Reciprocal Visit /reciprocal Return
What is iade-i Ziyaret (Reciprocal Visit)?
It is an experimental studio work made up of photographs, films, writings, interactions, and talks of participants from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, such as photography, video, music, staging, painting, sociology. The material is created while participants are on the road, at places where the stop, visit, or stay.
1. Period of studio work: 1 - 17 April 2009.
1. Location of the studio: Inside the different minibuses that are going to be rented throughout the trip.
1. Route of studio work: Takes off from Turkey and proceeds through Georgia, Armenia, then again Georgia, Azerbaijan, Iran and Turkey.
1. Duration: 17 days.
Aims:
The aim is to let each participant describe his or her experiences in his or her own language.
This will help to reveal the different kinds of language that can be formed within a shared work time in a mobile space serving as a studio area during a 15-20 hour work schedule, as well as the the way in which individuals in a group emphasize different aspects of something, even when everyone is observing the same thing.
Scope: Sharing with local people the material created during the studio work in the cities, towns, and villages visited after having left Turkey, using the bus as an exhibition venue. Ensuring the participation of local practitioners of diverse fields, like the arts, history, journalism, or literature, so as to inspire and lay the groundwork for developing and fostering new perspectives and developments.
Project Coordinator: Serra Özhan
Artists:
Endam Acar
Selda Asal
Volkan Aslan
Fatma Çiftçi
Zeren Göktan
Deniz Gül
Gözde Ilkin
Ceren Oykut
Gökçe Süvari
Sophia Tabatadze
The Apartment Project is working on its latest project called
Reciprocal Visit. This project is associated with the work of the
visual artist and the founder of the artist initiative Selda Asal who
is the originator of the project's concept. The project is organized
and curated by Serra Ozhan. Iade-i Ziyaret / Reciprocal Visit is an
experimental workshop project made up of photographs, videos, writings,
interactions, and talks by participants from a variety of disciplinary
backgrounds such as photography, video, music, performance, painting,
sociology. It takes its name from the culture of 'reciprocal visit'
that is alive and well in Armenia, Iran, Azerbaijan, and Georgia as
well as in many Arab countries and Turkey. The artistic material is
created while participants are on the road, at places where they stop,
visit, or stay.
Selections from conversations among us:
With Serra Özhan about the project:
As the curator of the project, what will you be underlining?
For
my post-graduate studies, I specialized in 'Geographies': borders,
maps, but in particular alternative map drawing with the aim of
softening these 'border lines,' of ' loosening the constrictions,' and a
continuous activity of redefinition. And so it was within this context
that the 'Reciprocal Visit' project looked very exciting to me, as a
way to break borders and definitions that have become cliché, or rather
than breaking them, to blur their standard meanings.
The
nation, the state, and borders are what we might call 'identification
zones.' Apart from the physical borders between countries, there is a
second kind of border that derives from political conflicts between
countries, and that turns those borders into walls: breaching those
kinds of walls depends on the nationality inscribed in your passport
and they can be difficult to breach even if you do manage to get a
visa. It is a kind of masonry that does not let someone from Turkey go
into neighbouring Armenia, or vice-versa. A similar wall exists also
between Armenia and its eastern neighbour Azerbaijan.
The
starting point of this project consists of those cultural interactions
that invalidate all the stories invented by states concerning borders;
in this case, the 'reciprocal visit.' In spite of the quarrels between
states, we shall embark upon an experimental journey involving a visit
and a return visit.
Can you explain a little more just how this project will change definitions?
When
we first started discussing the project with Selda, it was never our
primary aim to send a bus of peacekeepers to Armenia, for the purpose
of conducting studio work. The same can be said about alleviating
political quarrels between countries, or experiencing these quarrels.
The aim was mostly to set up an encounter on a multi-disciplinary
platform, on the basis of a culture of reciprocal visits: different
thoughts deriving from a collective activity, different experiences
brought about by togetherness and sharing, various narratives born out
of different materials.. In a way, making borders borderless.
To
erode and even to eliminate the physical, political and conceptual
obstacles created by borders, mostly by means of daily sharing of the 'here and now.'In this way, this 'experiencing project ' assumes a ' contemporary' posture. I shall try to think about the probable
experiences of this trip through Giorgio Agamben's concept of 'singularity.' As for daily comparisons, I might use Michel de
Certeau's 'daily practices.'
Of
course, daily developments during the initial phase of this project,
when it was still being formed, emphasized again and again the
political aspect of borders, thus blatantly revealing their most
discriminatory aspect.
A conversation with Selda Asal about the Project:
How did you come up with the idea for this project, and why did you decide to pursue it?
Actually, I came up with this project as a result of the synthesis of my experiences in many different places.
I was in Diyarbakir to study honor killings and to get some authorizations I needed for research.
A
woman I met in the Women's Shelter told me a fairytale. This fairytale
was one of the two important elements that led me to come up with this
project.
