Run in partnership by Kundura Hafıza Archive & Research and Kundura Sahne, the artist program VARDİYA welcomed a new group of artists this year. We asked them about the week they spent at Beykoz Kundura and the ideas and feelings the Kundura Hafıza archive left them with.
It was both intense and relaxing. On the one hand, I concentrated on and worked with ruins, which are one strand of my artistic research; on the other, the calm that came from being a little removed from everything gave me rest.
I have previously taken part in various artist residency programs abroad. The structure of each residency and the resources it offers are unique and very different from one another. So I can’t compare Beykoz Kundura with the others.
From the moment I began staying at Beykoz Kundura, an analogy with an ancient city was always on my mind. After all, I grew up in Denizli, among the ruins of two ancient cities. Probably because of this early experience, ruins are one of the important sources of my artistic practice.
In my practice, while researching healing, I look for ways to interact with the unreachable and to experimentally revive what is considered frozen, dead, expired or lost.
“Frozen, dead, expired and lost” practically describes ruins. So how can ruins be revived? That is what I think about. In my research at Beykoz Kundura, I approached ruins as the story’s resistance to time and disappearance. I explored the paths of continuity and the possibilities of revival.
In many ways, the process sparked my imagination and fed my ongoing research on ruins. I observed the possibilities of revival amid the ruins under several headings. I approached the relationship between movement and revival under two headings: the movement of light, and movement tied to the continuity of rituals. I thought that the emptiness and silence of the vast spaces, by opening room for possibilities of revival, nourish the intertwined relationship between fiction and truth at Beykoz Kundra. This intertwining is something very particular to Beykoz Kundura.
These observations of mine could, of course, open up to many creative possibilities.
For a week at Beykoz Kundura, cut off from the world, I lived in imaginary spaces made up of old factory buildings and film sets. Even when I went outside, I kept searching for clues to the past of these spaces. Concentrating on a place this intensely is a method of artistic research that I love and often turn to.
I have taken part in artist residency programs before, and I drew inspiration from the spaces and collections of the institutions that invited me. Kundura Hafıza’s invitation was very interesting to me because it related directly to its archive.
What drew me most during that week were the oral history recordings of the workers and civil servants who once worked here. Through the imaginary closeness I formed with these people, I gained insights into the social policies of the Republic’s history, gender, cinema and Fordism.
This process has surely created new possibilities, but I don’t yet know exactly what they are myself.
I can say that my week in Beykoz was wonderful. The venue being close to central Istanbul, and being able to be in the midst of nature and in such close contact with the sea, was an incredible experience. I was able to observe Istanbul in a completely different way. Being able to feel safe there as a woman, and to be outside freely very early in the morning or very late at night, was an important opportunity. The room I stayed in at the guesthouse was also very comfortable, which made my experience even better. Everything has been thought through in the Beykoz Kundura artist residency program, and a very good environment has been created where artists can focus on themselves.
The Beykoz Kundura Factory is a historic piece of industrial heritage and an important venue for cultural events. The buildings’ relationship with the stream and with water, the memory of spaces whose locations were determined by how suitable conditions were for leather and paper production and their connection to the past, reading its history as an inhabited place, entering its archive and imagining what happened there all gave me a new perspective.
Keeping an archive of my own, I collected objects washed up by the sea and mosaic fragments left over from the factory. It was lovely to look at the trees there, specimens that reflect Istanbul’s vegetation, and to feel the surroundings enveloping you. Being able to spend a week on my own, while also being in the city and having a solitary, comfortable time, was very precious to me.
In particular, watching the videos and experiences of the factory workers in the archive and being able to use a computer set aside especially for us were great opportunities.
Yes, I have taken part in many artist residency programs in many parts of the world. But Beykoz offered a unique experience.
Honestly, I didn’t want it to end at all; it was a bit short for me. There truly is an ocean of an archive, and the most incredible and transformative part was listening to so many proud stories. It was interesting that people working in the many branches into which labor at the factory was divided felt happiness and excitement in doing the same thing all day and experienced it as something liberating.
I was moved by the fact that activities for children were planned there, that people went to the cinema at night, and that life was lived so intensely. It was quite interesting how, in this social environment of the Beykoz Kundura Factory, people spent time with one another tirelessly and how the factory made such an experience possible.
I can say that I mostly did shooting and gathering. I collected various objects and I plan to create a work related to them. During this time, I wanted to work in all the buildings for days, even months, to read and discover more.
Yes, I can say that it absolutely did. I think about how we construct history, and how the experiences lived in the moment are usually excluded from historiography. That is why the experience I gained in the archive here, alongside my work in both archaeology and geology, was very valuable to me. While I usually look at a much more distant past, here I had the chance to reflect on the more recent past.
I thought in particular about the materials used in the factory, and about how we relate the influence of our bodies and of the place we are in, of water, soil and climate, to the processing and use of materials. In this sense, Beykoz Kundura was like a school or a campus for me. It opened a large window both for thinking about materials and for considering rhythm, daily life and the conditions of production in the age of the climate crisis.
It was also interesting to photograph the site and observe how it is used today. This experience has definitely influenced my practice and created new possibilities. Thank you so much for this invitation.
Born from the combination of Kundura Sahne‘s experimental, innovative and research-driven approach to performance practice and Kundura Hafıza‘s approach of pursuing local wisdom and preserving what has been lost, the artist program Vardiya began in 2022. Having hosted artists and collectives such as Gözde İlkin, Alican Tezer, Canan Yücel Pekiçten and Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası to date, the program aims to create new spaces for thinking and encounter where art and the archive meet.
Created with inspiration from the dictionary meaning of the word ‘vardiya’ (shift), which entered Turkish from the Venetian ‘vàrdia’ and the Italian ‘guardia’, and from the Italian verb ‘guardare’, meaning ‘to protect, to watch over, to keep watch’, the program was conceived with inspiration from the shift work system at the Sümerbank Deri ve Kundura Fabrikası, where workers handed over their watch to one another. For one week, the artists spend time in the archive of Kundura Hafıza and generate original ideas by developing, through their own practices, the research-based work they have taken over from the previous artist. When they leave at the end of the week, they hand over what they have gathered to the artist who will take the next shift.
