Tribes

The Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design & Space 2015

The fifth wall in performance is a metaphor for the barrier between the audience and their experience.
The tribe of screen-faces invites you to their performance. They ask you to choose which side of the wall you would like to experience it from.

The screen-faces are a 21st century tribe born into a world where technology provides a community of support, stimulation and inspiration.
They were raised in a cyber wasteland of selfies and hash tags
Their landscape filtered through beautiful colours by Hudson, Valencia and Ludwig.
A soundtrack of Samsung text whistles and Nokia’s Grande Valse.
Their language has a short attention span.
No consonants. Txt spk in less than 105 characters.
An ever-spinning hourglass

Screens protect their faces, their bodies encased in neoprene but underneath their circuits are pulsing with electric blood.
What will happen when you turn off the screen?

In many countries in the world recent political demonstrations exposed old, half-forgotten laws against being masked during political demonstrations. This points not only to the problem of our right to our identity but also to our right to our imagination. The presence of a mask in a public space can bring into view another layer of reality that was not visible before.

Furthermore the presence of a mask creates a space, not just a space of imagination, but a borderline space of change, a place of crossing over. During the Prague Quadrennial 2015 dozens of masked Tribes will walk through the center of Prague - visiting streets, and also a metro, a supermarket, a theatre and a museum on their way, colliding with the everyday. PQ

Photographs: Daniel Suska

CREDITS

Artist: Sophie Donaldson
Movement Director: Lewis Sherlock