Meeting Books at the Theatre | "Pasaże scenografii. Praskie Quadriennale 1999-2019" Are you interested in cyclical, international exhibitions such as Documenta or the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art? Have you heard of the Prague Quadrennial – the world’s largest event dedicated to theatre scenography and set design for the performing arts?
The Zbigniew Raszewski Theatre Institute invites you to a meeting in the Books at the Theatre series on 8 March at 18:00, devoted to the publication “Pasaże scenografii. Praskie Quadriennale 1999-2019″ [Passages of Set Design. Prague Quadrennial 1999-2019] by Katarzyna Fazan. Free admission. The talk will be translated into Polish Sign Language.
We will talk about the transformations of this event with our speakers in celebration of the publication of a comprehensive book about the Prague Quadrennial (PQ) by Katarzyna Fazan. We will also talk about the latest edition of PQ which will take place on 8-18 June this year, on the premises of the historic Prague market, which once served as the city’s slaughterhouse.
Katarzyna Fazan, through her systematic analysis of the PQ, has made an immense contribution to the advancement of the study of scenography. Her essays published in the Didaskalia periodical have always covered three aspects: firstly, discussing the Polish exhibition; secondly, analysing the PQ as a whole (which, given the vastness of this ‘event’, is no simple matter); thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, showing the global context in which Polish artists operate. Fazan does not analyse scenography, which is the development of the stage, but in her discussion, she is guided by Boris Kudlička’s claim that scenography today is a self-sufficient installation equipped with an expressive narrative and dramaturgy – and that is why exhibitions (…) require from visitors (or often rather – participants) quite a share of competence and an openness to experimentation. The author shows the transformation of the visitor’s journey as it changes from observation to participation (…). And this phenomenon has become more and more visible over the years (the book covers six editions of the PQ, i.e. 20 years), putting the concept of stage design in a liminal situation. We stand here between the concepts of stage design exhibitions as a catalogue of ‘traces of performances’ (this is how the first Polish exhibitions could be summarised) and the present-day experience of reading a performance by tracing the assumed relationships with the viewer.
– from a review by Prof. Dr. hab. Magdalena Raszewska.
Guests who will take part in the talk are Katarzyna Fazan (author of the book, lecturer at the Department of Theatre and Drama of the Faculty of Polish Studies at the Jagiellonian University and at the Department of Drama Direction at the Stanisław Wyspiański Academy for the Dramatic Arts in Krakow, professor of humanities), Paweł Janicki (media artist affiliated with the WRO Art Center, member of the team of authors of “Post-Apocalypsis” – Polish exhibition of Countries and Regions awarded in 2015 with a gold medal for sound), Magdalena Raszewska (theatre historian, professor at the Set Design Department of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw), Ida Ślęzak (member of the team of authors of the Exhibition of Countries and Regions “Look Around” developed for this year’s edition, a researcher of performing arts and a doctoral student at the University of Warsaw).
The meeting will be chaired by Anna Galas-Kosil, curator, theatre scholar, and producer of the Polish exhibitions at the PQ in the years 2007-2015.
The talk will be translated into Polish Sign Language.
