Lian Bell

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Ireland at PQ

Filming. Photo Ros Kavanagh
Filming. Photo Ros Kavanagh
Excerpt featuring Sing Your Failures. Photo by Ros Kavanagh
Conversations at PQ. Photo Michael David McKernan
Conversations at PQ. Photo Michael David McKernan
Exhibition publication. Design Niall Sweeney

The Next Four Years was the title of the Irish entry to the 2023 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, produced by Once Off Productions in collaboration with the Irish Society of Performance Designers.

I worked with the curator for the Irish exhibit, Tom Creed, to shape a series of conversations between designers to take stock of where we are now, and begin to imagine our future. I was among seven designers selected by Tom to hold a conversation over two full days around a large table in the Abbey Theatre’s prop warehouse. This was recorded and edited into a one hour film and included inserts made by each designer (mine featured the audience costumes for Sing Your Failures)

The exhibition in Prague comprised a looped screening of the film, and a schedule of daily live conversations with Irish designers around the table and assorted chairs from the Abbey warehouse. At these we invited other designers and design students to sit and talk with us over cups of tea (and sometimes whiskey) about what they imagine for the next four years. A broadsheet publication was designed to accompany the exhibition.

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In autumn 2023 the film and table are on a national tour of Ireland, where we will invite designers to join us for more conversations. This includes events at both the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Belfast International Arts Festival. Full details can be found here.

Curator: Tom Creed
Featured designers: Ciaran Bagnall, Lian Bell, Katie Davenport, Mel Mercier, Rob Moloney, Eimer Murphy, Jack Phelan and Sinéad Wallace
Produced by: Once Off Productions
Filming and editing: Michael-David McKernan
Publication design: Niall Sweeney / Pony Ltd.

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