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In August 2023, OBJECT:PARADISE held its first international language happening which was a co-curation from four collectives, featruing three events, across two countries, unified by one manifesto. The weekend of events was filmed and was later screened at venues across the Visegrad region, bringing together hundreds of creative people who explored not what poetry should be, but rather what it can be.

The project was funded by the VisegradFund and our collective worked closely with our neighboring Visegrad collectives, ARS LATRANS, Poland; ArtPortal, Hungary; and Slam Poetry SK, Slovakia.

On February 24th, we concluded the project with the last film screening of the project in Krakow, Poland.

After four years of dedicated effort, we were thrilled to witness the culmination of this project and to immortalize it in the annual O:P film OBJECT:PRAHA IV.

In 2020, one week before onset of the Covid-19 lockdowns across Europe, Tyko Say and Sandra Pasławska sat over espresso in Exarcheia, Greece, and although having only met in-person several times before, they schemed the first international OBJECT:PARADISE curation to happen in Krakow later that year featuring an unorchestrated script of action, reading, sound, and performance that could challenge and question what could and couldn’t happen at a poetry reading.

It was all on paper: a barista’s ruckus on stage abrupting the subject with bursts and gusts of espresso in concerto with readings, street strangers bombarding the room yelling, “we will not be moved”, slender vegan hotdogs venders navigating the audience, tossing weiners passed shoulders, crossdressers in masks cross-dressing as self, readers reading red (un)instructions in bed, triumphant rusty trombones scorching the ceiling from balcony enclaves, and a revolving door swinging robustly ajar for non-poets to become them.

This happening would never happen in this universe—but perhaps somewhere else a man with a mouthful of hot dogs is ironing his hair and reading the instructions of how to be oneself in front of a stage with his back turned towards a screaming, almost stranger, audience. It would never happen.

Covid struck good 2020/21/22 and the non-existent memories of this absent happening laid the groundwork for what would later happen in August 2023: Performance, Deformance, Reformance.

But between 2020-2023, the O:P collective changed faces, shades, grades, and took on new projects—an album, a magazine, a collection of films, projects, and installations all with and for our local community (we thank you, all the Jan and Janas of our microcosm art orgasm). It was a time to celebrate closeness. We took trains, road rails, and further schemed the Krakow happening with our new team and newfound energy. We thank you, Covid, for teaching us the importance of closeness (despite the frown, the smile, behind the mask).

In 2022, we set the venue to be at a video production house with open air, a glass hallway, and green screens. How could we replicate our new multimedia, television reality now in-person that the mask was down? Well, we couldn’t and we wouldn’t. And we realized that transporting twenty 100kg TVs was expensive—both by national and private post.

In 2023, the International Visegrad Fund approved the curation for funding but said we needed to make it bigger—so we did. We contacted our good friends in Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland to work with us to make the curation bigger than hot dogs, better than espresso.

We, ourselves, would take the TVs on the train, we, ourselves, would bring the closeness closer.

Through January - June 2023, the O:P team worked closely with Slam Poetry Slovakia, ARS LATRANS Poland, and Art Portal Hungary, to curate a one-time language happening that would feature over fifty actions of sound, language, performance, installation, and film. It was a time of excellency and excel sheets.

On Thursday, August 24th 2023, the four collectives gathered for the first time at Punctum in Žižkov where we laid out the three questions that our project aimed to answer:

1) What is the function of performance in the sharing of poetry in the public space?

2) How does the poet, the poem, and the context relate to each other? And is there a hierarchy?

3) Does poetry exist? If so, what is it?

For the next three days, the O:P collective, along with over 200 members of our Central European community, explored the nuance of the questions in OBJECT:PARADISE’s biggest language happening yet.

︎See how the event transpired below ︎

Past Events / O:P: P+D+R

HOME / MANIFESTO / UPCOMING

EVENTS / MEDIA / PAST EVENTS / STORE / ABOUT

︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP ︎ FIRST STOP

FIRST STOP: Prague (CZ)

︎Pannel discussion, reading, sound

︎Punctum, Krásova 803/27, 130 00 Prague (CZ)

︎ 24.08.2023

1. What is the function of performance in the sharing of poetry in the public space?

2. How does the poet, the poem, and the context relate to each other? And is there a hierarchy?

3. Does poetry exist? If so, what is it?

SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎ SECOND STOP ︎

SECOND STOP: In-transit (CZ-PL)

︎Readings, workshops, performance, filmscreening

︎Praha Hlavní Nadraži (CZ) ︎︎︎ Kraków Główny (PL)

︎ 25.08.2023