The woman, who told me this story had heard it from one of the members of her family. This was the story:
A
13-year-old young girl had gone to the stream to wash laundry. She
became thirsty, and so she drank a little water that she scooped up
with her palm. What she did not realize was that together with the
water she had swallowed the egg of a snake. As time went by, the snake
grew, and as it grew, so did the girl's belly. Seeing this, the girl's
family concluded that the girl must be pregnant and so they decided she
would have to die. No matter what the girl told her family, she could
not get anybody to believe her. Then one day, the girl went to the
stream one last time, and there she cried until she fell asleep from
exhaustion. Having heard the sound of the stream that was its natural
home, the snake in the girl's belly slid out through the girl's mouth
and returned to the stream. The girl's grandmother, who had witnessed
all this, turned to the girl and told her, 'You see? As a young girl,
you have to beare of everything you do, even if it's only drinking a
few few drops of water.'
As
someone who had grown up and studied at schools in the South East, and
who was familiar with the stories of La Fontaine, Andersen, and the
Brothers Grimm, I had tried to interpret the realities and difficulties
of life, and to find solutions to them, through symbols described by
the West. As the tales migrated towards the East, life was described
through very different symbols deriving from local customs.
It
was then that for the first time I began to ask myself questions like:
Which tales can I collect as I am following these routes? How can I
express these through the medium of film? What would Ceren Oykut draw
in response to these tales? What kind of music would Serdar Ateser
create on the basis of the sounds collected there? Or what kind of a
sociological map would Neriman Polat obtain from these neighborhoods?
As I was formulating these questions in my mind, I also started to ask
myself questions like, how would such a journey reflect in the work of
friends active in different disciplines, how would they work in a
studio that was in constant movement?...
Later I was invited
to the Gyumri Biennal in 2006 for an art project. When I visited an
artist friend of mine in Yerevan in their family home, I noticed for the
first time how similar our traditions were.
For
example, my friend's mother had baked cookies for us, and then sent a
plate full of them to her neighbor. A short while later, the same plate
was returned, but not empty. it came back with 2 apples on it, and this
led to a conversation about this exchange..
We
see that, contrary to Western Europe, the culture of reciprocal visits
is alive and well in Armenia, in Iran, in Azerbaijan, and in Georgia,
just as it is in many Arab countries and in Turkey. For example, just
as is the case in Turkey, a visit by a neighbor is appreciated even if
you're not yet acquainted. In fact, it's not just appreciated, it is
mandatory a 'must.' You take some candy or Turkish delight with you and
go to say 'hello.'
So
this project is called 'iade-i ziyaret', because it will consist of our
visits to Iran, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Armenia and of the reciprocal
visits of two artists from each country: a concept that is familiar to
the artists in these countries and to us. A concept that connects.
What about relations amongst the above-mentioned countries? Won't current relations make it a difficult journey?
Yes,
we won't be able to directly cross the physical borders, we know that.
Since the Gyumri border post is closed, we won't be able to go enter
Armenia directly from Turkey; instead, we'll have to go to Iran first
and from there to Azerbaijan, and since we shall not be able to cross
over to Armenia from Azerbaijan, we will have to go to Georgia, and
from there to Armenia. So, yes, we'll be encountering such difficulties
along the way. We might have problems in Iran, too, but I am sure that
artists' initiatives, with which we are in relation, will help us
overcome many of those difficulties.
Are you saying that this is an experimental process?
Yes,
exactly as we did in the case of Yalanla ilgili hersey, Hersey yolunda
olacak (All about lies, Everything will be OK). There are
no certain coordinates. The only element that is known is the work
location. And that is a bus that is in constant movement. The talk in
the bus, the sketches drawn, the photographs, the films shot, the
preparatory work for animated cartoons; everything will happen within
this process. I call this a free fall.
It is a risky process, but only as risky as previous exhibitions have been.
How did you select the participating artists?
I
have given priority to people who have shown an enthusiastic interest
in the project over the years as I've talked about it. Since the budget
and the work space are limited, we had to limit our number to 15.
Ceren, Serra, and I thought about and discussed different people
who we believed could contribute to the project, and who could provide
different perspectives to it.
I
distributed the notes that I had scribbled about the reasons for me
preparing this project, and then we corresponded about the kinds of
things they would like to do should they participate in this project.
The
real determining factor was the participants' desire to take part in
this journey, and their ability to imagine the journey and their own
contribution to it.
Being
together with 15 people with strong egos on a single bus, for 15 days,
and for 15-20 hours a day, is an highly significant experience. What
kind of a product will come out of the confusion, of the probable
confusion arising from people seeing, looking, taking notes with their
own languages of expression, their own materials, and creating? What
will happen?
The
togetherness of different dynamics, and diverse directions, tendencies,
and narratives deriving from these dynamics.. creating a visual, and
audible language from these narratives.
Can you tell us something more about this different way of practicing art?
The
Apartment Project's aim had been to collectively create and produce
different voices in exhibitions based on workshops. Thus, our previous
exhibitions have already set a precedent for us. The project includes
people who have all formulated their own languages within their own
fields.As I see it, this makes the process even more exciting.