The artists of Vardiya 2023 and 2024 come together on the same stage on June 1. The talk, in which the experiences of the Vardiya process will be shared, will be moderated by Merve Akar Akgün, Editor-in-Chief of Art Unlimited, with the team of the modern dance company Çıplak Ayaklar Kumpanyası from Vardiya 2023, and visual artist and director Sena Başöz, contemporary artist and curator Sibel Horada and photographer Sinem Dişli from Vardiya 2024 joining as speakers. The talk is also open to the public; to make a reservation, please click this link.
Beykoz Kundura‘s spring program, bringing together films and performances from around the world, awaits documentary enthusiasts. While performances by Rimini Protokoll from Germany, masters of documentary theater, and by the Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué come to Kundura Sahne, recent award-winning examples of documentary cinema will be screened free of charge at Kundura Sinema in May and June.
April 22-27
The second edition of Kundura DocLab, which brings together film and theater directors from Türkiye and neighboring countries in Istanbul, begins on April 22. Kundura DocLab, the project and capacity development platform that Beykoz Kundura has created for documentary film and documentary theater directors, will offer participants the chance to conduct joint research over the course of a week with a contemporary, interdisciplinary approach. The 10 directors selected by a jury of Dilek Aydın, Gurur Ertem, S. Buse Yıldırım and Yelta Köm will develop their projects under the mentorship of experts in their fields. This year, Imam Djabirowich Hasanov from Azerbaijan; Hesam Eslami, Javad Ebrahiminejad and Mahshid Afzali from Iran; Sonja Djekic from Serbia; and Berkay Tunalı, Deniz Yüksel Abalıoğlu, Didem Kris, Etna Ozbek and İdil Akkuş from Türkiye will take part in Kundura DocLab with their new projects. This year’s program of the platform, which will also include screenings open to the public, was prepared with the guidance of dramaturg Aljoscha Begrich and creative film producer Bruni Burres.
April 23
“Something About Georgia” (2010), the documentary by European Film Academy award-winning, Georgian-born French documentary filmmaker Nino Kirtadze, will be screened free of charge at Kundura Sinema on April 23. Having competed at major documentary film festivals such as IDFA, ZagrebDox and DOK Leipzig and won the SRG SSR Award at Visions du Réel, the film bears witness to a critical and violent year in the Georgian state, from the presidential elections of January 2008 to the chaos with Russia in August. Nino Kirtadze will also attend the screening and answer questions from the audience.
April 24, 26, 27
One of this year’s exciting guests of Kundura DocLab will be the Lebanese theater director, actor, visual artist and playwright Rabih Mroué. Widely discussed for his work in contemporary art, theater and performance, Rabih Mroué will be at Kundura Sahne for the first time in Türkiye with his performances “Riding on a Cloud” and “Make Me Stop Smoking”. “Riding on a Cloud”, to be staged on April 24 and 26, tells the story of Rabih Mroué‘s brother Yasser Mroué, who was wounded in the leg during the Lebanese Civil War and lost his ability to speak, and of the political conflicts in Lebanon. Blending reality with fiction, the performance examines the modern history and painful present of the Middle East, while also raising a jolting awareness of our globalized visual culture, in which war is watched on screens. Rabih Mroué‘s non-academic lecture “Make Me Stop Smoking”, on the other hand, stages a presentation that steps outside the conventions of performance. Taking place free of charge on Saturday, April 27, and followed by a talk with Mroué, the presentation ponders the question: “It may well be possible to rebuild a lost world, but what is the point?”
May 5, 12, 19, 26, June 2
The 2024 selection of #DocumentaryFilmSeries, Kundura Sinema‘s film program bringing together creative documentaries from around the world, awaits you at Kundura Sinema on Sundays in May and June. Featuring a total of 6 films from a wide geography stretching from Israel to Georgia and from Latvia to Qatar, the selection brings together films that question universal human experience and personal human memory. The films, screening every Sunday from May 5 to June 2 at Kundura Sinema, include Madeleine Gavin‘s chilling documentary “Beyond Utopia”, in which she speaks with activists and refugees who managed to escape the dictatorship in North Korea, and which was crowned with the Audience Award at last year’s Sundance Film Festival; Hassan Fazili‘s gripping biographical film “Midnight Traveler”, which made major waves internationally in 2019 and won awards at the Sundance, Berlin and Thessaloniki film festivals; “Dancing in Jaffa”, which brings to the screen, with joy and passion, world champion ballroom dancer Pierre Dulaine’s experiences with Jewish and Palestinian Israeli children; and Alon Schwarz‘s DocAviv award-winning documentary “Tantura”, which uncovers an unquestioned dark chapter in Israel’s history.
May 4, 5, 11, 12, 18, 19
“Conference of the Absent”, by the art collective Rimini Protokoll, known for award-winning projects that expand the boundaries of theater through technology, among them “Remote İstanbul”, returns to Kundura Sahne due to popular demand. Staged at the Venice Architecture Biennale as well as in many European capitals such as Brussels, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Madrid, Paris and Rome, the Berlin-based collective’s performance turns the audience into part of a conference discussing anxiety about the climate crisis. At this conference, where the speakers are not physically present in order to reduce their carbon footprint, real people, among them a refugee from the island of Lesbos, an astronaut preparing for a flight into space and a lawyer representing war criminals, will be represented and brought to life by audience members at Kundura Sahne.
The final guest of the #inspiringwomen series, featuring women artists from the March program, is actor and director Esme Madra. We asked the artist, who has won critical acclaim for her performance in the play GEÇEN GÜN, about her sources of inspiration.
