Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2023 - 36

Armenia's I see, I cannot see exhibit reveals heart-rending stories-slices of people's lives since the war-seen
through photographs of their faces and writings as well as symbolic squares centered on a table of plate-like orbs.
| Photo by David Kumermann, Prague Quadrennial 2023. Inset: A novel view of grass. | Photo by Susan Tsu.
our presence. Here is one: " On the night
of Director Artush Mikayelyan's birthday,
war broke out... When you look at
the sky, you will think that this is some
kind of birthday celebration, because
the fireworks illuminate the sky with a
brightness that rivals daylight. This is
a birthday party. The cake is the earth,
and the candles are the smoking shells
sticking out of it. I can't blow out all the
candles, the cake is too big... more than
forty men were packed in a bunker for
ten, squeezed up against the wall and
each other inhaling the heavy smell of
blood, the smell of death. War cannot be
erased... you realize that human life is the
only truth. "
We were compelled to slow down, as
Robert Wilson asks of us, to look carefully,
in order to contemplate and confront
what has been visited on the people of
Armenia.
Catalonia: " We live in a world that
tends towards virtuality, but the reality
is that our waste devours us. The overwhelming
amount of rubbish we produce
leaves confusing traces of us and our stories.
If we could observe this debris from
the near future, would we be able to imagine
other futures? " Catalonia's exhibition
Crop, winner of the ČT art Award for the
Most Socially Sensitive Exhibition, might
accidentally be skipped as a discarded
pile of old clothes not worth looking at if
36 | THEATRE DESIGN & TECHNOLOGY | FALL 2023
one didn't get drawn in to realize that in
fact it is a statement about a theatre that
had died (Which of us hasn't known a theatre
in peril, or lost a job at a theatre?) and
the clothes are now decayed and growing
actual mold. The installation was a kind
of landfill of the future exposed, and we
come to realize that we are that landfill.
Cyprus: Cyprus (Spectators in a Ghost
City. PQ Golden Triga Award) manifests
as three models of buildings nearly out of
sight, its presentation on high scaffolding
reminiscent of seaside homes surviving
on stilts. It chronicles the exploration of a
team of designers in a ghost city, entering
it for the first time since the 1974 Turkish
military invasion. The video and words of
Curator Marina Maleni and the creative
team from Cyprus are much stronger
than anything I can proffer:
" How can we understand sites
of conflict and trauma through
their materiality as carriers of
memories? How can we connect
with them through scenographic
methodologies and ultimately
imagine their possible futures?
The ghost town of Famagusta,
located on the east coast of the island,
inspires the curatorial concept
for the national participation
of Cyprus. For the past 46 years,
as a result of the Turkish military
invasion of Cyprus in 1974,
Famagusta has been completely
enclosed, devoid of human presence,
abandoned, inaccessible. In
October 2020, in defiance of UN
resolutions, it was possible to enter
the city through a guided path,
to experience the city as a time
capsule, to painfully retrace its
past, or simply to take a selfie (as
in many other places in the world
where ruins attract tourists)...
" Turning our attention to the
space of the ghost city itself, we
engage with it through notions of
memory, belonging and displacement,
trying to grasp how the
scarred and derelict urban landscape
becomes both 'author' and
'dramaturgy.'
Catalonia's Crop upon close examination, reveals clothing waste growing mushrooms and mold. | Photo by
Héctor Cruz Juárez, Prague Quadrennial 2023.

Theatre Design & Technology - Fall 2023

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