International Conferences
The New Space of Authenticity
June 17 – 19, 2007 - Philosophical Faculty, Charles University
Organizer: The Scenography Working Group of the International Federation of Theatre Research
The Scenography Working Group will organize a meeting addressing the following issues, all of which address the central question: what is at stake in constructing the ‘authentic’?
- In the post-communist world, how do we re-assemble our identities in the reorganization of the European continent and its relationship to the East and West?
- How do we determine a new authenticity? How is it manufactured in scenographic practice?
- How and why is ‘authenticity’ used as a fiction to underwrite particular agendas (e.g. nation states, period style, conventions of theatre performance)?
- How do we make our traditions comprehensible in a world of 'globalising forces', and how is this manifest in scenographic practice?
- How does the scenographic event respond to the concepts of authenticity?
- How and why does the search for the ‘authentic’ inform local scenographic practice and how can it be distinct from cosmopolitan model? Or does it need to be?
- What is the significance of authenticity for a discipline rooted in material artifacts (e.g. set, lighting, sound, costume, etc)?
- How does the visual text ‘tell’ a story (or influence particular responses to the theoretical event)?
- How might theatre and its infrastructure as a heritage site, tourist performance and site, community event, or even dystopic vision establish new signification in the theatre practice of the eastern European and other regions?
http://www.firt-iftr.org; http://www.swg-iftr.org
Capturing Scenography
June 18 - Industrial Palace, Výstaviště Exhibition Grounds
Organizer: OISTAT History and Theory Commission
Capturing Scenography aims to consider the variety of scenographic, technical and architectural invention in past and present, small and large scale projects in countries across the world and how they may be recorded and represented.
There is no single theory to apply to Scenography, which itself is a combination of multiple perspectives and approaches. As a temporal art form it can be problematic to capture outside the moments of performance. The ‘rich and strange’ qualities that Scenography captures in performance do not lend themselves easily to interpretation.
What then do we have to work with? Intentions, contexts, frames, experiment, process, materials, maquettes? Or the outcomes of the scenographic imagination, - artifacts, constructed or treated spaces, photographic images, video or audio recordings of performance, - all perceived and interpreted through the aesthetics, politics, passions of our hectic times.
Transliteracy
The History and Theory of Scenography – Interdisciplinary Making and Reading of Images in Entertainment Environments
June 20-21 - Theatre Faculty, Academy of Performing Arts in Prague and Industrial Palace
Organizer: Scenography International
The PQ/SI Conference is a collaboration between Scenography International (a peer reviewed academic journal) and The Prague Quadrennial. This collaboration came out of discussion with PQ 07 General Commissioner Professor Arnold Aronson for a debate around international research in scenography for a variety of performance environments. The Conference looks at the developing nature of scenography and in particular Transliteracy and the different and developing skills used in the making and reading of images in entertainment environments.
