The Wedding Banquet is a playful performative tool on the edge of contemporary performance practice, visual art and social science. It promotes understanding of culture that performs us. By taking a well-known format of the wedding celebration as its basis and involving team of international professionals in humanities and arts and local creative communities in adaptation of the format, the project aims at exploring the contemporary aspects of love in the borderlands of Poland and Ukraine.

Poland and Ukraine

Contemporary humanities, arts, social and natural sciences theorise affects as transformative forces of contemporary societies – and philosophers problematise how passions are bound with becoming a subject within specific context. By using popular format of the wedding celebration, and the way it reflects the normative expressions of love, we want to activate and tweak the folk structure for approaching issues of cultural proximity between inhabitants of Poland and Ukraine.

The capital aim of the project is to develop the interdisciplinary model for the artistic research of contemporary issue of love that would involve a vast audience in various communities. Wedding Banquet project will challenge the dramatic vector in the local, small town’s theatres/cultural centers and open these institutions for wider spectrum of public events acquainted with new formats of artistic expressions, engaging participants to playfully reflect upon the culturally formed identity.

1.The group of artists & theorists will work together during seven days in the residency in Ukraine on elaboration of a performative tool based on the traditional structure of the wedding, while production managers will work together on the promotion of the project in the chosen towns and development of its logistic.
2.The format created during the research will be performed initially in three Polish and three Ukrainian towns, actively involving local communities. The work in every town will last for 5 days. 3 days of workshops on contemporary understanding of love, proximity of cultures and bridging realities through scenic practices and 2 days of wedding banquet.
3.Finally: documentation - the cineaste will realise a documentary and a booklet with interviews on love will be published

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1.Local participants engaged in the project – inhabitants of 6 Polish and Ukrainian towns of the border area.
2.Artists and theorists working with issues of love and performance
3.Anybody interested in the application of the performative tool and love by the post production publication with interviews and critical essays on the theme.
4.Wider audience through the documentary film.

Our artistic project has a specific socio-political tone - that is not only about emancipatory potential of the performance, but is designed to work as a feedback loop. It proposes a participatory format for the audiences - and in the same time by way of pre-performance workshops and documentation of the event - it brings relevant common knowledge about contemporary understanding and expressions of love in the European society.

Office expences (600) Travel costs (1500) Accomdation and subsistence (5200) Event costs -space rental, materials (3000) Fees and honoraries for the artists (5000) Public realtions, documentation in form of a movie and publication 4000