Personal Invitation Letter
Hello! My name is Rosana Cade, and I am an artist who lives in Glasgow. I have created a project called Walking:Holding, which I take to different towns and cities across the world, and work with local people there to make it happen. In October I will be doing it in Ljubljana at 22nd International Festival of Contemporary Arts - City of Women and I am looking for people to participate. I started this project because as a gay woman I found that I was sometimes uncomfortable holding hands with my partner in public. I spoke to other gay people about this, and they said that they had all experienced the same feeling at least once in their lives. Some people said that they never felt comfortable enough to hold hands with their partners in public. This is something that makes me feel very sad, and something I wish to challenge. I began a series of experiments in Glasgow where I walked holding hands with lots of different people in public, and I became interested in how different I felt with each person, and also the differences in the way other people on the street reacted towards me. I held hands with someone much older than me, with a pregnant woman, with a tall black man, with a goth, with a cross dresser, with an Indian woman and with my girlfriend. It was a privilege to share this intimate action with all these different people, and hear their different relationships to hand holding and stories about their experiences in the city. So I decided to create this ‘performance’ called Walking:Holding, where one audience member at time gets to go on a walk and hold hands with a range of different people. I did it first in Glasgow, and have since worked with people all over the UK, as well as in Europe and Hong Kong to make it happen.
So now, I’m looking for people to be a part of this walk in Ljubljana. As a participant you would get to meet a new group of people and take part in a workshop exploring the themes within the project in order to prepare for the performance. During the performance you would be positioned at a certain point along the route, and walk holding hands with each audience member one at a time for about 5 minutes. People who have participated before have found it to be a very interesting and profound experience, where they have had an opportunity to learn a lot about themselves, and also to meet a lot of other people. If what I have described above resonates with you, and you think you would find it interesting to walk holding hands with lots of different people then please do get in touch with festival organizers via email contact@cityofwomen.org.
You would need to be available on Tuesday, October 4th and Thursday, October 5th in the evening hours for rehersal and on Friday, October 7th from 4 pm to 7 pm, Sathurday, October 8th and Sunday, October 9th from 11 am to 5pm.
In order to make it an interesting experience for each audience member I need to work with people who are as different to each other as possible, e.g. a range of ages, backgrounds, genders, sexualities, appearances and identities. I’m open to anyone who is interested getting involved, and you don’t need to have any special experience. Please feel free to pass this on to anyone else who you think might be interested.
I look forward to hearing from you!
Love,
Rosana
Workshop:
Tuesday, October 4th and Thursday, October 6th / 6 pm - 10 pm / Pritličje
Performances will start at Pritličje:
Friday, October 7th / 4 pm - 7 pm;
Saturday, October 8th / 11 am - 5 pm;
Sunday, October 9th / 11 am - 5 pm.
No prior knowlede needed. Workshop will be held in English.
Free of charge. Closing with a discussion with all the participants and performers.
Send your application with short biography to contact@cityofwomen.org until September 20th.
Organization: City of Women, Pritličje, Emanat
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