ANNOUNCEMENT Metropolis 2010

In alternation to the the Scenographers’ Festival at Basel that will be dealing with the art and design of exhibitions in 2010, the section of the humanities at the department of design of the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts are hosting a Biennal Scenographers’ Symposium in the fields of Staging, Designing, Scenography and Scenology. While at Basel the presentation of practices and projects stands in the center of interest, at Dortmund it is the conceptual dimension and the theoretical reflection of that scenographical practices. Yet at the same time, the scenological view may even look far further across the fields and fruits of conventional art, design and architecture.

The theme of the 2009 program was „Staging Trust and Confidence“. Or, to quote from a famous slogan of a wellknown DEUTSCHE BANK trailer, „Trust is the beginning of all“. The speeches was given in the main hall of the department of design at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Max Ophüls Platz 2, from 10th to 13th December 2009.

Symposium 2009
In relation with Scenography the relevance of this specific topic remains in the fact, that staging trust and confidence refers not only to those medial presentations and practices that are explicitly occupied with winning trust. Trust in and on this and that. Confidence in democracy, in the economy, in finances, in the health industry, in labor, in one’s own creativity and genius. Confidence in education, science, family, the next generation… confidence in confidence! With each single scenographical staging of those topics a special practice of designing and aestheticizing is involved. The medium, form and function of scenographical practices have to stimulate and generate acceptance, where facts and arguments alone won’t be able to convince. Representation has to become an event, a thoroughly satisfying and convincing experience, an effect of the process of staging trust that addresses all senses. Yet the scenological view won’t consider in this only a manipulative, basically deceptive practice of seduction which would have to be revealed by the critical theory and the ideology of the Frankfurt School. Our focus is more on the truth of the appearance and the seeming, in which evidences of experiences take on intentions and representations. So scenographical design really has the chance to give back the question of trusting and staging into the matter of course of scenic social manners and relating lived experiences of evidence. The relevance of processing trust is situated in this for each single scenographical practice – even far over a specific staging of trust and confidence.