WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A PARTICIPANT?  AND WHAT IS EXPECTED?

This means you are an American student designer who knows that they will be attending the upcoming 2011 Prague Quadrennial (PQ) in Prague, Czech Republic from June 16^th – 26th.  This also means you are willing to spend a couple of hours visually and/or aurally responding to a piece of text onsite in the American Student Exhibit.  The response can take on any form you like; rendering, sketch, bash model, sculpture, the possibilities are endless.  You will be provided with limited resources that you can use in any way your creative mind can think of.  And, to encourage collaboration, other students will be in the exhibit with you.  Upon the creation of your and your collaborators’ responses, they will then be placed on display in the exhibit for the duration of the Quadrennial.

 

SO, I’M ONLY SPENDING 2 HOURS ON THIS?

That is correct. That is all that we are asking of each participant.  You can then spend the rest of your time in Prague seeing exhibits, architecture, culture and hopefully participating in the many seminars, lectures, and activities available thru SCENOFEST, the educative arm of the PQ event. We encourage you to check out the PQ and linked SCENOFEST websites for a full listing of activities and things to do.

 

SOUNDS INTERESTING, BUT WHY?

With our exhibit, entitled EMERGE, we are hoping to look at parallels of collaboration and the initial or “rough” ideas that are created right at the beginning of a design process. The exhibit itself will begin virtually empty at the beginning of the PQ and over the course of the 10 days, will host approximately 60 collaborative teams. Thus the exhibit will be ever-evolving, enticing viewers to come back to see how, and in what ways, the ideas have EMERGED.

 

OK, HOW DO I APPLY?

Download and complete the PARTICIPATION FORM and return it along with no more than 3 images of your design work to tomburch@uchicago.edu.

 

WHEN WILL I KNOW IF I’VE BEEN SELECTED?

The student exhibit committee will get back to you with an answer within 2 weeks of your application being received.

 

I’VE BEEN SELECTED, WHAT NOW?

Now, it’s your responsibility to start raising the funds necessary for the trip. A round-trip flight will run at least $1400, depending on your departure city, and timeline of travel. And that obviously doesn’t include room, board, or spending money.

 

IS THERE ANY HELP AVAILABLE FROM USITT?

There is the International Student Travel Grant. It pays a sum of $1000. More information on it can be obtained on the USITT website (search for “travel grant”).

 

WHEN WILL I KNOW WHEN MY TIMESLOT IN PRAGUE WILL BE?

Good question.  The long answer is: Once we have the “pool” of participants chosen, it’ll take a degree of logistical maneuvering to figure things out on our end. What we’ll be doing is asking for people’s travel plans and available times in Prague, and then coordinating as best we can to fill the 120 slots that we’ll have.  Once you’re accepted as a participant, we will do everything we can to fit these myriad schedules together, but please know that there will likely be some schedules that simply don’t work with what we have.  The short answer is: early to mid –April, at the latest.

 

QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Tom Burch, the faculty mentor for the Student Exhibit Committee at tomburch@uchicago.edu.