Every kind of water sound, the sound of fire burning in a wood stove, the sound of walking on gravel, people speaking in a language I don’t know, the sound of a trumpet, the sound of a classical guitar, the voice of a child singing, the sound of breaking glass. These sounds usually carry my mind away from where it is to somewhere else.
Lewis Carrol – Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Antoine de Saint-Exupery – The Little Prince, J.D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye, Nine Stories, Franny and Zooey, the poems of Edip Cansever, the poems of Didem Madak, Isabelle Allende – The Sum of Our Days, Clarissa P. Estes – Women Who Run with the Wolves, Ursula K. Le Guin – The Dispossessed, Shakespeare – Hamlet, William Saroyan – The Human Comedy, Zabel Yesayan – The Last Cup, Zoya Pirzad – Things We Left Unsaid, İstasyon – Birgül Oğuz
Istanbul: My whole life has been spent here, and no matter how much it changes, you can always find a corner of your own, and strange things are bound to happen to you. And Guanajuato (Mexico): a city with wild parks, one that embraces you without smothering you.
Fatih Akın’s Head-On, Milos Forman’s Hair, Miyazaki’s Ponyo and Howl’s Moving Castle, Kieslowski’s The Double Life of Véronique… And from recent years, Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun and Céline Sciamma’s Petit Maman.
The women who inspire me most are those closest to me, my friends: Ece Ekşi, Selen Hayal, Büşra Albayrak, Leyla Postalcıoğlu, Gökçe Oğultekin, Birgül Oğuz, Basma Seiba, Merve Yazıcıoğlu. My grandmother Suzan Gülcügil, my mother Piyale Madra.
And among those I have never met: Clarissa P.Estes, Yıldız Tilbe, Isabelle Allende.
Welcoming theatergoers at Kundura Sahne with two performances in March, GEÇEN GÜN is co-directed by Naz Erayda, the new guest of the #inspiringwomen series. We asked Erayda, whom we know well as one of the founders of Kumpanya and as the award-winning art director of many films such as “Where’s Firuze?”, “Egg” and “Grain”, about her sources of inspiration.
Nathalie Stutzmann, the sounds the sea makes as it comes and goes, striking the pebbles/rocks/wooden piers on the shore, the sounds of walking on dry leaves, the rustle of paper, Wind, Forest, Mountain, Whistling, Double bass, Saxophone, Amy Winehouse, Nina Simone, Zeki Müren, Müzeyyen Senar, Aynur Doğan, Philippe Jaroussky, the whistles of the ferries in Istanbul, Glenn Gould humming as he plays the piano, silence..
Yavaş Günlük, Anita Sezgener, Nod, Istanbul, 2023
Aritmi Koridoru, Anita Sezgener, Everest Yayınları, Istanbul, 2020
Yanık Saraylar, Sevim Burak, Adam Yayınları, Istanbul, 1982
Afrika Dansı, Sevim Burak, Adam Yayınları, Istanbul, 1982
Sahibinin Sesi, Sevim Burak, Adam Yayınları, Istanbul, 1982
Uçuşan Etekler Bir Ağıt (Flying Skirts: An Elegy), Yves-John Berger, translated by Beril Eyüboğlu, Metis, Istanbul, 2014
Everest My Lord, Sevim Burak, Adam Yayınları, Istanbul,1984
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf, translated by Tomris Uyar, İletişim Yayınları, Istanbul, 1999
Ateşler (Fires), Marguerite Yourcenar, translated by Sosi Dolanoğlu, Metis Yayınları, Istanbul, 1997
Manuel Bir Daktiloya Ağıt (Requiem for a Manual Typewriter), Jonas Mekas, translated by Baran Bilir, Lemis Yayın, Istanbul, 2023
Cities where at any moment I might come across unexpected sights, events, smells, colors, textures, past and present lives are exciting, even if, for the same reasons, they leave me open to bad experiences. Istanbul, London, Marrakesh, Venice, Berlin, Paris..
Blue, 1993, Director: Derek Jarman
Because it is mesmerizing to look at the screen bathed in blue, almost as if hypnotized, and listen to what is being told in an extraordinarily calm voice.
Anatomy of a Fall, 2023, Director: Justine Triet
Because it expresses an entrenched and crude sense of morality through a different approach.
The Power of the Dog, 2023, Director: Jane Campion
Because of its subtle, deep and powerful approach to homosexuality and homophobia, set in the chosen period and the harsh atmosphere it builds.
The Piano, 1993, Director: Jane Campion
The way the director suddenly drops everything to chase after strange details affects me deeply. Everything complements everything else.
Youth, 2015, Director: Paolo Sorrentino
I find it delightful how it expresses the notions of stopping, looking, watching/peeping and seeing in an unexpected language. The colors and the visual language are also very beautiful.
The Lobster, 2015, Director: Yorgos Lanthimos
It is exciting that it is at once very realistic and surreal. It builds its own reality through both its visual language and the characters and story it creates.
Una Giornata Particolare, 1977, Director: Ettore Scola
Because it expresses the notion of resistance through an unusual story and with an elegant approach.
Carrington, 1995, Director: Christhoper Hampton
A strong female character with weaknesses, a moving story, understated and convincing acting.
The Hours, 2002, Director: Stephen Daldry
Because it expresses, through a different sense of time, the perhaps indefinable emotions of characters who are outside the norm, caught in between, and who feel loneliness deeply.
71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance, 1994, Director: Michael Haneke
I am struck by the way the film tells of the impulse toward violence in a different language, through its different sense of time and its fragmented structure.
Laurie Anderson / Artist
Because of her interdisciplinary creativity, the fact that she cannot be defined by familiar molds, her disregard for boundaries and rules, and her free-spirited, original and profound approach.
Louise Bourgeois / Artist
Because of her stance, which is mysterious yet plain to see, scattered yet rooted, both trembling and strong.
Sevim Burak / Writer
Because of her original and daring works, which create a different way of perceiving through her skewed gaze.
