Wish You Were (Not) Here: A Love Letter to Absence
Line up: Soapbox Journal
Open: 18:00 - 22:00 hrs
Tickets: € 6
On this Valentine’s Day, gather with us for an evening that celebrates absence, literally. Soapbox Journal invites everyone who craves connection, but not to love, but to an absence of love. Wish You Were (Not) Here: Soapbox’s Love Letter to Absence will be a lived space where themes of our most recent issue, On the Uses of Absence, are explored in togetherness and love.
We invite you for a cozy screening of a short film, Assenza - quello che c’è (dir. Emanuela D’Antonio), that explores complexities of absence in familial relations. After the film, we will have a collective discussion about what absence might mean in our temporalities and how it is discussed in the medium of film.
Merging absence and love together, we will learn how to write a love letter from Gabbi Lieve. After a short introduction on how to approach expressing your love via the written word, you are welcome to create your letter at any point during the evening at the special station with everything necessary.
In the second part of the evening, we want to invite you to take the stage, and sway the audience with a fascinating story, a comedy sketch, or a poetic rendition of your own writing in Soapbox’s first open mic. The form and tone are up to you, the only objective is absence (and love, if you please).
If you wish to take part in the open mic, send us an email at soapboxjournal@gmail.com or DM us on Instagram with your name/name you would like to be presented with, and what you intend to present.
We are waiting for your messages until Monday, February 9!
We will wrap the evening up with not one, not two, but three live music performances! We will start by an ambient poetic session from Concrete Yard, a duo that will linger a little longer on the words that were spoken and don’t quite want to leave yet. Then, we will drift in the slowness of Pajja’s live rendition of his album ‘altering’, drowning in the ambience of sound. We will close the evening with a cozy performance from Gabbi Lieve whose guitar will weave together themes of absence and love.
Our team will also be there selling two editions of the journal during the event - come get your copy!
Doors open at 18:00hr
