Scenography Expanded Symposium
Scenography Expanded, a symposium for the national curators in preparation for the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space 2011 will be held in Amsterdam
, Netherlands October 2 and 3, 2009. The sessions will be a forum for national curators and the PQ`s creative team to discuss current practices in curating exhibitions with performance design content. The discussions and presentations will address issues of individual and collective curatorship, commissioning of new works, and engagement with and reaching out to new audiences. Past PQ curators have been challenged by the complexities of documenting and exhibiting a performative work, as well as the dilemma of exhibiting the artifacts of design out of the production context. The exhibit audience is presented with fragments of the intentions of the artistic team, and though they may be fascinating, the sense of the vision in its entirety is absent.
The workshop will deal with the paradoxes of exhibiting scenography and look for creative strategies which artists and curators use, or could use to exhibit performance design successfully. The symposium is organized by the Prague Quadrennial and the Scenography Department of the Theaterschool Amsterdam, and support by the Culture Programme of the European Union. USITT-USA Artistic Director Susan Tsu will present the work of our curators on tackling this conundrum. Exhibit design Associate, R. Eric Stone and USITT and PQ International Liaison, Alexandra Bonds will be in attendance, as well.
Traditionally, the PQ has presented work in scenography, focusing on set, costume, sound and light design. In recent years it has been presenting a larger variety of genres and disciplines connected with performance and performance design. In 2011, the PQ aims to present and reflect contemporary performance design, thus embracing all areas of design concerned with the performative aspects of space. In order to strengthen this aspect Prague Quadrennial 2011 will include the Intersection project, interactive installation/performance, presenting both visual art and performing arts projects, as well as extensive theoretical part consisting of research, symposia and publications. 
Prague Quadrennial is organized by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic and realized by the Arts and Theatre Institute.