Jan Mocek – Táňa Švehlová
THE RADIANT CITY
a site specific project

FRI 12 May — 10.00 pm Kaštanová Street 7
SAT 13 May — 9.15 pm Kaštanová Street 7

The utopian dream of architect Le Corbusier who in his urban planning concept of The Radiant City dreamed about “housing in green-space for everyone” turned into reality of one third of inhabitants of the postwar Eastern Europe. The audiovisual performance of the same title explores the problems of the prefab concrete apartment blocks in a (para)documentary style. Thanks to wireless headphones the audience can switch between three simultaneous actions which they are watching in windows of a concrete block of flats. Three lonely characters represent the 80s (the G. Husák era) with the mass housing estate construction, arrival of “new religions” of the transformational 90s and the present consequences of the gentrification of towns and subletting flats to foreigners. The audiences are putting together the meanings and cut the stories the way they want to create their own story – they are the directors.

What I love about the prefab apartment blocks is not only their ugly aesthetics and massive scale, when you can look out of your window and notice the viewer ratings of each of the TV channels, but also the shared intimacy with the neighbours because you basically live with them acoustically to a certain extent.
Jan Mocek

concept Jan Mocek, Táňa Švehlová
production Praha 14 kulturní

premiere 13 April 2016

cast Irina Andreeva, Jakub Folvarčný, Marie Švestková

Those who have never lived in a block of flats can have a pretty exciting voyeur-like experience highlighted by the real surroundings of a cold building but for us – kids from these type of flats – it is a nostalgic reminder of the everyday reality. 
Tatiana Brederová, Theatre Newspaper, 28^th April 2016

The Radiant City brings a really original concept, it asks where the public ends and the private begins. It looks for the particularities of life framed by a panel partitions and windows which are so tempting to look into.
Marcela Magdová, Taneční zóna

Projects of Jan Mocek and Táňa Švehlová oscillate between theatre and visual art. Their performances have the character of sound and visual environments providing the audience with an interactive experience and freedom of interpretation. Since 2013 they have also been creating videowalks focusing on the phenomenon of gamification (marketing technique using the means of computer games in non-gaming environment).

For the National Theatre they created and programmed an interactive guide of the Stavovské divadlo (The Estates Theatre) on the theme of Maurice Maeterlinck's life – Play Maeterlinck (2016). A year before that they blocked the underground garage of the National Theatre with a videowalk project Play Underground (2015). They produce their projects under their own production platform SixHouses.