Monday, March 17, 2014

Shout out #5

Heya there!

One of the best things that we hear from people that come to Gugar, is that what they like most about the atmosphere of the place, is the fact that they still feel like they've gone for a good, fun night out even if they decide to drink a freshly-brewed tea or a fresh juice instead of binging on alcohol to get into the party mood and join the party crowd.  They can choose to drink and read a book, or play some board games.  No pressure to fit in.  For us this this is one of the best compliments that we can ever get...With Gugar we wanted to address the Big Split that has happened to modern life:  We spend our whole week working our asses off doing things we don't like and then, when the weekend comes we binge on the things that are supposed to balance the equation back again...and then...when all the fun is over...the puritan inside us takes over, and we punish ourselves for having "enjoyed the weekend a bit too much".  So we go back to the routine of another week of self-inflicted pain and guilt.  It seems like we keep a balance sheet in our heads...a balance sheet of "the things that we're supposed to do", and the things that we love doing.   Our lives seem to have been fragmented into different pieces - and this should be every freedom seekers duty - to join back together all these pieces.

And it was with this thought in mind that we came up with the idea of the Gugar DIY for Self-Reliance sessions.  Why seperate the "fun" part from the "work" part?  The things we do to survive, to live, should be fun and vice-versa...why not fill our "pleasure" time with work, if it is enjoyable and worthy?  If we have a DIY mental attitude, we can re-unite our disconnected selves and we can get a step closer to the things we consume and come in contact with.

So it is with great pleasure to say that we had great feedback from participants at our first sessions that included workshops on knife-making, beer brewing, soap-making, and a session on the baking of the original Maltese bread.  In the future, we want to explore these ideas further, so if you feel connected to what we think, stay tuned.


All this doesn't mean that we don't enjoy an occasional good night of letting loose!  That is why we had Bass Culture at our basement for a night of carnival fun.  The guys from Bass Culture turned our basement into a small but powerful machine of dubby grooves.  Watch out for these guys as they are slowly but surely filling dancehalls everywhere with their carefully selected cuts of dub and earth-shaking bass lines.





Some of our upcoming events:

Wednesday 19th March (public holiday)  8.30pm: Sempliciment Tat - Triq will be blasting out some hip-hop raps in Maltese from the Ġugar! Basement. Entry will be based on voluntary donations. All money collected will fund their upcoming Italy-France tour in April. Event to start at around 8.30pm.












Thursday 27th March, 9pm:  

FILM NIGHT @ Ġugar!  :  Belarusian Dream

Belarusian Dream, an award-winning film, is the story of a young person from Minsk who has lived most of his life in a country ruled by a dictator. Against the background of falsified elections, brutal repressions, and a severe economic crisis, it shows how more people in the most 'stable' post-Soviet country are starting to demand change. This is a story about how the regime can crush a person, and how you can find your own freedom in a state that possesses total contol.

Belarusian Dream is the first independent documentary film to look at what has happened in Belarus since the 2010 presidential elections. Directed by Ekaterina Kibalchich, born in 1982 in Minsk; laureate of the 'Zolotoe Pero' award from the Russian Journalism Union.  Belarusian Dream won the viewer's award at the 2011 International Human Rights Film festival ''WatchDocs".

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Photo taken by Kuluri

A small reminder that we will be closed on the 11th, 12th and 13th of April, as will be heading to Rock the South, a festival with different genres of music, from rock, punk and indie to hip hop, pop, folk, acoustic singer-songwriters, ska and Dub. Doors will open at 6pm and on Sunday at 2pm.  We are selling tickets for the festival, so if you haven't got it yet, hurry up!

For further real-time updates, please check out our facebook page here:  https://www.facebook.com/gugarmalta  IT SHOULD be accessible also to people with no Facebook account.

Until next time!
The Ġugar Crew