It’s All About Love — A Participatory Performance Series

There is hardly anything that brings as much joy and causes as much grief and speculation as love.
It keeps us together — its presence bestows peace and strength, its absence can leave behind destruction and anger. It is one of the central themes of our society as well as of human existence. Felt individually, it can be communicated and interpreted in various ways. What does love feel like? Can it be smelled, tasted or heard? Is an I love you a magic phrase or a disappointing set of empty words? How do we identify love and in which ways can we experience it?

It’s All About Love is a project by the artist duo Jakob and Manila who invited four curators from different disciplines. The couple asked them to use their professional and personal resources for the development of a performance series that examines love from various perspectives.
Especially young people aged between 18 and 25 are encouraged to participate. They are invited to capture their views and experiences and to possibly elaborate on them.

The Facebook page It’s All About Love (search: iloveyoulovewelove) continually features up-to-date coverage of the project. It serves as a platform for information and exchange. On Instagram #itsallaboutlove2017 you can post your own photo and video documentations that deal with the topic and make them permanently available in vision and sound to the interested public.

You are cordially invited to participate in the performance series.
Choose your favorite performance or even better experience all four of them!

 

Dark Room
Elena Forin
Friday, October 27, 2017, 8:00 - 10:00 p.m.
At BartnikProjectRoom, Lotterstraße 63
Don’t be afraid! It will be dark, but no hands will be involved, because only the word counts. This is about the magic three words I love you. What desires and emotions do they trigger when they are being spoken? What expectations are linked to them — Can a sentence change everything and if so, what does it change? Or does it linger in the room insignificantly— in the dark, an empty phrase that we long to fill?
Elena Forin works and lives as a freelance curator in Parma, Italy.
For It’s All About Love she developed the performance Dark Room that takes love literally.
She invites us to consciously engage with the word as well as with its impact as truth, chance or lie when we send and receive it between each other.

Love Is Walking Together
Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio
Tuesday, November 7, 2017, 4:30 - 6:00 p.m.
Meeting point: the Haarmannsbrunnen, Herrenteichswall 2, 4:15 p.m.
Love means walking this world together — based on this view Herman Bashiron Mendolicchio conceived the performance Love Is Walking Together. The writer and curator lives in Barcelona. In the process of consciously walking together — hand in hand, as friends, lovers or maybe as strangers until now — a room for maneuver opens up where the participants can experience to what extent they are willing to trust the other, to get involved with them — to find a common rhythm. On this occasion, pairs of any constellation can be formed. The 30-minute walk starts from the Haarmannsbrunnen and leads the attendees along the Hase, through the old town up to the Kunsthalle, where they can exchange their experience. If you already have someone in mind to accompany you (your partner, spouse, your best friend, your child or someone with whom you would like to consciously go for a hand-in-hand walk), please bring them directly to the meeting point. Don’t be shy to come alone. You won’t stay by yourself during the course of the performance.
The performance will take place, come rain or shine. Please dress according to the weather conditions and bring an umbrella, if need be.

Bread Is Love Between Strangers
Caique Tizzie
Tuesday, November 7, 2017, 11:00 a.m., Platz des 20. Juli
Dinner at 6:00 p.m. at the Kunsthalle
Eating is more than the mere ingestion of food. Eating is essential. Eating connects, provides — it is sensuality, life, love. Food — its preparation as well as its consumption — is the central theme in the works of the Brazilian artist Caique Tizzie. His performance Bread is Love Between Strangers will feature a cooking event where he and a team of adolescents from Osnabrück will create a meal, which will be served later on at the Kunsthalle.
Adolescents, ages 18 — 25,  who would like to join Caique's cooking team at 11:00 a.m., please contact the Facebook page It's All About Love via personal message.

Love Yourself
Valérie Schwindt-Kleveman
Presumably during the first half of November
Details concerning time and place will follow soon
This event invites you to experience self-love in terms of finding a peaceful presence within you, far away from the idea of the self-loving ego that is looking for recognition and satisfaction in the outer world. Let yoga master Ashwani Bhanot guide you through a meditation that will lead you towards quiet contemplation. Free yourself from external and possibly burdensome circumstances, from time and pressure, and turn towards your own inner source of love. The curator Valérie Schwindt-Kleveman, born in Brittany, lives and works in Osnabrück. 
She puts her focus on self-love as the precondition for giving and receiving any other kind of love. When we love ourselves, we are able to love and respect others and live in peace with them.

In December 2017, Jakob and Manila will be presenting the results of their performance series in a show, which will feature a portrayal of the new generation — what they think of love and how from their point of view love today touches and moves  — as well as an experiential insight into the whole participatory process in documentary form. There will be a separate invitation for the show.

The project It’s All About Love is funded by the Felicitas-Werner-Egerland Foundation and the culture department of the city of Osnabrück.
We thank the Kunsthalle Osnabrück for their cooperation.

 

Jakob and Manila Bartnik