Love Bar – Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art

Love Bar is a collection of stories that can be drank, and is presented as a feral apparition, a temporary wild mirage. The exchange of stories and drinks happens at the bar table, a sort of proto-theatrical stage in which the role of the spectator and that of the performer is blurred. A place in which the speaking and the drinking happens in the mouth at the same time. For each love story told there is a cocktail, a potion, an elixir, or another story.Every preparation is made with local herbs, gathered and harvested by Alex Cecchetti. It is told that each potion is at the same time a story, a remedy,and a question. Do you drink Justice or Love?

Love Bar is an ongoing project since 2012. Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw will host Love Bar on the occasion of the book launch of Tamam Shud. The book was an art project in the form of a novel by artist Alex Cecchetti that spanned more than two years, and was published in 2018!

Tamam Shud has emerged through a series of episodic performances and an exhibition featuring guided tours, seminars on poetry, synesthesia piano concerts, tarot readings, and dances on river stones—all of it sprinkled with mystery, humor, literary references, and biographical tidbits.

Tamam Shud is the post-mortem investigation of the victim into his own assassination. The only clue that detectives have recovered—found in a secret pocket sewn inside his trousers—is a fragile piece of paper torn from the pages of a book with the words Tamam Shud, “this is the end,”written on it. Experts, antiquarians, and opium smokers have been consulted. These are the last two words in the Rubaiyat, an ancient collection of esoteric poems written by a Persian poet named Omar Khayyam.

The art project and the artist’s novel are linked together as much as the life of the victim is connected to the piece of paper found in his pocket.

Join us to hear stories and to drink savoury coctails in Love Bar, before you read the novel!