Intersection Boxes Prague, New Prague Architecture, Czech Building Design Pictures

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle, Prague

Czech Architectural Project design by Israeli architect Oren Sagiv

1 Nov 2011

Location: Piazzetta of the National Theatre, Praha, CZ

Intersection project travels around the world

Intersection Project in Santancargelo, Italy:

Intersection Project

Intersection project continues presenting the artists around the world

Many things that began at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (PQ) in June continue being developed around the world. This includes the Intersection project – thirty boxes that formed an impossible-to-overlook labyrinth on the Piazzetta of the National Theatre.

A hit with audiences, the different spaces inside the boxes (ranging from intimate to extravagant designs) presented dance performances, installations, video art, and fashion. The art projects were created by renowned artists such as scenographer Anna Viebrock, visual artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, choreographer Josef Nadj, and Italian theatre director Romeo Castellucci. Czech Republic was represented by Josef Bolf, Egon Tobiáš and Bohdan Holomíček.

The projects were chosen in order to show the broadest possible range of fields and disciplines working with performative action as well as variety forms and functions of the contemporary performative space. The success of this curatorial approach is underscored by the fact that, since the end of the PQ, many of the Intersection projects have been performed in other countries, for instance at European theatre festivals and at theatres in Latvia, Norway, Italy, Finland, Portugal, Hungary, Serbia, and Slovakia.

“We are glad that Intersection has been presented within new contexts, both in terms of different spaces as well as audiences – for instance, at a primary school in Santarcangelo, an abandoned building in Riga, and the Old Theatre in Nitra. In this way, the project is given new meanings,” says Sodja Lotker, the Prague Quadrennial’s artistic director and author of the Intersection concept. More information is available at www.intersection.cz and www.pq.cz.

Two PQ projects from the Piazzetta could have been seen in the Portuguese town of Évora. Besides the local artistic duo of Ana Borralho and João Galante, visitors could see projection featuring the work of photographer Bohdan Holomíček and Eva Hrubá. In July, five boxes travelled to the festival in the Italian town of Santarcangelo, where audiences could see works by Harun Farocki, Hans Rosenström, Ulla von Brandenburg, Dace Džeriņa, and Monika Pormale.

With the start of the new theatre season, selected artists have presented projects created especially for the Prague Quadrennial at other theatre festivals and events. During September, parts of the Intersection project could have been seen at the BITEF festival in Belgrade, where Josef Nadj presented his hour-long performance in a box.

The end of the year will see the opening of an exhibition based on Serbia’s national exposition, “Displacements,” and at the beginning of next year, there will be an joint exhibition of videoinstallation of Ulla von Brandenburg and Harun Farocki´s projects as well as of the jp.co.de movie by Hungarian collective Krétakör.

Boxes also travelled to Riga to be shown at the Homo Novus international festival of contemporary theatre. Festival visitors could thus see the work of the mareunrol’s fashion design duo, the Socìetas Raffaello Sanzio company, and artists Hans Rosenström, Monika Pormale, and Bohdan Holomíček. Six other projects have been included in the program for the FAST international festival of contemporary arts in Terni in Italy, whose curators have created a small version of the Prague labyrinth inside the CAOS arts centre.

Other selected boxes have travelled to Scandinavia. Brett Bailey’s project was presented at the theatre.now festival in Helsinki, and Romeo Castellucci, Harun Farocki, and Hans Rosenström presented their works at the Meteor Festival in Bergen, Norway.

During the Prague Quadrennial, there was significant audience interest in the performance of jp.co.de, the first part of the Crisis trilogy by Hungary’s Krétakör ensemble, which was presented in the former printing shop and headquarters of the Rudé Právo newspaper and publishing house in Na Florenci street. The second part, Ungrateful Bastards, premiered in July at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich. The complete trilogy – including its final part, Priestess – was just concluded at the Trafó House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest in late October.

The premiere of the complete Krétakör trilogy was not the only event in Budapest associated with this year’s PQ. With the support of the local Czech Centre, the FUGA Museum is presenting Defining Space, a film essay inspired by the 2011 Prague Quadrennial and the Intersection project.

