Artists from All Over the World Are Headed to the Prague Quadrennial 2019 The international theatre event of the season is ready to start. A tradition since 1967, from June 6 - 16, the 14th Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space will welcome tens of thousands of visitors to the Prague Exhibition Grounds, DAMU, and many other sites. Over the course of 11 days, the festival will present exhibitions from 79 countries, featuring more than 800 artists from around the world, plus 600 performances, workshops, and lectures. The festival's main stars include illustrator Olivia Lomenech Gill, Italian opera director and scenographer Stefano Poda, and audiovisual artist Romain Tardy. PQ's main attractions are its three competition sections: the Exhibition of Countries and Regions, the Student Exhibition, and the Performance Space Exhibition. Other attractions include two performance-based projects in public space -- Formations and the Site Specific Performance Festival. The Fragments exhibition presents iconic objects by various legends of scenography, the audiovisual project 36Q° will take over the Small Sports Hall, PQ Studio shows works by young artist, and PQ Talks presents lectures and discussions with stars of theatre and scenography. PQ also offers a children's program and workshops as part of the PQ Family Program. For accreditation and a complete program, visit www.pq.cz; single-day tickets are available via GoOut. "PQ 2019 presents scenography as the art of singular moments. It is more than a mere exhibition. We do not present scenography merely through artifacts or just as the decorations and costumes of traditional theatre -- we present it as a summary experience. Scenographic works are what connects the inner world of the artist's imagination with the audience's fantasy," explains PQ's artistic director Markéta Fantová. After 12 years, PQ returns to the Prague Exhibition Grounds in the city's Holešovice district, bringing to life not just the Industrial Palace, but the entire surrounding area as well: the Križík's Pavilions, the Small Sports Hall, and Stromovka Park. The Exhibition Grounds were also the site of the first Quadrennial ever, held in 1967. This year's program focuses on three themes, three cyclically repeating stages in the creative process: Imagination, Transformation, and Memory. "Imagination" includes the Student Exhibition, the Site Specific Performance Festival, the PQ Studio program for emerging theatre artists, and the PQ Youth and Family Program. "Transformation" includes the Exhibition of Countries and Regions; the Performance Space Exhibition; the performance-based Formations project, which combines architecture, urbanism, dance, and movement theatre; 36Q°, which is focused on sound and lighting design; and lectures, presentations, and discussions of PQ Talks. And "Memory" includes the exhibition Fragments. The project titled Emergence, meanwhile, spans all three themes. One traditional part of PQ is the Exhibition of Countries and Regions, where representatives from geographic regions present their specific approaches to scenography. This year, the regional exhibits will include live events, with few curators even choosing venues outside the Exhibition Grounds. The main part of the Exhibition of Countries and Regions will nevertheless be in the right wing of the Industrial Palace and in Križík Pavilion B. The Student Exhibition, in which students, young scenographers, and new scenographic studios present their works, is located in the Industrial Palace's left wing. The Danish entry explores European folk traditions and myths associated with virginity. Some people believe that virgins are the only people capable of taming a unicorn, that they can walk through swarms of bees without getting stung, stare into the sun without coming to harm, and restore the flame of an extinguished candle. Others claim that their blood has the power to heal and bring happiness. Denmark is bringing one such magical being to PQ 2019, where it will be exhibited in a glass display case. In a world where people are constantly forced to change, performer and scenographer Julian Juhlin tries to halt his own evolution -- at least for the duration of the performance. The Netherlands' director Julian Hetzel's highly unconventional concept store offers visitors just one product -- a soap called SELF. Thanks to the great popularity of plastic surgery, Hetzel was able to use human fat from liposuction to create a luxury good, a sustainable product created by people, from people, and for people. What all is real and what kinds of things are we willing to buy in order to wash away our guilt? This performative installation offers a singular interdisciplinary experience. The Czech Republic has created a container city built in the vicinity of Villa Štvanice -- a camp for alien refugees from distant planets. The CAMPQ exhibition starts at the Prague Exhibition Grounds, from where a special bus takes the audience to Štvanice Island at half-hour intervals. Besides an interactive exhibition, the project also includes a seven-hour immersive performance. CAMPQ will be open to the public for the duration of PQ, but advance ticket purchase is required for the three all-night performances held on June 6, 8, and 10. The starting point for Fluid Stages, an exhibition organized by Finland's Kokimo art group, is an understanding of the world as a scenographic landscape: as stage, montage, and a series of scenes. Its "fluid scenes" consist of an exhibition at the Industrial Palace and several separate performances held at various places throughout Prague, each of which uses unusual combinations of sensory perception to enable audiences to "read" the world. The precise times and locations will be announced at www.kokimo.fi. The Czech student exhibition Intelektrurálne collective presents six one-day trips through its "Prague Is Not Czechia" travel agency. The program includes a trip organized by students from DAMU's Department of Alternative and Puppet Theatre, who will lead a trip to the Brdy Forests titled Going Mushrooming. Students from the Intermedia Studio at Brno's Faculty of Fine Arts will take participants to the very limits of reality, while a group of students from JAMU's Theatre Faculty presents the mythical Czech figure of the water sprite and the project's curators themselves have put together an outing titled No Cake without Hard Work. Also involved in the project is the artistic-anthropological group Czechia, which will take participants on a trip to Ústí nad Labem. Tickets for the various trips must be purchased online or during PQ at the "Prague Isn't Czechia" stand at the Prague Exhibition