Collaborative artistic research project
June 2007
Work produced in collaboration with Aşkın Adan, Julien Grossmann, and Kamila Szejnoch.
Following on from my participation in the Here As The Centre Of The World workshop in Diyarbakır in March 2007 organised by the Dutch Art Institute, I also took part in the final workshop of the project in June of the same year, this time in Enschede.
Although the same work process as employed in Diyarbakır was used, namely working towards artistic interventions as small groups in the street, there were for me at least significant differences in how the Enschede workshop unfolded.
Firstly, the neat rows of houses and empty streets of Roombeek, the quarter of the city where we were to work, bore little resemblance to the constantly bustling chaos of the public realm in Diyarbakır. This lack of opportunity for direct engagement with the local population meant that the spontaneous interaction which we were able to experience in Turkey was absent in Twente. Furthermore, the precisely planned nature of the urban structure and ongoing construction in Enschede left little room for subversive intervention.
However, it was still possible to make comparisons. While Diyarbakır hangs under the shadow of the ongoing conflict between those who would see an independent Kurdish homeland and the Turkish military, Roombeek has its own scars to heal. It must struggle to deal with the memories of the horrific explosion at a fireworks factory in 2000 which lead to numerous deaths and destroyed most of the buildings in the area, necessitating the aforementioned reconstruction. Once again, a sensitive treatment of the given context was essential.
As in Diyarbakır, the varied nature of our group meant that much discussion and compromise was necessary before it was possible to begin with active intervention. These discussions lead to the decision to make two video works, each of which focussed on the physical state of things in the locality. One made use of the absurdly inhuman, desolate effect created by the landscape, where countless enormous construction cranes seemed to peer like menacing birds of prey upon the few people who were to be found. In contrast, the other took the form of a quiet, understated vignette, a glimpse into a make-believe twilight world in miniature. What lay behind this was that the little overgrown hollow in which this scene was constructed and filmed was the crater caused by the explosion of the fireworks factory. Violence and thunderous destruction had provided the setting for peace and tranquillity, perhaps even the mundane.
Once again, the unavoidable difficulties caused by differences of opinion, expectation, background, and of course language provided the setting for our efforts. While it is certainly true that the collaboration which took place during the workshop was by no means easy, it is thus all the more remarkable that within the short ten-day duration of the workshop it was possible nevertheless to create rewarding and meaningful work.