Maya Kurdoğlu / Artist, Designer
Because of her free-spirited, innovative, subtle, deep and original approach
Aytül Kipkurt, Artist
Because of her courage, her stubborn persistence in her original outlook, her innovative attitude and her powerful ideas, ahead of their time.
Seçil Yersel, Güneş Savaş, Özge Açıkkol (Oda Projesi) / Artists
I have always been moved by the way these three women artists determinedly sustain their creativity by creating conditions of collective production that are open to others.
Duygu Aykal / Choreographer, Dancer
The way she tried to cheer us up by telling stories and laughing out loud while face to face with death left a deep mark on me.
Director, designer, art director, educator. She completed her education at Mimar Sinan University and the Bilsak Basic Acting and Stagecraft Workshops. In 1991 she founded Kumpanya together with Kerem Kurdoğlu. Taking as her starting point the identity of a building, a neighborhood or a person, a concept, a photograph, a sentence and sometimes a written text, she has worked on creating a theatrical language in which “the text becomes the actor, the actor the voice, the voice the space, the space the light, and the light the costume,” and on generating different modes of perception. Focusing on the concepts of “space, time, memory, movement, rhythm, stopping, fragmentation, repetition, multiplication, approaching, moving away, disappearing,” she designed and directed plays built from fragments of sound, word and movement by combining different disciplines, for open and enclosed spaces outside and inside the city as well as for indoor theater venues. She wrote a conceptual play she called “Çizelge Oyun.” She has led workshops on new theatrical language in Türkiye and abroad. She edited the book “Ne Bileyim Kafam Karıştı,” which covers the work of Kumpanya, and served as editor-in-chief of the contemporary theater magazine Gist. She has been a founding member of several theater and artist initiatives, including the Contemporary Performance Artists Initiative, Tiyatro Devran and 5. Sokak Tiyatrosu. She has served on the advisory board of the Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat Theater Seminars, on the jury of the Afife Jale Theater Awards, and on the juries of the Antalya Film Festival (Antalya Golden Orange Festival) and the Istanbul Film Festival. In theater she has worked as a director and as a set and costume designer, and for short and feature films, commercials and TV films she has worked in production design, art direction and costume design. She has led workshops and taught courses on “different approaches in theater” at the Department of Architecture of İstanbul Technical University, the Faculty of Art and Design of Yıldız Technical University, the Department of Theater Criticism and Dramaturgy of İstanbul University, İzmir Dokuz Eylül University and Eskişehir Anadolu University. Between 2006 and 2023, she taught Experimental Design at Mimar Sinan University, Art Direction at Bilgi University, and a course titled “Improvisation: Space-Time-Body” at the Theater Department of Okan University Conservatory. Among the plays she has directed are “Ya Seni Rüyasında Bir Daha Hiç Görmezse”, “Sansürcü”, “Nurşen”, “İstanbul By Naz”, “Yine Ne Oldu?”, “Kesişmeler”, “Everest My Lord Roman 3 Perde”, “Everest My Lord’ Birinci ve İkinci Bölüm”, “Everest My Lord’dan Kısa Bir Bölüm”, “Kim O?”, “Doğum, Canlanan Mekan/ Uzun Zamandır Ölmekte Olan Bir Kentin Tiyatral İzdüşümü” and “Burada Kalmak İstiyorum, Pencereyi Rüzgar Kapatmış…”. Among the collective works whose concepts she developed are “Uzun Bir Yıl: Yürümek, Durmak”, “Ölmek Üzerine Bir Çalışma”, “Duruş”, “Yemek”, “Nurşen”, “Beni Duyuyor musun?”, “Ay Tedirginliği”, “Hücre” and “Zapturapt”. She has received awards in theater and cinema from festivals and institutions such as the Theater Critics Association, the Avni Dilligil Awards, SİYAD (the Turkish Film Critics Association), the Antalya Film Festival, the Adana Film Festival and the Ankara Film Festival.
The second guest of the #inspiringwomen conversation series is composer, pianist, songwriter, vocalist and educator Selen Gülün. We talked about her sources of inspiration with the musician who, on March 17 at Kundura Sinema, will join her band Selen Gülün Trio in accompanying films starring Asta Nielsen.
For as long as I can remember, I have had a tendency to internalize all kinds of sounds. So every sound seeps into my creative process. I love living in cities, and I love drawing nourishment from their sounds, however chaotic they may be. I once had a conversation about this with the famous jazz pianist Tord Gustavsen. He mentioned that making albums that are completely different from one another might upset my followers. I told him that living in Istanbul and writing music while gazing at the mountains of Norway could not be the same thing. Sonic chaos inevitably seeps into the music. As someone who has placed improvisation at the center of her life, making music with the timbres of the moment is important to me. That is why every kind of sound is material.
Reading is a very important act for me. I try to read every day. Books with bookmarks in them are scattered all over the house. Reading nourishes my world of ideas. I am one of those who will never be able to give up daydreaming. I can also learn about life from other people’s experiences. When certain sentences I read stay with me and live with me, they make my life more meaningful. Just as with contemporary music, I try to follow contemporary literature with curiosity. For a while now I have been enjoying the books of Nobel Prize-winning author Annie Ernaux. I have a special interest in French writers. I read Ernaux’s A Woman’s Story. To take a break from Ernaux’s language, I read Hasan Ali Toptaş‘s Kuşlar Yasına Gider. As luck would have it, one turned out to be a lament for a mother and the other a lament for a father. I finished both in tears.
Cities are my source of nourishment. I have a love-hate relationship with cities, especially with Istanbul. All the cities I have lived in, Istanbul, Boston, New York, London, Rome, Tokyo, have always been big cities. Since I live actively as a contemporary musician, both in creation and in performance, I cannot imagine myself living far from the city. Like all contemporary music, jazz, for example, was born out of chaos, out of New Orelans. Cities have their own chemistry, their own scent, their own filters. They bring their inhabitants together in their own way. And out of that coming together emerge different sounds, textures, colors, lives, stories and poems. It would be very hard for me to move away from such a chemistry, such a life.
