2O19

Call for Applications:

SITE SPECIFIC
PERFORMANCE
FESTIVAL
Call for Applications

VITAL INFORMATION
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space invites submissions for the
Site Specific Performance Festival, a curated, non-competitive project that will take
place in Prague, 7-15 June 2019. Proposals are accepted from performance designers,
directors, choreographers, performers and artists of all career levels.

CURATOR: Sophie Jump

DATES:
• Call Published: 30 November 2017
• Deadline for Submission: 28 February 2018
• Official Selection Announced: 15 April 2018
• 14th Edition of Prague Quadrennial: 6-16 June 2019
• Site Specific Performance Festival: 7-15 June 2019

LOCATION OF FESTIVAL
The location for the Site Specific Performance Festival will be the Prague Exhibition
Grounds (Výstaviště Praha Holešovice). The large grounds offer a rich landscape of
history and topography from which to draw inspiration. There is also the possibility of
expanding into the adjacent Stromovka park.

TO SUBMIT APPLICATIONS:
The submission form can be accessed at the following link:
https://tinyurl.com/pqsspfapplication
In addition to completing the form, please email (or send via WeTransfer or similar
provider) additional requested materials listed at the end of the call to [email protected] with
subject line: SITE SPECIFIC.

COPYRIGHT:
By submitting to the Site Specific Performance Festival you grant permission to the
Prague Quadrennial to record, reproduce, edit, and display both your submitted materials
and the work presented at PQ 2019 in any way it desires, whether for promotion,
retrospectives, or archives, etc... in perpetuity. All other rights reserved.
All projects are obligated to secure all author’s rights and copyrights for all components
(design, video materials, music, text, etc...) that will be utilized as part of their
performances, and guarantees that PQ organizers will not be held responsible for any
claims made by third parties.

PLEASE NOTE:
While excited to offer a platform for this work, PQ cannot cover the expenses or production
costs for every participating artist or company, who will need to be self funded. However,
the Prague Quadrennial will contribute to the expenses of a small number of endeavors
that the curatorial team feels is most in the spirit of the artistic statement. By selecting
participating artists more than a year before the festival, it is our hope that participants
will have the opportunity to secure funding from other organizations or grant bodies.
PQ can provide needed documentation and letters of invitation in support of any grant
applications undertaken by participants.
Call for Applications

CONTEXT
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

ABOUT PQ:
Organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and realized by
the Arts and Theatre Institute, the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design
and Space is the largest international exhibition and festival event dedicated
to scenography, performance design and theatre architecture. Since 1967 PQ
has been an exchange, networking and educational platform exploring the best
works in scenography and design for performance through exhibitions, festivals,
workshops, performances, symposia, educational events and residencies.

The last edition of this international performance design event in 2015 was held at
more than 30 venues, featured more than 500 live performances with over 180,000
visitors, and was named one of the twelve most trend-setting European festivals
in the prestigious EFFE Awards. Individual exhibitions of countries and regions
were organized by some of the most important cultural organizations from over 75
countries, including ministries of culture, art and theatre institutions, as well as
international festivals, theatre companies and prestigious theatre and visual arts schools.

CURATOR:
Sophie Jump designs for theatre and performance and won the overall Gold Medal
at World Stage Design 2013. She is Co-Artistic Director and designer for performance
company Seven Sisters Group, who are well known nationally and internationally for
their site-specific work. Her designs were selected to represent Britain at every Prague
Quadrennial exhibition of world theatre design between 1999 and 2011. Sophie completed
a PhD on theatre designers Jocelyn Herbert and Motley and is Associate Lecturer at
University of the Arts London and visiting lecturer at Royal Central School of Speech and
Drama. She curated an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum called When Marcel
Met Motley, about the collaboration between Motley and the architect Marcel Breuer.
Former Joint Honorary Secretary of the Society of British Theatre Designers, Sophie is a
Linbury Prize committee member and was a judge for the 2015 Linbury Prize for Stage
Design.
Call for Applications

ARTISTIC CONCEPT
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

A higher form of stereometry:

‘It does not seem to me…that we understand the laws governing the return of the past,
but I feel more and more as if time did not exist at all, only various spaces interlocking
according to the rules of a higher form of stereometry, between which the living and the
dead can move back and forth as they like…’
- W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

An open call to artists from around the world to bring design led site-specific performances
to PQ 2019. The location for the Site Specific Performance Festival will be the Prague
Exhibition Grounds (Výstaviště Praha Holešovice).

The grounds appear to be a jumbled, aesthetically confused place where successive

regimes have randomly placed buildings, structures or landscapes on top of one another
to represent their view of leisure or culture. It is not an easy site to engage with at first,
but it pays to persevere, and to uncover the archaeology and hidden traces of its uses and
history.