But that is not all: several Intersection projects will be presented to visitors of South America’s largest theatre festival, the Santiago a Mil festival in Chile in January 2012.

This year’s twelfth Prague Quadrennial, which ran from 16 to 26 June, hosted more than 40,000 visitors, including a large number of artists, directors, scenographers, and designers from more than 70 countries around the world. Prague’s city centre sprouted several “islands” of culture, reminding visitors and passers-by that theatre and theatre stages can be found (or built) just about anywhere.

27 May 2011

Intersection Boxes Prague

Under Construction in Prague: Intersection Boxes by Oren Sagiv

Location: Theater Square – Narodni Trida 2, Praha 1

Upcoming Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle project in the city centre of Prague from June 16-26, 2011, and which is right now under construction:

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle will introduce to the city center an ephemeral artistic dwelling composed of thirty boxes, designed by Israeli architect Oren Sagiv and curated by Sodja Lotker.

These boxes will be inhabited by performative projects realized and performed by scenographers, performers, choreographers, visual artists, film directors, drama theatres, installation artists, fashion designers, writers, and painters, etc. including Anna Viebrock, Romeo Castellucci, Harun Farocki, Markus Schinwald, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Josef Nadj.

The project is a part of the next Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, the world´s largest performance design event held in Prague once every four years. More on www.pq.cz.

The project will be open to the public on June 16th, 2011.

Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space
16 – 26 Jun 2011

Designing Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle, the interactive event of the next Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space (opening June 15th 2011), was an architectural experiment questioning the space of theater and the space of art – and, at the same time – the form that the meeting of the artistic and the everyday might take in today’s urban public realm.

The curatorial theme of ‘Intersection’ seeks to evoke the blurring of borders between theater and visual arts and to evoke space as a medium for interaction of the public with art in both disciplines. It also seeks to collide the somewhat negating concepts of spectacle and intimacy. In past years, all PQ’s interactive events took place in the central hall of Prague’s Industrial Palace.

Following last year’s fire damage to the Industrial Palace it was decided to situate the upcoming event in the midst of Prague’s public realm. The Theater Square, a vast open space located between the 19th century National Theater building and the communist era “Laterna Magika” buildings was chosen as our site.

The temporary structure designed for the project seeks to add a layer to these interminglings by bluntly intersecting the unique artistic event with the everyday life of the city, deliberately making both activities “leak” into each other. Addressing the intermingling of theater and visual art together with the concept of intimacy, the first image we have formulated was of several room-size black boxes and white cubes (micro ‘ideal theaters’ and ‘ideal galleries’) that are parked in the public square, each providing a compact interior for an intimate engagement (oftentimes made for one viewer at a time) with a work of art.

This preliminary image – a simple layout that, while providing the necessary interiors for artistic activities, also articulates the otherwise vacant public space – exposed an opportunity to bring an additional element into our intersection: the quality of the anonymous, public intimacy that large cities provide.

From this moment on the process of the design has a parallel structure: The Art Boxes, commissioned to thirty international artists to be filled with interactive installations and performances, were each individually specified and detailed. Laid out on the square, the art boxes form a micro “Art Town” with its “streets” and “courtyards” designed to cohere with the curatorial syntax. At the same time, the square’s original urban program is kept as a popular pedestrian shortcut.

Simultaneously, a particular exterior was developed for the boxes: a Public Shell that is made for the everyday life of the city – a wooden landscape that is bounded on top and around the art boxes. The new landscape of the shell is making seating areas, a cafe-bar and an open air cinema. The shell calls for an independent 24-hour event of public intimacy, making the prosaic social engagement another performance of “Intersection”.

Intersection: Intimacy and Spectacle – Building Information

Construction begins: May 15th 2011
Event Opens: June 15th 2011
Title: Intersection Project, Prague 2011
Artistic Direction: Sodja Lotker
Architectural Design: Oren Sagiv, Studio Oren Sagiv
Project Designer: Eyal Silis
Technical design: SCENOGRAFIE s.r.o.

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