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| The French pavilion's blunt statement |
Anyhow, would I have been in the jury, these are the prizes I would have given out this year:
Prize for bold use of outdated stagecraft: Russia
Coulisse? Who uses coulisse these days? Now, really? That's what I though, when first glancing at the Russian pavilion, artistry by Shishkin-Hokusai, Oleg Karavaychuk and Olga Muravitskaya. But then I entered the area, bordered by a coulisse picket fence. Obviously. And the uncomfortable atmosphere really hit me, helped by the sound design and the fact that it really wasn't too easy to move among all the coulisse. What first seemed as happy kids playing, were actually people (and animals) in obvious agony. Suddenly, use of this old, even cliché technique in such a cartoonist way seemed to have a certain juxtapositional meaning.
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| A slight detail of the Russian woods of coulisse |
Prize for smuggling in contemporary fine arts: Cyprus
I have no idea what the installation of Cyprus had with stage design to do, but I loved it. The empty seats in the dark room, around the table of obviously important decision making, with a pool of water ominously roiling, and no entrance to the other side of the table, made a very clear political statement. Maybe even a tad too clear, and that might be the reason the piece by Elena Kotasvili and Alexis Vayianos was seen in PQ and not in the Biennale.
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| Audience door opening to the murky site of decision making |
Prize for the best use of revolving stuff: Finland
This year's hit was revolving things. There was the revolving curtain of Germany, the revolving room/music box of Latvia and the revolving virgin of Denmark, to name a few. And then there was Finland and its revolving audience. There people could sit for a while (always a spring of joy among the weary visitors) and see the scenographic landscape changing, and let the sound design affect what they see and how they perceive it. I think this was one of the simple yet genial concepts, actually making a point about stage design in this years PQ. Way to go, KOKIMO!
Disclamer of probable partiality here.
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| Come to the Finnish pavilion and see the world |
Prize for out of context presentation: Croatia
Presentation of stage design elsewhere than in the actual performance is a hell that everyone presenting in PQ must deal with. Croatia had managed particularly well in showing video designs of Ivan Marušić Klif for several performances. The setup was quite media art like, with uneven projections around the traditional white cube. There were the original videos running, but they also created a totally new entity put together. Obviously, the pavilion didn't even try to present the videos in the original context, but took a leap of faith towards fine arts. A wise decision, since the videos were quite groovy on their own.
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| Examples of Mr. Klif's varied styles |
Prize for serving important identity questions sugared in cuteness: Chile
Not too long ago, a professional in the Finnish theatre asked, when discussing the challenges of a costume designer, if actors could just go and grab some clothes from their storages. This proves that the Chilean pavilion is much needed. There, in the form of natural history museum, are some all too unknown monsters of stage world on display. In their cutest, funniest and overall adorable versions, based on clichés, prejudices, and, partly, truths. I hope this exhibition and its monsters, created by chilean designers, will be a touring one!
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| One of the minor monsters |
Prize for best use of a classic illusion: Hungary
We've all visited tivoli's, fairgrounds and Yayoi Kusama's artworks with this classic mirror illusion of infinite space. Yet, Hungary managed to make it a bit more immersive, communal and even funny. I was afraid of a giant whack-a-mole hammer landing on my head at any given moment, though.
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| Hungary out |
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| Hungary in |
Prize for having a point in bringing scale models: Korean Student section.
Representing scenography via scale model is a drag. You get to see the structure of sets and maybe a light cue or two, but the whole of the performance is horribly missing. Even though I find scale models interesting in their own right, I usually lose interest when there are gazillions of them, which is the case in PQ. Luckily, I was especially tipped to go see South Korea's student section's models. Maybe it's because these projects are not (all) realised, that they are made with more leeway and even humour than the professional ones – and this goes to other student section models as well. Most of the models have one elaborate spatial idea, which means that for once the space could be the lead of the performance. I hope the students can keep up with this in the future, too.
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| Detail of the model of Tsang Wang Shun |
Everybody loves the French pavilion prize: France
How could you not adore this piece? It's fluffy, hilarious, nostalgic, melancholic, even sad, enigmatic and outspoken, and overwhelmingly captivating. Without an exception, everybody I talked to mentioned the squirming blobs of Philippe Quesne as (at least one of) their favourites. I would have loved to go in and hug every one of the wobbling thingies of fake fur and foam there (but didn't, I'm a rule abiding Finn, after all). The atmosphere of the cube, filled with – in addition to the blobs – a lonely automatic piano tinkling away, scenery wallpaper and occasional smoke, kind of condensed a designer attitude towards theatre, as a colleague said: "It's like, after all the struggle and even desperation in my profession, when I watch this piece, I can still remember why I do this shit".
As the evergreen by The Scorpions, played by the automatic piano, goes, we serenade the theatre: "Still loving you-uuuuu".
Other people visiting Prague Quadrennial
• The Seriousgeogamelabs: ECO-TRAVEL AND ECO-SCENOGRAPHY FOR @PQ_2019 #PQ2019
