaněk // Tomáš Džadoň // Pavla Sceranková // Dušan Záhoranský // Jan Haubelt // Ivars Gravleys // Petra Pětiletá // Daniela Baráčková // Vasil Artamonov // Alexey Klyuykov // Alice Nikitinová // Tomáš Moravec // Matěj Al-Ali // Jan Pffeifer // Jan Komárek // Tomáš Svoboda // Stage Code & La grande bande // Handa Gote // Jan Lepšík // Alice Nellis // Árpád Schilling / Krétakör // Claudia Bosse / theatercombinat