The love I felt for films in my early youth has somewhat given way to resentment. I think this has to do with the dominance of the visual world over the world of sound in our time. Because of my hypersensitivity to sounds and colors, my system cannot handle the sensory bombardment of blockbuster films whose running times have stretched to 2-3 hours. But I have been a MUBI member for years. MUBI keeps my love of old films alive. I also try to watch contemporary cinema there. I have only one sibling, my older sister Diloy Gülün, who is a very successful film producer. I follow contemporary cinema from Türkiye through her as well. I also love making live music for silent films. Approaching an existing film, one that has been imagined, realized and given form, from today’s perspective, and voicing it anew in the flow of the moment, is tremendously exciting.
We are going to change this world and this order. We have no other choice. I have been actively working on women’s rights for twenty years, and even though I sometimes fall into despair, the strength of the women’s movement empowers me. Together with the renowned musicologist Patricia Adkins Chiti, I compiled a book titled ‘Türkiye’de Kadın ve Müzik’ (Women and Music in Turkey), published by İstanbul Bilgi University Press, which includes an article of mine about the women composers in the history of the Republic of Türkiye. Our compilation took 7 years. The only reward we hoped for was to make the lives and works of the more than one hundred and fifty women composers and songwriters featured in it known to people. Because if we don’t write about them, no one does. If we don’t tell their stories, no one knows. This book is a first in Türkiye, and I hope it does not remain the only one. Without my women friends, my dear friends, it would be very hard for me to live the life I live. Especially after a certain age, the meaning of their friendship doubles. Women above all!
Selen Gülün: Composer, pianist, songwriter, vocalist and educator Selen Gülün began her musical life at the age of seven at the İstanbul Municipal Conservatory. After graduating from the Department of Business Administration at İstanbul University in 1992, she entered the Mimar Sinan University State Conservatory that same year and began studying Piano and Composition. In 1996, with a scholarship, she went to Boston, USA, to study Jazz Composition at Berklee College of Music. She graduated in 1998 with a distinction and an award. She completed her master’s degree in contemporary music composition at İTÜ MİAM in 2003. Between 1998 and 2016, she taught Piano Performance, Music Theory, Composition, and Gender and Music as a lecturer in the Music Department of İstanbul Bilgi University. Her performances and compositions have received major awards such as the Charles Mingus Composition Award 1998 and the British Council Visiting Arts, Creative Collaboration in Music 2003. Alongside composing, she continues to perform on stage in Türkiye and abroad with various jazz and modern music groups she has founded. She has eight released albums and five singles: Just About Jazz Live (recjazz, 2005), Selen Gülün Trio Sürprizler (recjazz, 2006), Selen Gülün – SOLO (CDBaby 2017), Answers (pozitif, 2010), Başka (linrecords, 2013), Kadınlar Matinesi (AK Müzik, 2017) and Many Faces (iKi Muzik, 2019), Sea by Sea (2019), Yollar (2020), Yavaş (2020), Daha Yavaş (2020), TRE (2021) and Selen Gülün Blue Band (2022), Una Serata Sbagliata (2023). The book “Türkiye’de Kadın ve Müzik” (Women and Music in Turkey), which she prepared together with the Italian musicologist Patricia Adkins Chiti and which traces women composers from Türkiye, was published by İstanbul Bilgi University Press in 2019. Since 2019, she has been releasing albums through iKi Muzik, the contemporary music platform she founded, and giving online music culture seminars on behalf of the platform.
The first guest of the #inspiringwomen conversation series, which we created drawing inspiration from the women artists of the March program at Kundura Sinema and Kundura Sahne, is a name well known to dance lovers: Kamola Rashidova. We asked the artist, who most recently captivated us once again with her performance in Melih Kıraç‘s choreography “Eski Tören İçin Yeni Cilt”, about her sources of inspiration.
The sounds of nature: I prefer natural sounds such as birdsong, the rustle of a gentle breeze and the sound of waves.
Islandman, Ikaru, Mercan Dede, Ajokki, Elori Saxl, Hania Rani, Yehezkel Raz, Daniel Schrage, Nils Frahm, Iori, Landhouse, Tom Yorke, Aparde, Cosmo Sheldrake, Richard Hougften, Yalnayak, İdil Meşe, Ah!Kosmos, Onur Seçki, Max Cooper, Kaleida, Bleu Toucan, Mammal Hands, Monatik, Manizha, Passmurny, Martin Roth, Brian Eno, Lambert, Kenneth Bager, F.S Blumm, Neil Cowley, Ben Lukas Boysen —they are a source of both inspiration and motivation for me to move.
Alexandre Dumas’s “The Count of Monte Cristo”, W. Somerset Maugham’s “Theatre”, Ötkir Hoşimov’s “The Affairs of the World”, Matt Haig’s “How to Stop Time”, Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way”, Wilhelm Schmid’s “On the Power of Touch”, Lao Tzu’s “Tao Te Ching”, Jonathan Burrows’s “A Choreographer’s Handbook”, Pema Chödrön’s “Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change”, Frederic Gros’s “A Philosophy of Walking”, Yoshi Oida and Lorna Marshall’s “An Actor’s Tricks”, Douwe Draaisma’s “The Nostalgia Factory” and “Forgetting”, Yevgeni Zamyatin’s “We” and “The Dragon”, H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine”, Hermann Hesse’s “Siddhartha”, İlhan K Mimaroğlu’s “11 Çağdaş Besteci” (11 Contemporary Composers), Armand Farrachi’s “Bach, Last Fugue” and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s “Flow: The Psychology of Happiness”…
Cities that have stayed in my mind and heart at some point: Samarkand, Bukhara, Khiva, Istanbul, Rome, Moscow, Olkhon Island in Irkutsk, Ogoy Island, Tbilisi, Brussels, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp, Ostend, Amsterdam, Paris, London.
