Best Exhibition
in the Exhibitions of Countries and Regions
Prague Quadrennial 2019

The project

States make constant use of performative strategies to maintain their power structures. This generates more and more demonstrations of resistance driven by totally heterogeneous grassroots movements that challenge power through alternative representations of spaces and bodies. These movements are capable of both inspiring and challenging the design of scenic spaces.

Prospective Actions (Catalunya 2004-2018) is a participatory multimedia installation that explores this issue in relation to six cases of social conflict that have taken place in Catalonia over the last 15 years. These cases show a strong tension between police control and the creation of new ways of using and creating public space. We have invited six Catalan set designers, who began working in the 1990s, to help us reflect on these cases, as well as on the position of art in the face of political conflicts and the connections between the artistic workshop and the street. A large round table becomes a game board: the setting for a whole series of potential actions and a meeting point between two generations separated by the outbreak of the financial crisis and its impact on our lives, with different working conditions and visions about the world.

Credits

PROSPECTIVE ACTIONS (Catalunya 2004-2018)
By Laura Clos Closca, Pau Masaló, Xesca Salvà & Marc Villanueva Mir

Concept & design: Laura Clos Closca, Pau Masaló, Xesca Salvà, Marc Villanueva Mir
Curators: Bibiana Puigdefàbregas, Marta Rafa
Invited scenographers: Anna Alcubierre, Paco Azorín, Cube.bz, Sílvia Delagneau, Max Glaenzel, Eugenio Szwarcer
Construction: Jorba-Miró, Estudi Taller d'Escenografia
Electrical design: Carlos Franke
Sound design: Gerard Valverde
Video: Alfonso Ferri
Video assistant: Laia Tubío
Technical director: Roger Orra
Producer: Maria Guillén
English translators: Pere Bramon, Neil Charlton
Czech translators: Eliška Raiterová
English dubbing: Herbert Graf, Amélie Haller, Maria Huber, Martin Müller
Czech dubbing: Nina Jacques, Bořek Joura, Nataša Mikulová, Ian Mikyska
Thanks to: Eduardo Cáliz, Toni Cervantes, Cesca Fora

Production: Institut del Teatre, with the collaboration of Institut Ramon Llull
Prospective Actions (Catalunya 2004-2018) was presented for the first time from June 6th to 16th, 2019 at the Prague Quadrennial 2019.

Press

«Prospective Actions, Catalonia’s sleek hands-on political multimedia table, was a crowd favourite.»
Nick Awde – The Stage

«I sit in at a round table set like a Warhammer-style table top game with headphones on. The disembodied voice of a Catalan designer tells me to take the objects out of the white Formica drawer in front of me. I lay a table. I make a barricade. I watch a video of Spanish police brutally beat Catalans trying to vote in Barcelona. I look across to see my neighbour arrange pins in felt to mimic the groupings of protestors. There are six of us sat at this table, each meditatively engaged in minute tasks that re-enact Catalan politics, six social conflicts over the last 15 years with nothing more complex that balloons, stickers, tableware and pins. (Prospective Actions, Catalonia)»
Francesca Peschier – Exeunt Magazine