How do we define love? — Amoratorium of Agnieszka Odziemkowska as part of the School of Artistic Methods project

Can love be enclosed in a single definition? Or do people in a close relationship always think about her in their own way? The participants of the artistic study will look together at what unites them: they will translate their experiences into image and word.

We invite you to participate in meetings conducted by Agnieszka Odziemkowska as part of the School of Artistic Methods program, implemented by CSW in cooperation with the Civic Forum of Contemporary Art.

All couples are welcome - partners, partners, friends, friends, siblings, parents with children, grandparents and grandchildren, queer people, people in unnamed relationships who share a close relationship and who want to look at what their love is through the language of art together. An hour is allocated for each pair. Entries through the form apply.

10 October (Saturday), 12:00 — 18:00

October 11 (Sunday), 14:00 — 19:00

As Bell Hooks wrote “Definitions are an indispensable starting point for the work of the imagination. What we cannot imagine simply will not exist. The correct definition is a bit like a signpost — it shows where we want to go. As we get closer to our destination, we plot the route of the trip and create a map. We need maps that lead us to love — and we need to start from a place where we know what we mean when we talk about it.”

Amoratorium is a study carried out within the School of Artistic Methods. The project, inspired by the idea of bell hooks, attempts to collect a variety of ways of understanding and defining love by people in close relationships, including non-romantic ones, using artistic language.

During the one-hour workshop, couples close to each other will be invited to a joint artistic activity, the starting point of which will be their relationship and personal experiences of love and closeness. The meeting will be accompanied by conversation, painting work and work with text. No artistic skills are needed — it is important to be willing to talk, act together and look at your own relationship.

The works created during the meetings and the accompanying statements will become research material, and the whole process will be documented in the form of recordings. The possible use of this material in future presentations of the project will always require the authorization of the participants.

Agnieszka Odziemkowska

social designer, visual artist, graduate of the Faculty of Design of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw. In her practice, she combines analysis and design with intuition and artistic sensitivity. She is interested in the relational, social and psychological dimension of design. In his artistic activity, he is mainly engaged in painting and photography. He treats art as a tool for learning about experiences that are difficult to define unequivocally and as a space for meeting, conversation and exchange between people.

School of Artistic Methods

is a project implemented in cooperation with the Civic Forum for Contemporary Art focused on research projects in which artistic practice becomes a tool for analysis and interpretation of reality — social, cultural and political. The School of Artistic Methods is one of two projects in the field of artistic research and alternative art education conducted this year at CSW Zamek Ujazdowski. The second project with a similar profile is the long-term Ruchome programme. Choreographic Research Laboratory.