The performance introduces Taklak as a flower. A dialogue blossoms around the narrative and archives that Taklak has gathered and created. It offers imagination of embodied experiences, and performances inherent to Taklak and its various translations, from tumbling to betraying, revolution to coup d’état. One can reinvent oneself as a Taklak during the performance, blossom and tumble through the cycle of seeds, exiles, and belongings across geographies and time.

‘‘Plants seep into my mind and dream - from hills filled with houses or between mountains, along streams, and through pines. They are always on my mind in the story of making a place for myself in another city, Leipzig. And it is good to be with them in this story. Because it gives me strength to see that a seed can take root in many places, make many places home and come to life under different names: Taklak, Erguvan, Cercis, Judas Baum, Redbud, Arkavan, Koutsoupia, dara Cihûda, شجرة يهوذا, հուդայի ծառ’’

...

‘’My search still spans a wide area. Notice Taklaks in many landscapes, languages, tales and memories, archives, herbariums and gardens. As I wander, it becomes a story, a story of stories of Taklaks.‘’

The project continues in collaboration with Merve Şen (editor), Ali Cindoruk (KHORA, designer), Aslıhan Demirtaş (KHORA, designer). Together, we are forming an artistic publication that can spread Taklaks around. The publication project is granted by SAHA (Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey)

Please email me for the video documentation of the performance. I am interested in presenting Taklak lecture performance in further occasions!