These are films I watched out of curiosity or on someone’s recommendation, took notes on, and was deeply affected by. Tomer Heymann’s “Mr. Gaga”, Andrey Zvyagintsev’s “The Return”, Patric Chiha’s “If It Were Love”, Julian Rosefeld’s “Manifesto”, Natalie Johns’s “Max Richter’s Sleep”, Boaz Yakin’s “Aviva”, Pawel Pawlikowski’s “Cold War”, Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune”, Ümit Ünal’s “Sofra Sırları”, Azra Deniz Okyay’s “Ghosts”, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses”, Betsy West & Julie Cohen’s “RBG”, Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness” and Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things”.
There are women I love and follow, who inspire me greatly because of the intelligence of their vision and creativity: Canadian choreographer and dancer Crystal Pite; freelance choreographer, teacher and creator of the Stream-Flow movement method Heidi Vierthaler; Brussels-based choreographer, contemporary dancer and founder of the FATHOM HIGH Dance Technique Meytal Blanaru… I had the opportunity to get to know Meytal very closely through the Feldenkrais method in 2015-2016. I greatly admire the temporal intelligence she brings to the many-layered, subtle details of her work, both as a teacher and as an artist. The online Fathom High Dance technique sessions I took part in in 2020 helped me keep my approach to movement up to date. And I also came to know psychologist Pınar Sabancı through her podcast Psikopatika. A sincere storyteller who inspires my daily life…
Long walks in nature, taking notes, sight-reading the works of composers I love, caring for and tending to plants, reading books, drawing, visiting museums, going to concerts by artists I love, listening to my favorite podcasts.
She trained in ballet at the Tashkent State Higher School of National Dance and Choreography. She graduated from the P.A.R.T.S. dance school in Brussels. Since 2016, she has been dancing with Modern Dans Topluluğu İstanbul (MDTİstanbul) while continuing to create her own work.
Among this year’s international guests of Kundura DocLab, the documentary platform of Beykoz Kundura, will be the Lebanese theater director, actor, visual artist and playwright Rabih Mroué. Rabih Mroué, an award-winning and widely discussed name in the international world of contemporary art, theater and performance for works that question political unrest in the Middle East and social uprisings in Lebanon, will appear before Istanbul audiences with two different shows.
Addressing political unrest in the Middle East and social uprisings in Lebanon in a body of work that began in the ’90s and has continued without interruption, Rabih Mroué is known for works that have been banned in his home country and have caused a sensation in the international art world. Producing performances and videos that question the role of the audience, the social significance of the actor and the spatiality of space, the artist explores and interrogates universal themes such as memory, power and the construction of truth in pursuit of historical and personal narratives. Blurring the boundaries between reality and fiction by using archival materials such as diaries, photographs and videos, the artist creates works that focus on provoking thought rather than putting on a show.
Praised by The New York Times with the words “Mroué is to Beirut what the Wooster Group is to New York: a mix of avant-garde innovation, conceptual variety and political urgency, with a worldly sense of humor,” the artist says his work deals with “issues that have been swept under the table in Lebanon’s current political climate.”
The artist has had solo exhibitions at many major museums and galleries, including MoMA (New York, 2015), Kunsthalle (Mulhouse, 2015), SALT (Istanbul, 2014), Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo (Madrid, 2013), Documenta (Kassel, 2012), Kunstverein (Stuttgart, 2011) and BAK (Utrecht, 2010), and his works are held in the collections of MoMA, Centre Pompidou, SFMOMA, CA2M, MACBA and the Van Abbe Museum Rotterdam. Also a co-founder of the Beirut Art Center, Mroué has been writing and directing short documentaries and animated films for Lebanon’s Future TV channel since 1995.
“Eski Tören İçin Yeni Cilt” (New Skin for the Old Ceremony), the latest work by Melih Kıraç, one of the leading choreographers and dancers of Türkiye’s dance scene, awaits dance enthusiasts at Kundura Sahne on Sunday, March 10.
Premiered at Kundura Sahne in January and brought to life through the spellbinding solo performance of Kamola Rashidova, the piece points to the memory events experienced in a state of dementia and seeks paths toward a hybrid of past, present and future in the moment of performance.
Sparked by Melih Kıraç‘s journey to the village in Konya of his paternal grandmother, who was given up for adoption in the 1930s, and inspired by the dreams of Uzbekistan-born Kamola Rashidova and her sense of disconnection from her mother tongue, the choreography creates a dance of the ways we relate to memories, of our place in the world, and of our transience.
ESKİ TÖREN İÇİN YENİ CİLT
Dance, performance
2024, 45′, +13
Choreography: Melih Kıraç
Co-creation and Performance: Kamola Rashidova
Lighting Design: Utku Kara
Costume Design: Hilal Polat
Music: Akira Rabelais, Arvo Part (Else Torp, Christopher Bowers-Broadbent, Paul Hillier)
Co-production: Kundura Sahne
Rabih Mroué, one of the most widely discussed names in the international art world for his work in contemporary art, theater and performance, is coming to Istanbul as a guest of Kundura DocLab with two different shows. The Lebanese theater director, actor, visual artist and playwright Rabih Mroué‘s performances “Riding on a Cloud” and “Make Me Stop Smoking” will meet audiences for the first time in Türkiye at Kundura Sahne in April.
“Riding on a Cloud”, which you can see on April 24 and 26, takes us to Lebanon and introduces us to Yasser Mroué, Rabih Mroué‘s younger brother and the work’s lead performer. Inviting Yasser, who was wounded in the leg during the Lebanese Civil War and lost his ability to speak, to play a character resembling himself, Mroué creates a subjective portrait of Lebanon’s political conflicts through videos shot on the basis of the memories recounted on stage. Blending reality with fiction, the work examines the modern history and painful present of the Middle East, while also raising a jolting awareness of our globalized visual culture, in which war is watched on screens.
