From 12th to 16th of March 2024, at art center BUDA, Kortrijk.
School Of Love facilitated a workshop from 12th until 16th of March, 2024 for a secondary school class at the ‘tvier in Kortrijk, in co-production with BUDA. Twenty pupils of 17-18 years participated in the 5-days workshop and their teachers joined the activities sporadically, 3 solers led the workshop. This is a 4th Loverynth that we have organized for secondary schools, and a 2nd collaboration with ‘tvier school.
Content of the workshop was focused on the comparison between a historical text about love – Symposium by Plato, and contemporary view on love. The Symposium is a philosophical and literary text that depicts a friendly contest of speeches about love, given by a group of notable men attending a banquet. The ideas on love from this text have heavily influenced the perception of love in the Western society, but a lot of its values are outdated. We proposed an encounter between this text and the teenagers at equal level as a way to question the place of western canons in education: How are they taught and contextualized especially when their values are problematic? SOL was curious to investigate with students who are the leading voices in the discourse on love today; who are the modern slaves in contemporary society; and what is the mythology woven around love of today.
The students were invited to create their own modern versions of Symposium, while the frame and step by step preparations were designed and guided by SOLers. The Symposium, original text entails 7 speeches about love, from 7 different characters. SOL has extracted the essence from these speeches, connecting them to the contemporary research, questions and problematics of love as a social engagement. Students worked in groups on these 7 different perceptions of love, for ex. Love for strangers, love for more than humans, bad love, love for knowledge, kin love, etc. They explored them by adding their own narratives on love, expressed through words, songs, body movement and visuals. In that instance the agency was given to students to criticize and make their own version of a classic.Whereas the historical version focuses on eros and romance expressed from the perspectives of elite, we guided a process that actualizes it to love between kin’s or strangers, institutions and communities, fueled by reflection on inclusivity and solidarity. The comparison to the past allowed today’s urgencies to stand out and be articulated in an explicit way. As a final step of the workshop students created their own Symposium on love, which has revealed a lot on the evolution of perceptions of Love, at a time when many rooted social norms on the matter such as heteronormativity, patriarchy and gender roles are questioned. They reflected on how some ‘traditional’ ideas about love have been embedded in our Western European societies for more than 2000 years and how strong their roots still are in our culture.
Working with the students that are studying to become caregivers has provided us with valuable experience, which improved the way we hold space for fragility that arises in working with vulnerable groups. It has also posed challenges in breaking free from the societal expectations of students from this line of studying. We find that it is crucial for them to develop a discourse on love, to perceive their role in society and to reflect on how their actions and presence in the world form a fine fabric of reality that they will be an essential part of.