Dr Dorita Hannah is a designer and independent academic whose practice and research – operating across the architectural, performing, culinary and visual arts – focus on performance space and spatial performativity. Her international projects range from theatre architecture (space-in-action) to public events (action-in-space), addressing the dynamics, politics and intermediality of the public realm. Hannah has published on Performance Design and Event-Space, while designing, curating and directing exhibitions, installations, performances, feasts, symposia and workshops. Her creative work has gained awards and citations and has been regularly selected for exhibition in World Stage Design and the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design & Space.
Showcase
PhoneHome
This installation, was designed for Chile's 2018 Architecture & Urbanism Biennale, themed on 'Unpostponable Dialogues', and subsequently exhibited in Helsinki (FI), Auckland (NZ). Orlando (US) and Prague (CZ). It refers to those exiled from their homelands and forced to occupy unhomely refugee camps and detention centres. The exhibition incorporates videos, created by artists, designers and correspondents, which play on mobile phones, embedded within a row of replica models of refugee cabins, viewed and heard through the mediating elements of barred windows and headphones. While phones are no longer tethered to place, allowing communities in-transit to connect, the miniature cabins capture unhomely and spatially reductive experiences, while directly referencing architecture’s failure to critically engage, both in discourse and practice, with urgent humanitarian issues.
CURATORS/DESIGNERS: Dorita Hannah (New Zealand), Shauna Janssen (Canada), Joanne Kinniburgh (Australia)
CURATORS/DESIGNERS: Dorita Hannah (New Zealand), Shauna Janssen (Canada), Joanne Kinniburgh (Australia)
Year of Completition
2018
Type
Exhibition
Role
Design Director
Now/Next: Performance Space @ the Crossroads
Dorita Hannah curated and designed the Architecture Section of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial. Sited at Prague’s literal & metaphorical crossroads, NOW/NEXT explored the intersection between performance & space. It displayed work from 32 countries in the National Exhibition (representing practices NOW), projected cutting-edge projects in the Media Tower (working BETWEEN architecture & scenography) and drew together designers/theorists in the Open Spatial Laboratory (asking what a theatre could be NEXT). It also incorporated OISTAT’s 4-yearly Theatre Architecture Competition (TAC).
The Exhibition was bifurcated by a glowing wall that displayed selected TAC submissions printed onto suspended plastic sheets. Each nation presented their current state of theatre via a specially designed table they adapted or redesigned. The 10m high Media Tower visually connected the lower exhibition space with the upper Laboratory that also housed a projection tower and a studio for visiting international researchers & practitioners. It also doubled as a space for public lectures, symposia & reviews.
The project was one of 100 selected for exhibition in 2013 World Stage Design (Cardiff, Wales).
The Exhibition was bifurcated by a glowing wall that displayed selected TAC submissions printed onto suspended plastic sheets. Each nation presented their current state of theatre via a specially designed table they adapted or redesigned. The 10m high Media Tower visually connected the lower exhibition space with the upper Laboratory that also housed a projection tower and a studio for visiting international researchers & practitioners. It also doubled as a space for public lectures, symposia & reviews.
The project was one of 100 selected for exhibition in 2013 World Stage Design (Cardiff, Wales).
Year of Completition
2011
Type
Exhibition
Role
Designer & Curator
In Association With
Join our newsletter
