The exhibition of Lebanon is an exhibition landscape of raised hands carrying cellphones showing stills from performances. It reverberates on the global trend of audience members filming and photographing ongoing performances.

The exhibition raises questions related to this practice:

1. Why would spectators reduce their live experience and contain in a small screen? Theatre experience is a 3D (depth of stage); it is a 4D experience (with smells and other effets); it is a 5D experience (with audience interaction, remarks and mood).

2. While technology enhances experiences with augmented realities, why do we seek to diminishing our experience and decreasing our reality?

3. While filmed footage is generally of low quality, what satisfaction does this practice bring to the spectators?

4. Do spectators ever go back to the filmed material?

5. How does this practice challenge the performer’s intellectual property right?

6. While raised hands, sudden camera flash and screen light cause discomfort to other audience members, what is the limit to this practice?

On another note, the section is called exhibition of countries and regions, which automatically begs a question: what does a national exhibition mean in 2019? Are we referring to productions shown in Lebanon? To productions done in Lebanon? To productions done by people based in Lebanon? To productions done by Lebanese in residence abroad? To productions done by expat Lebanese? To productions done in relation to local dynamics, audience and themes while they can be affected by outside dynamics (foreign funding, performance space policies, etc)

The PQ curatorial team chose the theme of Transformation for the exhibition. They wrote:

Transformation is the core of the creative process. Process of surpassing individual personality realizing the power of shared awareness and the collective vision of a group. Inspiration through the best collaborative performance design and architecture, where experience and deep understanding play a major role in its successful realization. Focusing on in-depth explorations of the possibilities within the limitations of each task, where the limits determine new styles, engender new forms, and give impulse to new creations.

What does “Transformation” mean? The space in transformation: space as a movement? The visitor in transformation? The exhibit in transformation? Means of transformation: how does the transformation happen? How is transformation practiced? Is it a before/after/in progress?

All these questions will be answered in a paper post-PQ2019, similar to the one issued after the first participation of Lebanon in the PQ in 2015.

Reverberating on this trend and its application during PQ2019, visitors are asked to take their own footage of PQ performances and to email them to info@pq-lb.org for us to add them to the exhibition. This will mark a performance migration from local productions to global ones within a country exhibition, thus reinforcing world dynamics in performance practice.

The exhibition follows the curatorial approach of the PQ that asks to refrain from creating black box in particular, and walls in general, thus producing a landscape of exhibitions of countries and regions.

EN — As our imagination is practiced against life challenges (nationality, finance, sexuality, etc.), we ask how our profession transforms our work. How does the audience perceive the staged performance? How does their perception, how do their habits alter the scenography? Our multidimensional world is decreased in extended digital devices that ever multiply.

PQ Exhibition of Countries and Regions Curatorial Statement: We live in a world that is rapidly changing; where the topic of borders, individual and collective identity, cultural thresholds, fast paced movement across boundaries and constant reframing of realities are woven through our thoughts and our lives. The tensions between local and global, international and national are rising in many parts of the world and the question of identity and the border between what is familiar and what is seen as 'the other' is going through a complex evolution that brings both uncertainty and new creative energy.

The exhibition of countries and regions captures and shares the essence of contemporary views, thoughts, and artistic developments in performance design realized in past six years in theatres or other sites adapted by scenographic means. Performance design as a strong integral element of performance, not conceptual, directorial or dramaturgical approaches where performance design plays a subservient role. All country and regional exhibitions share the same site, without being a series of small exhibition sub-spaces, but one dynamic scenographic landscape where each country and or region has a place and where a different kind of experience is offered. The country and regional exhibition displays the works of practicing performance designers, the whole framed with a site-specific installation. The emotional composition is a dialogue, a collaboration and an environment purely scenographic, where every element has a meaning, where every shape and object were carefully chosen with a purpose. How can we recreate a moment that has passed for others to encounter? How do we preserve the emotional signatures of outstanding performances created in a specific locality, whilst finding inspiring ways to communicate its unique message to global audiences?

Theme: Transformation
Transformation is the core of the creative process. Process of surpassing individual personality realising the power of shared awareness and the collective vision of a group. Inspiration through the best collaborative performance design and architecture, where experience and deep understanding play a major role in its successful realisation. Focusing on in-depth explorations of the possibilities within the limitations of each task, where the limits determine new styles, engender new forms, and give impulse to new creations.

Curator: Hadi E. Damien
All PQ2019 exhibitions and projects are curated, which means that participation is by selection through an open call application process. For the Exhibition of Countries and Regions and for the Student Exhibition, inclusion is selected through a process established by the national curator. All other PQ2019 projects are handled, curated and selected by an international board of leading practitioners.

Exhibition Designers: Hans Harling, Sasha Elijah and Omar Khattar

A Competitive Exhibition
The Exhibition of Countries and Regions is among other PQ2019 competitive projects that have prizes awarded by an international jury for exceptional work, such as the Golden Triga award to the best national entry. Non-competitive projects, though curated for participation, do not have prize categories.

Area: 25 m2 (5x5)

Venue: Prague Exhibition Grounds

Opening Hours: Thursday 6 to Saturday 15 June 2019, from 10 am to 8 pm / Saturday 8 June 2019, from 10 am to 11:59 pm / Sunday 16 June 2019, from 10 am to 6 pm

The Exhibition of Countries and Regions is the main component of the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. The Exhibition is handled by the country (or region) national curator, in charge of the organization, the finance and the artistic supervision of the exhibition. The country application to the section is not subject to curatorial review by the Prague Quadrennial artistic director; entries are accepted and the exhibitions are competitive and eligible for the PQ Awards. Be it an installation, a performance space or an exhibition, the Country Exhibition features "the best" of scenography works that have been executed in the country during the previous years.