Rabih Mroué‘s non-academic lecture “Make Me Stop Smoking”, on the other hand, stages a presentation that steps outside the conventions of performance. Taking place free of charge on Saturday, April 27, and followed by a talk with Mroué, the presentation ponders the question: “It may well be possible to rebuild a lost world, but what is the point?” Using a large number of anonymous and personal documents, videos, photographs, newspaper clippings and eyewitness reports to reconstruct and recover Lebanon’s lost images, the artist questions how valid a reconstructed “reality” can be.
Riding on a Cloud
Performance, 65′, in Arabic with English and Turkish subtitles
Written and Directed by: Rabih Mroué / Performer: Yasser Mroué / Contributor: Sarmad Louis
/ Assistant Director: Petra Serhal / English Translation: Ziad Nawfal / Co-production: Fonds Podiumkunsten, Prins Claus Fonds, Hivos & Stichting DOEN – (Netherlands)
Images… One disappears, another appears. Most of the time, he cannot grasp the connection between one photograph and the one next to it. He needs someone who knows him well to explain it and set the memory in motion, so that the photograph ceases to be merely itself.
How does memory work when the memories in your head resemble still photographs that contain no scenes from the past?
Director Rabih Mroué’s theater work is a compelling blend of the personal and the political: in ‘Riding on a Cloud’, he invites his brother Yasser to play a character resembling himself. Yasser, who was wounded in the Lebanese Civil War and lost his ability to speak, begins shooting videos based on the memories he recounts on stage, and these create a subjective portrait of political developments in Lebanon. ‘Riding on a Cloud’ also tells of the fragile structure of biography, a structure that emerges between political reality, memories, facts and fiction. For Mroué, this is always the starting point of artistic personal reflection, which he then adapts for the theater.
Make Me Stop Smoking
A presentation of examined ideas
A non-academic lecture by Rabih Mroué, 60′, in Arabic with English and Turkish subtitles
Production: Ashkal Alwan – Beirut
It may well be possible to rebuild a lost world, but what is the point?
In this audiovisual lecture/performance, Lebanese writer and director Rabih Mroué ponders precisely this question. Using a large number of anonymous and personal documents, videos, photographs, newspaper clippings and eyewitness reports to reconstruct and recover Lebanon’s lost landscape, the artist questions the accuracy and credibility of records. In doing so, he uses this complex system of convoluted narratives and examines how valid a reconstructed “reality” can be.
Commissioned by Akram Zaatari, 2006.
“These clever auteurs of the theater delight us with their skill at searching for, and finding, an innovative language. From among all the people who have left their footprints on the city, they tell us: “watch where you step, a ball, a dog, a child or an angel could pop out from somewhere at any moment.” They hold up a smiling mirror to this city full of surprises.”
Pınar Erol*
Thirty years ago, in “Kim O”, a police officer stopped passersby in their tracks; having stopped Filiz Sızanlı and Mustafa Kaplan (let’s not count Bilge Arat and Cenk Telimen), wouldn’t you know it, he is now stopping people in their tracks at Beykoz Kundura in “Geçen Gün”. The very same officer stepped out of the piece that Naz Erayda had asked Kerem Kurdoğlu to write back in 1994, and asked passersby questions like “where are you from, what do you do for a living, where did you get all this?” In other words, that passage of “Kim O” became the text of “Geçen Gün”. It turns out Kerem Kurdoğlu had been holding on to it in a corner of his mind and heart for years. A year and a half ago, when Mihran Tomasyan suggested they make something together, work finally began to bring it to life. The fifteen-to-twenty-minute text expanded further and took on its present form. Çıplak Ayaklar Stüdyo, open to every kind of imagination, took on the executive production of the play, and, again at Mihran Tomasyan’s suggestion, Beykoz Kundura joined the project as a producer for the first time. And so the components of the same careful spirit, while creating multiple forms of expression, also managed to remind us of the responsibility of being an audience. How lovely.
The other day, I too watched this performance, which offers slices of a person’s relationship, interaction and exchange with the city they live in, with the other people in that city, and with those people’s other beings (living and non-living). Ever since the day I saw it, I have noticed the smile that settles on my face whenever it comes to mind, at the most unexpected moments. Let me tell you right away what struck me. First of all, all of theater’s expressive possibilities join hands to convey what the city does to people, what people do to one another, and what people do to the city. And they do it in the most aesthetic way possible. They gather with a semiotic air, and each one builds the text through its own discipline. In other words, all those elements of theater that we are used to seeing in support of the text declare their autonomy, so to speak, and this time write the text from beginning to end in their own codes. This should not be taken to mean that the result is a disjointed, eclectic language. On the contrary, we rarely come across works whose parts connect so organically, blend so well, lift one another up and converse with one another so beautifully. What we are watching is a neat translation of the hustle and bustle of “everyday life” into an artistic language. And when one encounters such a collective creation, one truly wants to savor it. Pieces like this usually include the subject or a synopsis of the play, but this time that is impossible to do in the usual way. The plot does not proceed along the classic line of exposition, climax and resolution, nor can its genre be clearly named. I suppose I don’t need to say that this is a deliberate approach. Still, I can say that in this “peculiar” work we watch, through the lens of action and reaction, people who are indifferent, sensitive, timid, rude, thoughtful, helpful, embarrassed, guilt-ridden, judgmental, reproachful, bullying, loving and content, in the midst of the encounters, near misses, escapes and chases through which the city makes us paranoid. We notice the moments that make us smile in our lives of constant struggle and breathe them in deeply. We take a pluralistic look at the ways the city, and therefore the human being, is perceived. Although I feel like calling this a fraternity of disciplines, I decide to refer to it simply as a performance. Looking at the coincidence in the way words and people come together, the thing this performance reminds me of most is the game “Name, City, Animal.”
While waiting for the performers to take the stage, my eye naturally wanders across the set design. Each object, which looks like the components of some Rube Goldberg-style project, forms a whole out of unrelated pieces, just like the content of the performance. These objects, which sit within the whole like an installation, are not expected to form a meaningful sequence side by side. Thank goodness I am familiar with the instruments that Tophane Noise Band makes from the city’s waste, so I can more or less guess what is about to come out of this contraption.
