07.09., 14.09., 21.09., 28.09., 05.10.
“The Hearing Voices Café”
A sequence of mediated talks and performances for the Ukrainian community in Latvia
17.30
Venue: “Hearing Voices Café”, Pils iela 23
Events will be held in Russian with translations available in both Ukrainian and English.
The Hearing Voices Café is a space for discussion and debate, a place of respect and safety, open to all, that offers a platform to unheard voices and stories - helping these voices to come together, thus forming a collective demand to be heard. Each of the events will start with a theme, introduced by the evening's curators Ilze Dzenovska and Marija Zenkova, and the invited artists, who will be using their personal stories and art practices, to engage with the many stories and voices of the community formed around The Hearing Voices Café. Our inner voices have different intensities and relationships with the outer world. Too often are they suppressed and criticized by systematically being excluded from the social picture of the world communities whose stories we are not used to hearing and by silencing issues that are difficult to talk about. Let's start talking about intuition and solitude, the power of creation and renewal, guilt processes and freedom. Through researching personal experiences of war, survival, and displaced life away from one's home, we hope to foster mutual support, strengthen identity and unity of the community, which is not just passively included in the Latvian social environment taking the role of a victim, but rather as an active and insuppressible part of society.
The Latvian edition of The Hearing Voices Café is a collaborative project between Ukrainians and Latvians, featuring artists and musicians from both Latvia and Ukraine and organised by Ilze Dzenovska and artist Marija Zenkova together with the LCCA and the Survival Kit festival.
All events will be held in Russian, with translations in Ukrainian and English if necessary.
Families with children are very welcome to attend, as there will be a designated children’s area in the café, where attractions such as games and drawing materials will be provided.
Snacks and drinks will be provided by the restaurant “Borščs – vakariņas pie ukrainietēm” (Borscht – dinner with Ukrainians).
The project will include five evening discussions, during which the singer Helēna Kozlova, actor Gerds Lapoška, musical duo Ansis Bētiņš and Artūrs Čukurs, ceramicist Viktorija Broka, traditional singer Janta Meža and bandurist Darja Leleko will support the participants with their stories, voices and artistic practices. The café itself will be open every evening, inviting everyone to find out more about The Hearing Voices Café, as well as to engage in informal conversations and performative experiments.
The Hearing Voices Café is open to everyone.
If you have any questions or want to find out more and join the community, contact us via email sofija@lcca.lv
We will be very happy to hear from you!
*The event is accessible to people with disabilities. Before visiting the festival, please read about the accessibility here. If you need special access requirements or have any questions about the accessibility of the festival, please contact us at mara@lcca.lv
The Hearing Voices Cafe is a project of the Goethe-Institut incorporated into a comprehensive package of measures for which the Federal Foreign Office provides funding from the 2022 Supplementary Budget to mitigate the effects of the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.