I wanted to start this post with a couple pictures.
That's our building on the left. the building to the right of it is St Nicolas Church, which clearly is undergoing a huge renovation. the other end (unseen) of the green building at the right is an Absintherie... the team hasn't been... yet.....
Frank Kafka Square is really kinda snug, especially compared with the larger "namesti" so nearby.
On the first floor is Cafe Kafka (where the team ate together the day I arrived) I don't know if the pasta really was awesome, or if I was simply too hungry to consider it, but the place sure is handy to us! Our exhibit is located on the second floor, right on the corner. we have 2 windows that flank the corner of the building. Here's looking out our window down onto the Namesti...
Inside the building, it is cut up into small rooms, that are often used as studios by visual artists, or as gallery space. Each floor has a sequence of rooms, that link to each other as well as a hallways that runs an interior perimeter of the building. Tomorrow, I'll include some interior shots of the building.
Today, we all-but completed the install, we have some tech issues to address, and some mounting of items to do, but we are getting there and it's pretty exciting!
here we are installing the header piece...
and a pic of the team yesterday!
and as I've note posted this, here's an artist rendering (by team member Joe Klug) of what (we hope) it'll look like when complete.....
The design sprung from a varied set of team conversations that began over 2 years ago. We talked about our memories of being a student, and how those memories and experiences shaped who we all are as people, and from those conversations sprang visual research connected with those emotional connotations. We discussed the question of what were the commonalities in our memories of school, and the idea of lockers came into play as being particularly seminal. How eager you were, the first day of middle school to get your own locker, as if it were a sign of maturity that you didn't have a single desk in a homeroom.... how, as a high school student, that locker became a personal touchstone during the day, often reflecting your own personality with touches, and items that were uniquely you, and (for some of us) in college, it was a place for art supplies to land and be (reasonably) safe.
Among early inspirational images were pictures of school hallways, and a few that were abstracted, deformed, and/or destroyed, and we explored a variety of ways to utilize those notions. we also discussed how, when you enter into a gallery, a viewer typically walks into the center of a room and then gravitates to things along the perimeter on the walls, and how we wanted to upend that typification of space-usage.
Inspired by the exploratory nature of what gallery-type exhibits typify, the notion of active audience engagement, as expressed in the like of experiential theatre companies (like Punchdrunk, Underbelly, Seattle Immersive Theatre), we explored the notion of how to make such a school-related space, a space that our viewers could experience, and be forced to active engage with. Thus the notion of darkening the room and giving the viewers flashlights, so that they would be encouraged to peek in, open up, flip through. We'll see if these notions translate into the final identity of the space, but for now, we are all excited!
Tomorrow, I'll talk a little bit more about the process, and what's INSIDE the lockers. In the meantime if you are interested, I suggest you LIKE our page on facebook (just look up TRANSCEND and we should be the first page to pop up). TRANSCEND is the title of our exhibit.
You can also go the USITT's page about it's involvement in the PQ. it is here...
http://pq15.usitt.org/
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