Cafe Esperanto - Event - Saturday 23 July 2011

Whitstable Museum and Gallery Education Space 

Oxford Street, Whitstable, Kent, CT5 1DB

Café Esperanto 

'To learn another language is to live another life' - Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto (Dr. Hopeful), the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy-to-learn and politically neutral language that would serve as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

We propose to create a language café inspired by the idea of Esperanto - a politically neutral language - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto

The café will allow for people to practice a foreign language by speaking with others. An informal interactive language centre for public participation including video and audio activities. A temporary environment where people are encouraged to speak with others using a foreign language. Games and props will be on hand to 

enable dialogue. 

This one-day event for the people of Whitstable will be organised in association with the Whitstable Twinning Association (WTA). The event will take place during the annual Oyster Festival in Whitstable where a large number of tourists descend on the seaside town. The event is planned for Saturday 23rd July 2011 to coincide with a visit from one of Whitstable’s Twin Towns - Albertslund, Denmark. The WTA members are speakers of different languages. 

We will attempt to collaborate with the WTA and utilise their knowledge of other European languages. The event will run from 12pm until 6pm in the Museum’s Education space, a venue that we will transform to give a café atmosphere and which is located on Whitstable high street. It will be a social occasion and an opportunity to bring people together who wish to practice speaking European languages.

We invited the audience of the Whitstable Biennale 2010 to join us for the launch of our two-year commissioned project Bureau de Change. We served tea - using crockery borrowed from Whitstable Castle - with a slice of celebratory cake to all who attended. The image on the cake was selected from the Whitstable Twinning Association (WTA) archives and this photo documents the signing of the first town twinning agreement with Borken, Germany in 1987.

A handmade EU flag was hung in the centre of the Sea Cadets Hall. A projector and screen were positioned at the back of the Hall. A slide show contained images from the WTA archive, newspaper articles, maps and images of Thomas Masaryk - a Czech politician, socialist and philosopher. Masaryk was also elected as the founding President of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918.

The Czech flag was draped over a table and an assortment of Masaryk memorabilia was arranged, including a papier-mache bust of Masaryk and an edition of 'Masaryk on Thought and Life' published in London, 1938 on loan from a North London library.

"To learn another language is to live another life" - Thomas Masaryk

Image (left to right): Roger Annabel, Chairman of the WTA, the Mayor of Borken, Germany and the Mayor of Canterbury, 1987.

Tea Party Project Launch on Sunday July 4th 2-4pm

www.whitstablebiennale.com

This year Uddin & Elsey will launch a two-year research project, to be presented at the Whitstable Biennale 2012, that will investigate and consider individual histories and politics of both people and place. We plan to navigate a route through Europe and attempt to critically engage with the following five towns and its communities that are twinned with Whitstable, Kent: Albertslund, Denmark; Borken, Germany; Dainville, France; Molndal, Sweden and Ricany, Czech Republic. Town twinning was set up after the Second World War in Europe as a means to aid the reconciliation process.

This blog will follow Uddin & Elsey as they travel to the twin towns of Whitstable, to engage with local people and initiate dialogue. We hope to create a series of site-related works that will be documented and made accessible through this blog. The process will explore alliances between groups of people across borders and attempt to negotiate different forms of cultural exchange through collective experience.