Reviewed by:

• Prague Quadrennial
• Alicia Corts

While the Prague Quadrennial has been billed as a festival of design since its first iteration in 1968, part of its charm lies in how performances are integrated into the festival. The 2023 edition of the PQ—centered around the theme “Rare”—offered an array of performances that directly addressed the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic and the emotions and questions we lived through as a global community.

Promenade, conceived by Eliza Soroga, was one of the performances most overtly related to COVID-19, combining the strange bedfellows of joy and anger in the time of the pandemic. The performance took place as a walk through the Old Town of Prague from DAMU (the Academy of Performing Arts) to the Old Town Square. Each participant wore a t-shirt with a QR code for their vaccination record. As we marched through town, emotions in the crowd ranged from solemnity to excitement over new connections. There were happy babbles of conversation as we approached the square, erupting at the end of the journey in a release of anger and emotion through a collective scream. This emotional range highlighted the rare brew produced by the pandemic: the joy of reconnecting with other people, the rage produced by isolation, and the release of expressing both those emotions despite the tension between them. We obviously lack rituals to take people from isolation to reintegration into community, and the pandemic left many people in the liminal space in between. This performance was extraordinarily effective in offering a means of bringing the season of the pandemic to a close in a way that honored participants’ experiences during the worldwide crisis while also suggesting a means of reentry into post-pandemic life.

Wreck: List of Extinct Species, directed by Pietro Marullo and produced by Insiemi Irreali Company, continued to explore how the pandemic collided with what we previously thought of as a normal life. Ostensibly a production about a mythical leviathan invading a world and exposing the vulnerability of its citizens, the conceit of the show was quite simple: an enormous, inflated black plastic bag rolled about the space as performers interacted with it. The performance built steadily on the spectacle of the plastic bag. When it first appeared, moving through the gigantic Trade Fair Palace, it revealed dancers paralyzed in place, arrested by the fear of encountering the monster for the first time. The company slowly began to move as the performance progressed, seeming to overcome their initial fear but still not quite ready to interact with the plastic bag. Eventually, the company began to touch and interact with the leviathan. The analogy to COVID-19 was obvious during this section of the performance, and as the first half of Wreck ended with the bag interacting with and floating over the audience, many left, assuming the performance had ended as the monster had touched all of our lives.

The second half of Wreck, however, went from a simple analogy of the pandemic to a more thoughtful interrogation. The plastic bag had touched audience members and performers alike, and it settled softly in the hall after the exuberance of its frenzied hunt for people. The energy shifted to the performers. They began to attack and manipulate the bag, and the bag responded by moving away from each touch as though it wanted to be left alone. The bag took on a different persona than the monster it seemed to be at the beginning. It became an object of pity—and, as the dancers eventually chased it down and deflated it, the audience was left to ponder the sense of loss left behind when an object of fear meets its demise. The pandemic induced worldwide trauma, yet this production asked what we miss about that collective experience. The leviathan’s deflation signaled its extinction, but as the dancers circled the deflated bag in its powerlessness, it seemed a warning to remember that our own extinction was always precariously close.

Participants are taken through the dying process in Memento Mori. Photo: Jakub Hrab.

Promenade and Wreck...

审阅者：

• 布拉格四年展
• 艾丽西亚·科尔茨

虽然布拉格四年一度自 1968 年首次举办以来一直被宣传为设计节，但其魅力之一在于如何将表演融入节日。2023 年版 PQ 围绕主题“Rare”，提供了一系列表演，直接解决了 COVID-19 大流行的孤立性以及我们作为一个全球社区所经历的情感和问题。

由伊丽莎·索罗加 (Eliza Soroga) 构思的《长廊》是与 COVID-19 最明显相关的表演之一，结合了大流行期间奇怪的欢乐和愤怒。表演是在从 DAMU（表演艺术学院）步行穿过布拉格老城到老城广场的过程中进行的。每个参与者都穿着一件带有二维码的 T 恤，用于记录他们的疫苗接种记录。当我们穿过城镇时，人群中的情绪从庄严到对新联系的兴奋不等。当我们接近广场时，大家欢声笑语，在旅程结束时爆发出集体尖叫，释放愤怒和情感。这种情绪范围凸显了大流行带来的罕见的酝酿：与他人重新联系的喜悦，孤立产生的愤怒，以及尽管它们之间存在紧张关系但表达这两种情绪的释放。我们显然缺乏让人们从孤立到重新融入社区的仪式，而大流行使许多人处于中间的临界空间。这次表演非常有效地提供了一种结束大流行季节的方法，尊重参与者在全球危机期间的经历，同时也提出了一种重新进入大流行后生活的方法。

《沉船：灭绝物种名单》由 Pietro Marullo 执导，Insiemi Irreali 公司出品，继续探索疫情如何与我们之前认为的正常生活发生冲突。表面上看，这部剧讲述了神话中的利维坦入侵一个世界并暴露了其公民的脆弱性，该剧的创意非常简单：一个巨大的、充气的黑色塑料袋在表演者与之互动时在空间中滚动。性能稳定地建立在塑料袋的奇观之上。当它第一次出现时，穿过巨大的贸易博览会宫殿，舞者们瘫痪在原地，因为第一次遇到怪物的恐惧而停下来。随着表演的进展，公司慢慢地开始行动，似乎克服了最初的恐惧，但仍然没有准备好与塑料袋互动。最终，公司开始与利维坦接触、互动。在表演的这一部分中，与 COVID-19 的类比是显而易见的，当《沉船》的前半部分结束时，袋子与观众互动并漂浮在观众上方，许多人离开了，假设表演已经结束，因为怪物已经触及了我们所有的人。生活。

然而， 《沉船》的后半部分从对流行病的简单类比变成了更深思熟虑的审问。塑料袋触动了观众和表演者，在疯狂地寻找人之后，它轻轻地落在大厅里。精力转移到了表演者身上。他们开始攻击和操纵袋子，而袋子的反应是远离每次触摸，就好像它不想被打扰一样。袋子呈现出与一开始看起来的怪物不同的性格。它成为了一个令人怜悯的对象——当舞者最终追赶它并将其放气时，观众只能思考当一个恐惧的对象遭遇灭亡时所留下的失落感。这场流行病在世界范围内造成了创伤，但这部作品询问了我们对这种集体经历的怀念。利维坦的泄气标志着它的灭绝，但当舞者们无力地绕着泄气的袋子转时，这似乎是一个警告，提醒我们记住，我们自己的灭绝总是危险地临近。

参与者将在《死亡纪念品》中经历死亡过程。照片：雅库布·赫拉布。

长廊和残骸...