Yawn, Renae Shadler and collaborators |
What Tregloan finds fascinating is the way PQ is looking at design as something that happens in the here and now and examining live performance from that perspective, making it special and different from recorded culture.
Tregloan will principally show documentation using video, books and interactive websites representing works that are “participatory and in-location,” like the film of Renae Shadler’s Yawn (2015), part of her In Ya Ear series, made with commuters in a railway station. “It’s a beautiful work because it’s very simply shot in a single frame with a whole range of human beings yawning for the camera. It’s participatory for the volunteers but when you’re watching it also becomes a participatory experience. Renae will collect Prague yawns on location and transfer them into the exhibit room each day.”
Democratic Set, Back to Back Theatre |
Other works in Tregloan’s program that occupy public space are Super Critical Mass and PVI Collective’s Resist. The former is the MCA version involving 40 volunteers humming—“it was on the collections floor with works that we know quite well. The room, the whole space was refreshed by the action of the mass. We’re going to show documentation of Resist and make a new version of it—a collaboration between Prague and Perth. PVI’s Kate Neylon will be in Prague canvassing citizens for the hot issues that they want debated.” A tug-of-war will take place in Perth with locals representing the citizens of Prague; “it will be documented and sent to Prague.”
These works attracted Tregloan because of “their participatory nature and the other semantic I’m working with, the power of mass. [PQ’s other themes are music, politics, space]” Titling her curation The Mass, she says she is “working around the idea of weather as the outcome of mass action. A single raindrop is not rain; a mass of raindrops becomes rain.” Similarly, people put politicians in power, a mass effect, and they deal with the weather. To further the metaphorical connection, says Tregloan “we are going to have giant meteorological balloons in the room. Some days the room might be quite full and on others have just a single balloon. Because of the theme I wanted something participatory in the room that would be very simple. The air currents you create will shift the balloons around or you might need to push them out of the way.”
Resist, Mumbai, PVI Collective photo Punit Paranjpe |
Although more conventional theatre, The Malthouse production The Shadow King will be represented for its innovative design, especially the use of participatory filmmaking for its projections and for its dialogue between “a very old play and an extremely old culture.” The spiritually potent dilly bag from the production will be exhibited in the Object section of PQ.
Other exhibits include NORPA’s The Home Project which focused on the Winsome Hotel’s history as alternate cabaret scene, band venue and now homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Lismore. NORPA put several artists in place, working with the residents, collecting stories and creating, says Tregloan, “a one-off Hospitality event” for people welcomed back to the venue.
Tregloan emphasises that PQ “is not a market. It’s a tasting, a feast. It’s not like many biennales where everything is clean and neat and in its place. It’s quite an anarchic event. This is another of its strengths. It means everyone is there on an investigative path and you make your own way.” RT
PQ 2015, 13th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, Prague, 18-28 June; PQAU is an initiative of the IETM-Australia Council for the Arts Collaboration Project and with support from Arts Victoria.
RealTime issue #126 April-May 2015 pg. 40
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