There are two main ways to approach the site:

1. SITE SPECIFIC
This specific site as a source of inspiration:
• Its social and political history / the memories embedded in it and suggested by
it / the traces or archaeology of its past
• Its present use by the public and by organizations and businesses
• A series of potential relationships between viewer and viewed
• A series of relationships between color, form, line, volume, texture, light, sound
and smell
• A combination of all of the above

2. SITE GENERIC
The site as a place to host preconceived ideas. The work could be created to happen
in many different environments or in any similar environment to this one.

The particular interest of the PQ 2019 Site Specific Performance Festival will be towards
site-specific performances that respond to the specificity of the Prague Exhibition
Grounds, and preference will be given to this work, although site-generic work will also
be considered.

In order not to hinder artists who are unable to physically visit the grounds before PQ
19 a number of documents including maps, histories, video walk-throughs, photographs
and provocations have been provided as inspiration.

- Sophie Jump, Curator

Call for Applications

LOGISTICS/SUBMISSION
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

FESTIVAL LOGISTICS:
Each performance will be scheduled to take place at least three times during the festival,
7-15 June 2019.

The performance should be self-sufficient as there will not be access to electricity,

lighting, sound equipment, or technical support etc. on site.

SUBMISSION:
The submission form can be accessed at the following link:
https://tinyurl.com/pqsspfapplication
Applicants should provide:
1. A proposal of up to 500 words that should include responses to the following
questions:
• How does the performance relate to this particular site?
• How does the audience encounter the performance?
2. A 250-word biography of the company or artist/s
3. Link (with access password if necessary to view content) to online video (Youtube,
Vimeo, etc...) of previous work by the company or artist/s, or to the proposed work
itself. If video is unavailable applicants should email (or send via WeTransfer or
similar provider) up to 5 images of previous work by the company or artist/s, or to
the proposed work itself. Images should be saved using the artist or company name
and a number designation:artistname1.jpg, artistname2.jpg, etc...
4. A PDF copy of the provided map marked to show intended spaces used for performance
5. The completed application form should be saved as “artistname.application.pdf” and
emailed along with map and images(if needed) to [email protected] with subject line: SITE
SPECIFIC. No handwritten forms will be accepted.
Call for Applications

PROVOCATIONS
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

PRAGUE EXHIBITION GROUNDS

What is this space?
• Where the first PQ was held 50 years ago
• Where Prague boasted about its prowess at the 1891 World Fair
• Where you went on a roller-coaster as a child
• Where royalty went hunting
• Where you exhibited at PQ as a young designer
• Where 45,408 Prague Jews were held before being marched to Holešovice station
and shipped to concentration camps Theresienstadt, Łódź, Ujazdów, and Auschwitz.
• Where families come for BBQs on summer evenings
• Where paths lead nowhere
• Where fires burn down buildings
• Where children come on school trips
• Where regimes try to make their mark by building over the past
• Where spiral staircases lead up to the sky into improbable cubes
• Where teenagers fly their drones at dusk
• Where fountains perform with sound and light
• Where rusted archways mark forgotten triumphs

What is the space?

• A series of traces of the memories, ambitions and events that have happened there?
• A series of relationships between color, form, line, volume, texture, light, sound,
smell?
• A series of potential relationships between viewer and viewed?

SOME HISTORY OF THE SPACE:

https://tinyurl.com/deportcamp
https://tinyurl.com/lightfountain
https://tinyurl.com/wikivysta
https://tinyurl.com/1891vysta
https://tinyurl.com/vystahunt
Call for Applications

SITE VISUALS
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

SELECTED PHOTOS OF SITE

Call for Applications

SITE VISUALS
SITE SPECIFIC PERFORMANCE FESTIVAL

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES:
Aerial Films of the Site: http://www.vystavistepraha.eu/areal-vystaviste/
Google Maps: https://goo.gl/maps/CknA6fvos5m
Catalogue of Panoramic Images of Site: https://tinyurl.com/pqsspfimages
 Celetná 17
110 00 Prague 1, Czech Republic
T:+420 224 809 102
www.pq.cz
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www.twitter.com/PQ_2019

The Prague Quadrennial strives to present performance design as

an art form concerned with the creation of active performance
environments, that are far beyond merely decorative or beautiful,
but that are emotionally charged; where design can become a
quest, a question, an argument, a threat, a resolution, or an
agent of positive change...Performance design is a collaborative
field where the artists mix, fuse, and blur the lines between
various disciplines to search for new approaches and new visions.

This edition of the Prague Quadrennial is inspired by PQ’s

highest prize, the Golden Triga. Three different forces coming
together to pull the chariot driven by Nike, the goddess of victory,
stand proudly atop the roof of the National Theatre, reminding
all that creating performance is an act of collaboration
where all talents combine their strengths to achieve much
more than any individual could ever accomplish alone.

The three horses pulling the chariot symbolize the three stages
of human life: youth’s wild instinct and intuition, the experience
of adulthood, and the wisdom of age. We will use the metaphor
of the Golden Triga to explore these points of view, three areas
connected with the cyclical phases of the creative process:
Imagination, Transformation, Memory.
- Markéta Fantová, Artistic Director PQ2019