Grounds. A group of Italian students has decided to test PQ visitors with a small experiment. Inside the Industrial Palace, they have erected an IMAGINOMETER, a scientific research device that visitors can use, one at a time at two-minute intervals, to test what their imagination "sounds" like, using headphones outfitted with a special technology for conducting sound via the cheekbone. Students of scenography from the Hungarian University of Fine Arts and students of set design from Kaposvár University's Rippl-Rónai Faculty of Arts have joined to create the installation Cloud to show how our thought can travel, change shape, or change into something else in the blink of an eye -- just like clouds. Fragments, an exhibition at the Prague's Exhibition Grounds' Lapidarium, celebrates artistic creations that capture the essence of a particular place and time. Each participating country has chosen a single artifact, a pioneering or cult work of art from the field of stage, costume, lighting, or sound design created by a legendary representative of those fields. With incisive charm and sophisticated elegance, the artist Kustav-Agu Püüman masterfully focuses on a simple object that resonates on the personal as well as national level. In Beast on the Moon, Püüman uses the suitcase with which he fled his native Tallinn during an air raid in 1944 to tell the story of an Armenian couple fleeing genocide in 1915. For atmospheric wizard Thom Luz, music is not simply a framework by which to pave the path towards a new, different world; it is far more than a language and a theatrical performance. For unconventional performance projects, look no further than Formations and the Site Specific Performance Festival, held primarily in front of the Industrial Palace, on the Prague Exhibition Grounds, and in Stromovka Park. Robin Meier and Ensemble Cairn present a symphony created by twelve trained pigeons. In the meanwhile, the Complejo Conejo collective and its six anthropomorphic fish will wander the streets of Prague in order to play with and imitate everyday human behavior. Vietnamese-Chinese artist, researcher, and designer Moi Tran presents her improvized movement-based performance work The Circuit - A Movement Scenario, in which she pays homage to Vietnamese women. Norway's theatre ensemble IZAM explores the performative potential of standing in line. In Melting Borders, Riccardo Matlakas dissolves our country's political symbols: In an installation consisting of an ice cream in the colors of the Czech flag, the stains left by the melting the ice cream become a "sweet flag" of the Czech Republic. French artists Carolina E. Santo and Emmanuelle Gangloff explore the fact that France has not participated in PQ since 2003. For the Site Specific Performance Festival, they have created an archeological survey titled Excavating the Remains of French Scenography in Prague. Swiss artist Tom Greder comes to the Prague Exhibition Grounds with his mobile projection booth Panorama whose 360-degree rotating booth transforms reality into fantasy. As they peer out through the window, the viewers inside experience the world from an absolutely new perspective. For a performance mixing elements of dance and circus, check out the joint project by Hungary's SimorÁg DanCircus and Firebirds Productions titled The Flock Project. Their aerial vertical dance on the walls of the Mama Shelter hotel promises to be an unusual, fascinating spectacle. Stars of this year's festival include Olivia Lomenech Gill, known for her illustrations to J. K. Rowling's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Besides participating in the PQ Talks lectures series, she will also present a workshop for children. French visual artist Romain Tardy, known as the founder of the visual group ANTIVJ, is the artistic director of the 36Q° audiovisual section. For PQ, he is coordinating a group of leading artists from many different fields, including music, VR technologies, and lighting design. The central part of his project is the installation Blue Hour -- an experimental, interactive environment in the Prague Exhibition Grounds' Small Sports Hall. Another important guest is the famous opera director, scenographer, and choreographer Stefano Poda, and also coming to Prague is costume designer Fruzsina Nagy, who previously showed her works as part of the Extreme Costume project at PQ 2011. At this year's PQ, she will be presenting her collection Taboo, June 8 - 9, in the central hall of the Industrial Palace. She is also representing Hungary in the Fragments project. Admission to all of PQ is free for children up to age 15. For them, the festival has also created a separate PQ Youth and Family Program in Križík's Pavilion C. The program for schools and families is being prepared by "Do You Have a Knack for Art?" in collaboration with various Czech artists and students from primary and secondary schools. The main exhibition, titled "Experience a Miracle!", was created by artists Markéta Hlinovská, Tereza Damcová, and Kakalík. The accompanying program features open workshops, a workshop with illustrator Olivia Lomenech Gill, plus a film animation course with Aeroškola in which kids can shoot their own film. Reservations may be made via GoOut. The 36Q° ("threesixty") project presents the artistic and technical side of performance design concerned with creation of active, sensorial, and predominantly nontangible environments. Just like a performer, these emotionally charged environments follow a certain dramatic structure, change and evolve in time and invite our visitors to immerse themselves in a new experience. The main attraction of 36Q° will be the immersive installation Blue Hour, created by a creative team consisting of six working groups under the guidance of audiovisual artist Romain Tardy. The group leaders are Pavla Beranová (lighting design), Robert Kaplowitz (sound design), Tereza Stehlíková (tactile environment), Shannon Harvey (systems integration), John Richards (experimental sound), and Paul Cegys and Joris Weijdom (augmented and virtual reality). Also being presented in the Small Sports Hall are "Sound Spot" and "Light Spot," two projects aimed at theatre professionals with a focus on networking, lectures, and the exchange of experience. The 14th Prague Quadrennial was created under the leadership of Pavla Petrová, the director of ATI and the general director of PQ; Markéta Fantová, the artistic director of PQ, and Pavlína Šulcová, the executive Ddrector of PQ. PQ has been made possible by a 30-member team in cooperation with international curators, 260 Czech and international volunteers, and 16 interns. 
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