Kurbet
Reading Performance
Reading Performance
On my last visit to Turkey, I found a handwritten diary of my grandfather, who as a “Gastarbeiter” in Germany from 1968 to 1978.
In these and many other notebooks, my grandfather, a primary school graduate, recorded his days working in Çukurova, the autumn in Stuttgart when he questioned his existence in a park near the factory, his longing mixed with a nationalist desire, the smell of pine as he climbed the Taurus Mountains, the way he recalled a memory from the Alps in those mountains, the literary magazine he read on the village bus, his questions about when to write poetry.
A year after we first met, I wanted to honour his desire to write, which I thought came from a very sincere place. Especially the new generation of the Turkish diaspora, who travel similar roads and struggle with similar emotions, would hear his notes on the relationship between the land and the two geographies.
The diaries of my immigrant grandfather met with a new generation of the diaspora who, like me, left Turkey and moved to Europe in the 2010s at in-house reading meetings organized in Berlin. The installation accompanying the reading performance provided a bird's eye view of the landscapes in the recordings, allowing the audience to produce their own experiences after the performance.
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In these and many other notebooks, my grandfather, a primary school graduate, recorded his days working in Çukurova, the autumn in Stuttgart when he questioned his existence in a park near the factory, his longing mixed with a nationalist desire, the smell of pine as he climbed the Taurus Mountains, the way he recalled a memory from the Alps in those mountains, the literary magazine he read on the village bus, his questions about when to write poetry.
A year after we first met, I wanted to honour his desire to write, which I thought came from a very sincere place. Especially the new generation of the Turkish diaspora, who travel similar roads and struggle with similar emotions, would hear his notes on the relationship between the land and the two geographies.
The diaries of my immigrant grandfather met with a new generation of the diaspora who, like me, left Turkey and moved to Europe in the 2010s at in-house reading meetings organized in Berlin. The installation accompanying the reading performance provided a bird's eye view of the landscapes in the recordings, allowing the audience to produce their own experiences after the performance.
