Dear friends,
We have a new page on Facebook for the upcoming Queer Culture Festival in St. Petersburg. There will be updated information about the festival – programme, pictures etc.
International Queer Culture Festival /http://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Queer-Culture-Festival/147727131920287?ref=ts
Feel free to invite your friends. Hopefully we see you in September!
Best regards,
The Organizing Committee International Festival of Queer Culture 2010
http://queerfest.ru/?lang=en
queerfest.spb@gmail.com
THE LOVESEARCH PROJECT
Art guide tour through hidden, secret Amsterdam
I think that nothing sets us down in reality as much as a true love. And he who is set down in reality, is he on the wrong path? I think not. But what should I compare it to, that strange feeling, that strange discovery of ‘loving’? For it’s truly the discovery of a new hemisphere in a person’s life when he falls seriously in love.
Vincent Van Gogh
Concept
Our project is a research about conservative stereotypes in human relations and gender fixing frontiers in a context of cultural values of contemporary neoliberal society. It is a critical research about the ‘Myth of Love’ as well as the myths about the concept of history, tourist expectations, cultural standards and art autonomy.
It is incredibly difficult to talk about love without platitude. The intellectuals turn off their heads with disgust. And a fundraising specialist in Amsterdam admitted that he wouldn’t think of our project when he saw the word “Love” in the e-mail title and almost deleted it as he would delete spam. Meanwhile serious philosophers such as Alain Badiou, Jaques Ranciere, Jaques Lacan announce the necessity of talking about re-inventing Love, the necessity of re-discovering Love, to reveal its value, re-consider the notion of marriage, gender stereotypes, and the limits of morale and behavior norms of men and women.
Our main point is that loving itself is a hard work neither worse nor better than the other, and sometimes just to keep the relations dear to you it is necessary to make gigantic efforts and without those efforts we are on the brink of catastrophe . But the problem is that this hard work in the name of relations is not explicit, and will hardly ever be paid for or even appraised. As one of the heroines of our interviews states: ’when I feel independent and free why should I yield to him’. Inner title of our project is. ‘Love is a work, say ‘NO’ to egoism’.
What underlies the Myth of Love?
It has ruined so many lives. Since our birth we expect of love something outstanding, something exceptional to turn our lives upside down – literature and art promise that to us. Whereas, dreams rarely come true. What is the obstacle on the way of their realization? Why people are incapable of loving? Why are there more and more single people in the world? Why the value of Love is being lost? Why many consider it a burden? All these questions are vital for our project and we believe that the answers are to be found in the modern structure of the society.
Interrelations of a person and a society has been the main concern of the FFC since 1996 and the main objective of ours is to illustrate it with the help of art. In the course of our project we would like to carry out the our own artistic research to find out what the Amsterdam dwellers think of Love and answer the following list of questions:
– How does the political and economical structure of the modern neo-liberal society influence our subjectivity and interpersonal relations?
– How has the notion of the Romantic Love transformed during the history?
– How does modern consumerism influence the understanding of Love?
– How the estrangement and the solitude of the modern man changes his or her attitude towards the family?
– What relations does a neo-liberal subject not ready to risk chose?
We are planning to realize the project in a form of three sound excursions, unified in a kind of a triptych. Each viewer – participant will receive a player with the headphones and a map with the route of the excursion.
Each excursion will tell a love story or, to be more precise, a love crisis story. Each one will have a character of its own and his or her voice will lead the viewer-participant along the route of the excursion.
Excursion one. The hero of the first excursion is Mr. Grey. He is a typical middle-aged bourgeois. He experiences crisis. He doesn’t feel pleasure neither of life nor of the relationships. On his way Mr. Grey analyses the causes of this crisis. Is possibly the reason in his selfishness and impossibility to sacrifice but a small thing in the name of the other person.
Excursion two. The heroine of the second excursion is a middle-aged woman. She is torn between the Love and the duty. She is in love, but she is married, she has got a child and a job. She has too many of the social duties. She doesn’t have neither right, nor time for the love. During her trip, the woman tries to make a decision how to find the way out of this situation.
Excursion three. The third excursion has two heroes: a boy and a girl. While travelling they try to decide whether or not they should live together. They are in love and they have a passion, but the question is whether they are ready to sacrifice the even a small portion of their freedom.
Our project is mostly to be based on the interviews we are going to take from the representatives of various social layers of Amsterdam dwellers. Later on in the process of writing the scenario the interviews will be knocked together with the real historical statements and the events that had taken place there. Brought into contrast the love stories and the historical facts will reveal their essence as the contradiction between the characterless and impersonal historical knowledge and uncontrolled feelings. Moreover, the excursion will include music and sounds of the city itself, recorded on the route of the excursion.
Our excursions are going to cover not only the official historical sights of Amsterdam, but also the off-the-beaten track places.We invite the spectator to become a pioneer of discovering new places in Amsterdam moving along the alternative “love map”, representing a city as a polyphonous choir singing real stories. We do believe true love to be a simile of a trip, as well as mercurious flove is like tourism. We expect from a real journey the same as we do from real love: to be changed, to be totally renewed, and certainly to be better, understanding other people better, than we used to be before we headed there.
Love is a burning issue for each social layer, that is why the target group of our project is not limited. But certainly our project is mostly aiming at the young people and people interested in modern art, in problems of the modern society and as well as that in the history and the present of the city of Amsterdam.
Project realization
1. Research: materials collection, interview. Starting date November, 30th 2009
2. Creation of the excursion routes
3. Script writing.
4. Translation of the text into Dutch and English
5. Sound recording in the streets
6. Recording actors at the studio
7. Creating sound effects
8. Preparation of the soundtrack for the excursion
9. Design of the map-brochures describing the project and routes of the excursion.
Budget:
Equipment:
1. Purchase and borrowing of players and headphones.
2. Sound studio rental
3. Rental of the sound-recording devices
Royalties to:
1. Artists (authors of the project)
2. Recording engineer
3. Recording director
4. Actors
5. Translator
6. Designer of the map brochure
Transport expenditures:
1. Tickets for the artists
2. Hotel
3. Per diem expenses
Printing expenditures:
1. Printing map-brochure