CW#7 l SEASON 3 l Gelgit

Theme: Light

17 May 2023, Wednesday | Season 3, Episode 7

Apartment Project and online

 

Livestream link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04it5UyzaJQ

Organized by the Apartment Project Berlin and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Culture and Europe

 

Gelgit

 

19.30 «Gelgit» by Seda Mimaroğlu and Zeynep Toraman

20.30 «Diyarbakır.Tourism.Romanticism.Activism» by Nadir Sönmez

 

 

«Gelgit» means «tide» in Turkish. It can also be used to refer to fluctuations of light, to its varying intensity and brightness. Figuratively, it relates to a situation or behavior that is unpredictable, fluctuating and changing, much like light. In the multimedia piece «Gelgit» by Seda Mimaroğlu and Zeynep Toraman, words, images and sound interplay in such an unpredictable way, weaving a tapestry of fluid textual, visual and sonic metaphors of light, elements, textures and patterns.

 

Light and darkness, Nadir Sönmez uses these opposites to contrast queer visibility and solidarity in different cultural contexts. In his multimedia project «Diyarbakır.Tourism.Romanticism.Activism», comprising an autobiographical performance, an essay film and documentary theater, he portrays Kurdish LGBTIQ+ activism in Diyarbakır. In contrast, solidarity networks seem to play a different role for the career of the gay Francophone Turkish artist in the play. While the black and white nature of the film visually obscures, it amplifies the voices that can be heard in the darkness, reclaiming public space by integrating homosexual intimacy into everyday life.

 

Seda Mimaroğlu is a poet, artist and literary scholar from Istanbul. She works with words, images and sound, and her practice and performances include collaborations with other poets, artists, musicians, curators and scholars. Her recent publications include the poetry collection «Love Songs» (Blue Figure Press) and the audio tape «Loose Leaves» in collaboration with Andreas Reihse (Wanda). Mimaroğlu’s work was recently exhibited at Stations and Periode in Berlin.

 

Zeynep Toraman is a composer and scholar who lives and works in Berlin. She completed her PhD in Music Composition at Harvard University in 2023 and taught at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz. Zeynep’s practice-based research explores the ways in which texts interact with each other within the larger framework of musical compositions. Viewing her own library as an archive, she enfolds autobiographical, poetic, fictional and historical components within her work. She has collaborated with Ensemble Proton, andPlay, Lauren Cauley, ELISION Ensemble, among others. Her music has been performed at festivals such as the Sommerakademie Schloss Solitude, IRCAM ManiFeste and Wet Ink Large Ensemble Readings.

 

Nadir Sönmez is an actor, writer and director. He studied theatre at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University. He received acting training at the Paris Erik Satie Conservatory and earned an MA in acting at Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. In his digital project «Murder of the Male», shared with the audience on WhatsApp, he conducted a social autopsy of gay porn stars’ suicides in the US (Istanbul Fringe Festival, 2020). He staged a reading of «Les Fils des Hétérosexuels», his first play in French, which addresses the representation of race in gay porn, at the Paris Cité Internationale des Arts in 2021. His play «Ama», a conversation piece exploring sexual politics of young Turkish artists, was invited to Dresden for the Fast Forward European Festival For Young Stage Directors in 2021.

 

 

«Chromatic Wednesdays» is a bi-weekly event series bringing together creative thinkers across diverse backgrounds. As part of this interdisciplinary program, the performances will be shown at 19.30 (doors open at 19.00) at Apartment Project (Hertzbergstraße 13, 12055 Berlin) and can also be followed online on Youtube (https://youtube.com/live/04it5UyzaJQ).

 

The space of Apartment Project is accessible by wheelchair.