Love Is a Verb #2

The world that people long for—or have worked toward—often feels further away than ever before. The starting point for “Love is a Verb #2: We, the Heartbroken” is an essay of the same name by cultural theorist Gargi Bhattacharyya.

In it, she describes heartbreak not as a private emotion, but as a political condition. Anyone who truly perceives the violence, inequality, and losses of our present cannot remain unaffected by them. Heartbreak becomes an expression of a world that wounds—and at the same time, a starting point for solidarity. For it is precisely in the shared experience of vulnerability that the possibility of connecting with one another arises.

The festival brings together artists, authors, and thinkers who grapple with the fractures of the present and ask how they can continue to live amidst them.

Their works deal with memory and resistance, migration and exile, unfulfilled love, and political disappointment. They explore how people maintain their capacity for action under conditions of war, loss, and social upheaval—and what forms of community can emerge in an increasingly fragmented world.

Featuring

Rébecca Chaillon and Sandra Calderan, Ali Chahrour, Kubra Khademi, Jolie Ngemi, Annie Sprinkle & Beth Davis, SOAP & SKIN, Vlatka Horvat, and others.