As the performers and musicians step onto the stage, it is as if they are crossing a line into another ground/reality. They are like possibilities in a multiverse. Or like individuals who happen to occupy any given square meter of the city. Then their steps grow stronger. And then their bodies, voices and words join in. As movement blends into words, words into sound, sound into noise, and noise into emotion, the harmony rises. And the audiovisual symphony that paces the routes of the city begins. Voice, words, movement and design join hands to set off an unusual viewing pleasure. Every element and every movement on stage is open to free association. And these free associations multiply the images. Through music, image, bodies, words, thought and emotion, countless human conditions come to life. At first I have trouble following the story within the text. Sentences are formed by the two performers taking turns saying the words allotted to them. This time I want to ask the question that drives theater people crazy: How do you memorize all that? Especially a string of words that do not form a meaningful sentence in succession? Shame on you! I notice an inductive approach. So we are moving from the parts to the whole. Once I stop chasing the successive meanings of the divided sentences, I relax. Only then can I enjoy the melodies in the words. I leave be the words whose stress shifts, which are in a sense broken, so that their music comes before their meaning. My effort to put the pieces of the puzzle together was in vain; they were a deconstruction. And it turns out that what we had been watching was a trailer. The events were only now about to unfold. These repeated narrations each time put in parentheses the routine, whatever the days bring, the possibility of events. I understand now that while we thought we were hearing the same thing, the story was changing depending on its companions. Every day was a new day! I also see from the intertwined conversations that complete each other that there are moments when they, too, stop listening to each other. They pretend to be talking to each other, but each focuses on their own story. They do this sometimes with an echo, sometimes with a canon, sometimes with a chorus, and sometimes by falling silent. I also love the long “rests” that are not afraid of losing the audience. In these moments I savor the stillness they offer. And I find myself focusing as much on what we leave unsaid/cannot say/say only to ourselves as on what we say.
Esme Madra and Ozan Çelik, what can I say to you? You are like two acrobats walking a tightrope. If one of you loses balance, the other will fall. If one of you forgets the lines, the order of the words, the other will be thrown. If one of you drifts for a moment, the other’s math will be off. If one of you misplaces the stress, the other’s rhythm will slip. What a beautiful feeling it is to want to succeed as much for the person opposite you as for yourself. This is a form of partnership in which you are responsible not only for yourself but also for your partner. That is why I think each of you is giving a performance for two. When there is acting as synchronized as yours, a focus that never breaks, that is the pinnacle of partnership. Oh please, don’t fall!
Defne Gül and Berkant ‘Doktor’ Kılıçkap are responsible for this abstract sound design. The noisemakers of Tophane Noise Band, Serkan Aka, Mihran Tomasyan, Selim Cizdan and Ufuk Fakıoğlu, are utterly charming with their songs, their movements, their moments in the spotlight and their moments in the background. They are in charge of the city’s hubbub, its tension, its rush, its joy, its wind and its awakening, as well as the sounds of seagulls, ferries, walkie-talkies, keys, doors, jostling and punches. But the lovely thing is that the desired sounds are conveyed through evocative timbres rather than literal expressions. Now the purpose of that water jug, the hose, the pump, the pan, the dumbbell, the steering wheel and the broom becomes clear. The waste the city spews out becomes instruments for sound effects before our very eyes. A new production is born out of consumption. With those two mischievous songs, the musicians at times deliver a profanity-laced rebuke and at times describe what a civilized person should be. At times they accompany Esme and Ozan to form the crowd of the city, and at times, like urban planners, they pave stones along their path. Moving the set from place to place, they create houses, steps, chairs, roads, slopes, obstacles, underpasses, overpasses and, if you ask me, even bridges. In other words, they do a lot.
The duo’s movements often embody the harshness and uncanniness of the city, and at times are calmed by human sensitivity. Whether they move in the same direction or in opposite ones, the city knows how to bring them into line. They also speak through the sway of their bodies, through their inclines, angles and shifting centers of gravity. Sometimes they take us into the past with steps backward; sometimes they affirm each other; and sometimes, through the symmetry they form, they create their own reality. Let me tell you, Maral Ceranoğlu and Mihran Tomasyan are writing poetry with bodies here.
This performance, made up of the unity of space, time and place, also offers depth through its lighting. Before us is the silhouette of a sooty, foggy, grimy, hazy city. I would almost call it cinematographic. While the light seeping in from outside Beykoz Kundura corresponds to a real slice of life, time and place take on meaning through Utku Kara’s craft. Wherever he wants us to look, our attention is drawn there. The light provides the temporal breaks in the text, which is mostly dominated by the simple past tense, and the transitions from moment to moment. With different variations that multiply that moment, it sheds light on what happens in that part of the city. Right here I lament how much we shortchange the present tense. Events that happen at the same time are remembered differently, and therefore told differently. Isn’t that strange? For some of us a safe space means deserted places, for others it means crowds. And what those who look at the same place, unaware of one another, see does not always mean the same thing. The truth is that every person’s action/inaction steers the story of this city.
Maya Kurdoğlu adds layers to the spirit of the play with the posters she designed. How beautifully she depicts the sea, the pier, the waste, the roads, the mortar of civilization and people’s bewilderment in the face of events. She makes visible what the people living in this city do not see. Aaand the directors of the performance, Naz Erayda and Kerem Kurdoğlu… May they be proud of themselves and of what they have added to this city. Not only do they pull off a direction with difficult math; they do so with an approach that favors none of the staging disciplines over the others. They banish illusion, make room for real slices of life, and create a striking world out of small things. These clever auteurs of the theater delight us with their skill at searching for, and finding, an innovative language. From among all the people who have left their footprints on the city, they tell us: “watch where you step, a ball, a dog, a child or an angel could pop out from somewhere at any moment.” They hold up a smiling mirror to this city full of surprises.
*This article was published in Mimesis Dergi on February 28.