Objective

To produce a text on joy and express the text artistically. The process would involve demonstrations in crafts like calligraphy and bookbinding. It would also involve creative writing.

Participants, a profile

Young people who are interested in poetry or write poetry themselves. Bibliophiles with creative and artistic gifts, interested in calligraphy and in the written word.

Process

Day 1 (Monday): Creative writing/editing of texts. Bringing the corpus together and reading it, everyone explains his/her text to the others. Recognize and determine recurring themes, note down some wordings,  recreate a coherent, poetic text through association and rewording on/of the main theme.

End-redaction by the teacher.

Day 2 (Tuesday): Calligraphy for the bibliophile. In the morning we have a 3-hour lesson of calligraphy for beginners by Jan Rossey. Then we have a visit to the City Archives for bibliophile editions (Geernaert).

Day 3 (Thursday): a visit to the workshop of Dr. Brody Neuenschwander.  In the afternoon we start processing and editing our end product, either in hand-word or on the computers. We would also like to produce a book with own poems for every participant.

Day 4 (Friday): Developing the end-work.

End-work

The proposed concept:

At a reasonable distance of the hut, at the beginning of the first wall we have a TV-set with a recorded video-tape. On the tape there is a montage of 7 students in close-up, reading their work in their own language. They shall have to know their texts by heart.

The two walls consist of black panels. On the grey background there will be seven lines of language, each showing one medium in which language is used.

Form

layer 1: one uninterrupted fax-sheet with poetic text

layer 2: one line of postcards (possibly enlarged, alternating front/back) with matching colours, containing unusual, concrete, poetic messages or images, coming from people of the participating countries.

layer 3: one line of Post-it multilingual messages.

layer 4: a line of envelopes of the same size, filled with messages and calligraphic notes, allowing the audience to react, they can fill in blanks.

layer 5: a line of posters, one modern layout but with the 7 versions of the Ode. This is the central layer.

layer 6: the Ode in one calligraphic line. Could be graffiti-like in form.

layer 7: a line of enlarged newspaper message-collage. Among the articles in various languages one sees the poetic messages we found.

Content

The main theme is joy, joy of poetic creation, joy as defined by Schiller but re-positioned into our modern world. We try to integrate the language of the Ode an die Freude into the formats that we present, find links between sentences from the Ode and postcards and/or the utilitarian language that the media require. We try to personalize, customize and make the abstract ideas from the Ode concrete and interesting for the reader. Freude trinken alle Wesen could be linked up to a postcard, showing some people having a drink in a Lincoln pub or to a Post-It message inviting someone to cocktails.

layer 1:  is about the joys one experiences in the business world, increased turnovers, bigger profits, more employees... but the messages can be surrealistic too. 

layer 2: is about the joys in discovering other cultures, other languages, another world, an evident topic within our project.

layer 3: is about the joys of everyday life, the small things that bring us joy on Post-Its (Have you bought lemon for tonights Glühwein?)

layer 4: is about personal, intimate joy, friendship and love between two people.

layer 5: is about filosofical/theological abstract joy, the joy of reason, of feeling embedded in a larger universe. We draw on Hegel, Schiller and the romantic poets for this.

layer 6: the joy of artistic creation, joy in beauty and art.

layer 7: the joy following social achievements, our paper-extracts will deal with realisations of organisations and institutions that make our world more joyful, peace-processes for instance.