Kundura Sahne‘s interdisciplinary and international concept and practice development program in the field of performance, held for the first time this year, PerformLab, is bringing together artists from Türkiye and the Netherlands at Beykoz Kundura from May 29 to June 6. Ten-Question Conversations will host these artists, and the first is performance artist, theater maker, actor and writer Khadija El Kharraz Alami

Interview: Ayşe Draz & Mehmet Kerem Özel

Art Unlimited – 10-Question Conversations

***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE

Khadija El Kharraz Alami

Realized by Kundura Sahne in partnership with Productiehuis Theater Rotterdam and with the support of Dutch Performing Arts, the PerformLab program will give artists from Türkiye at different stages of their careers, selected through an open call – Barış Arman, Dilan Onay, Doğan Can Serinkaya, Filiz İzem Yaşın, Halil İbrahim Aygün, Nadir Sönmez, Nursev Irmak, Onur Karaoğlu and Selen Gürmen – the opportunity to share and develop their work over the course of a week, together with the artists from the Netherlands. PerformLab will also be accompanied by artist İlyas Odman as its Art Fermenter, bringing a new perspective to artistic processes through the concept of fermentation. This approach, which proposes using fermentation as a tool for looking at artistic processes from a new perspective, will form the backbone of PerformLab.

The artists joining from the Netherlands are dancer and choreographer Benjamin Kahn, Amsterdam Fringe Award–winning dancer and performer Cherish Menzo, actor and performer Khadija El Kharraz Alami, and Green Room Award–winning educator, artist, theater maker and director Samara Hersch. The first of the artists we will host in Ten-Question Conversations is performance artist, theater maker, actor and writer Khadija El Kharraz Alami. El Kharraz Alami is a ‘storyteller’ who draws inspiration from everyday events, relationships and people in her own personal life, and who is interested in human beings in search of identity and in the futility of that search. Her performances emerge at the end of long research processes, and she allows them to keep transforming even afterward. In performances shaped by a feminist perspective, she invites her audience on a journey, one they undertake together and that the process continually transforms, into the realm of womanhood and toward how one might move beyond it.

What do you think is the essence of performance? How would you define performance today?

Setting out to move beyond established, old ideas, recalling them and expressing them; trying to explore the unknown. An ongoing inquiry into how the clash of different times can be fruitful.

What new perspectives do you think interdisciplinary production in the arts offers artists?

It keeps artists’ curiosity alive and allows them to gain broader perspectives on the meaning of craftsmanship.

What specifically (which performance, process, etc.) will you share with the PerformLab participants?

The attempt to mentally and physically “take back space” (reclaim space), and how our first encounter, in the midst of the unknown, can allow us to share, exchange, confront and move beyond this attempt.

***To read the full interview in Art Unlimited Magazine, CLICK HERE