Looking for…
Looking for…
Concept, teksten en vormgeving i.s.m. Lena Müller, Theun Mosk, Marloeke van der Vlugt voor Looking for… een mobiele telefoon-route door Praag; de Nederlandse inzending voor The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2011, de wereldtentoonstelling voor theatervormgeving.
De vier ontwerpers maakten een lege houten doos. Ze toonden geen maquettes of foto’s van hun ontwerpen, maar maakten een smartphone-route door Praag. De wandeling is gebaseerd op locaties, afgebeeld op oude foto’s gevonden achter het oude tentoonstellingsgebouw van The Prague Quadrennial. De smartphone leidt het publiek naar de locaties, waar de foto’s rond 1968 genomen zijn. Gedurende de route delen de ontwerpers hun gedachten over framing reality. Als antwoord nemen de toeschouwers hun eigen foto’s, die meteen na afloop van de wandeling geprint worden. De houten doos vult zich gedurende The Prague Quadrennial met de foto’s van de toeschouwers, opgehangen naast de originele z/w foto’s. Deze foto’s vormen het uitgangspunt voor een gesprek over verschillende manieren van kijken en over het creëren van (theatrale) beelden. Lees hier meer
Concept, tekst, vormgeving: Lena Müller, Theun Mosk, Marloeke van der Vlugt en Roos van Geffen, Techniek: Jeffrey Steenbergen, software: 7Scenes, ontwikkeld door De Waag Society, producent: Henrica van den Bergcuratoren: Mirjam Grote Gansey, Herbert Janse e.a. Met dank aan: De onbekende fotograaf die de foto’s maakte rond 1968, VPT/ Els Wijmans, Theater Instituut Nederlands / Nan van Houten, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Pieter Smit, Theaterschool Amsterdam
Blue pages – The Society of British Theatre Designers juni 2011, Michael Spencer “The Dutch exhibit confronted us with a booth, inside which sat a man who presented participants with an iPhone if they wished to take a hour long tour through the streets of Prague immediately outside the exhibition building. The tour was created by four leading Dutch scenographers – the iPhone was your guide: map, visual references, audio and means of recording your experience. This last example – a personal favourite – raises issues of where reality meets theatre, by asking participants to frame their experience via photographs they are instructed to take.”
www.newparadiselaboratories.org: I found the Dutch National Pavilion and the walking tour to be a well-integrated and forward-looking experience at the Prague Quadrennial–amongst my favourites there. The tour was well-written and evocative, the ending was fulfilling and memorable.
Michael Spencer Course Director BA Performance Design & Practice Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design, London “I find this exhibition extremely important for my students. I will make this part of their obligatory program during their visit of the PQ. Intrigued by the idea of an exhibit that was part experienced outside of the exhibition building, I initially received a lesson in how to use an iPhone (I have a thing about mobile phones and don’t own one, never mind an iPhone). Having been instructed, I marched out and followed the map, watching my satellite blob and stopping to hear text, see images to assure me I was on the correct route, and take photos. The idea became more intriguing over the hour I spent experiencing it – I granted no other exhibit an hour of my time, which in itself makes this remarkable. After all, performance happens in space over time….My appreciation grew over the hour, at first intrigued, then a bit confused, then delighted and engaged, and finally, illuminated. The central question of when framed life becomes performance and when performance dissolves into real life is very pertinent, and beautifully and elegantly described here. Theory and practice as one.”
Nanay Fanini Katalin (Hungary)
Project coordinator of Festival Art on Site (www.placcc.hu) in Hungary: “I liked the walk very much. This is one of the most interesting projects of the PQ for me.
Andrew (UK), academic, teaches theatre and performance [E]
“I’m interested in location of performance. What’s the spectators’ experience in site specific work. What’s my work while I’m walking around. It’s for me to imagine this theme, to locate myself, to see what’s around me, where am I in Prague, who am I in Prague, and how do I relate to the history of what has gone on before. 1968 is floating around, how was life under communism?”
Viola Weltgen (Germany)
“We liked the recording, especially the fact that you can hear different sources from editing of sound. But you could have added sound of the street. I enjoyed most the audio recording at Expo building (L4): to be asked to choose what I would keep. It was like going back in history while listening to the text. In general we thought the texts were very good.”
