THE INSPIRATION
OF HOME
Köken Ergun interviewed by November Paynter
August 2006
Published
in PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, issue 85, December 2006, New
York. Reprinted by permission of PAJ Publications/The MIT Press
Born in 1976, in Istanbul, Köken Ergun studied with actress Y¦ld¦z
Kenter and playwright Güngör Dilmen at the Istanbul University
Acting Department, followed by a postgraduate diploma in Ancient Greek
Theatre at London’s King’s College. He holds a Masters degree
from the Istanbul Bilgi University Visual Communication Design Department,
with his dissertation entitled Stress on the Contemporary Body in
New Media Arts. An earlier Post-Graduate Diploma dissertation was
written on The Representation of Iphigenia in Euripides, Racine
and Goethe. Ergun is currently a Phd candidate at the Theatre Dramaturgy
Department of the Istanbul University.
Between 1998 and 2001 Ergun worked as Assistant Director to Robert Wilson
on productions such as The Days Before: Death Destruction &
Detroit III. In 2001, he presented his first solo work, a large-scale
installation performance, in Istanbul’s Rumeli Fortress. This
initial step into art performance led Ergun to move into the field of
art video and performance and he began exhibiting in Europe and the
United States, at institutions including KIASMA Museum of Contemporary
Arts (Helsinki), Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center (Istanbul),
Exit Art (NYC), Art in General (NYC), Badischer Kunstverein (Karlsruhe),
Sparwasser HQ (Berlin) and Sculpturens Hus (Stockholm). His video works
have been screened in film festivals in Europe at both the Oberhausen
Film Festival, the Odense Film Festival and at The Amsterdam Documentary
Film Festival. In 2004 Ergun was an artist-in-residency in New York,
at Location One and he is currently an artist-in-residence at Kuenstlerhauser
Worpswede, Germany and the Foreign Artist Exhange of the Austrian Government,
in Vienna.
Köken, please tell us a little about your interest in theatre
and performance and how you moved away from these fields to begin working
in the field of contemporary art.
I think I have always been “dramatic” in a sense. When I
was a child I always dreamt of “the other”, almost always
being better, stronger than “the self”, but not because
I was unhappy with my current state or upbringing. I think I just liked
fictionalising and dreaming for the sake of creating a different world
around me. So I would dramatize other states, other people, like I was
creating my own mythology. My roots go back to the lands of the Ancient
Greeks of Asia Minor so I was already very familiar with the myths and
legends of the Aegean from an early age. One of the reasons I wanted
to study theatre was because of this connection with Greek mythology
and theatre.
Maybe I also sensed an existential suffocation at that early age towards
the greater world (not necessarily to my immediate surroundings) and
escaped from that general reality by being dramatic. Istanbul is a very
gray city, it can be very depressing in the winter, very misty and dirty,
even more so during my childhood. Not everybody is lucky enough to have
a fantastic view of the city or the Bosphorus, and sometimes all you
see is a gray city skyline, a poor skyline. I remember Istanbul being
perpetually gray, and even as a child I understood about the political
struggles and the hard times that consumed it. I knew that there was
a better world out there, one that was not so full of struggle and political
contestation. So I pictured our surrounding reality from the position
of different characters all the time. I could easily relate to those
who didn’t live in Istanbul, those that came from other places,
non-places. I still like these non-places and enjoy the ability tolocate
myself somewhere else that is not necessarily anywhere in particular.
Through this relationship with a drama of sorts, I ended up being accepted
to an acting school having attended an audition merely to test my abilities.
I entered prematurely which perhaps manifested its problems later on
and thus I soon realised that theatre was not for me. Or rather this
form of representation was not for me. I didn’t find it sincere.
I disliked all those Checkovs and Shakespeares. They didn’t fit
my body, my body was too Eastern for them. But the teachers forced us
to adjust our bodies to these heavy minded creatures that existed in
their plays. For me there was little of interest in theatre produced
between the time of the Ancient Greek writers and Beckett. The body
in these two examples were closer to mine. All the plays and characters
that came after Euripides and before Beckett were a mere nuisance to
me. With a few exceptions of course, like Maeterlinck who I still feel
comfortable with.
Then, just as I was preparing for auditions for film schools I found
myself working with Robert Wilson. He showed me a different aspect of
theatre. He made me aware of the importance of timing. Not specifically
his own timing, but a sense for timing in/for a work of art. I think
this is one of the most important elements of art production. It is
all about timing, as Bob (Robert Wilson) would say.
Bob wouldn’t “teach” me things, he wouldn’t
teach anyone anything. What he did was much more interesting, he would
create a space for you to think that there is an alternative. This is
very important and many people who criticize his work today overlook
this important motive in his practice. Once you understand that there
is another, you can move on yourself. This is pretty much similar to
the teachings of Shamanism, Taoism, or that of Bektashis in Turkey.
As soon as I understood this other, I moved towards contemporary art
and away from theatre, also away from Bob’s work, which I found
a very natural development, and I think he would be comfortable with
it too. So, with this new sense of timing that I had acquired, I felt
more comfortable working in the field of contemporary art, especially
with video and performative video.
Can you explain why you chose not to pursue this new sense of timing
within the genre of performance itself and instead chose to work mainly
with video, which steps away from the act of live performance into that
of documentation?
I am still not content with the representation techniques of either
theatre or performance. Many things disappear in repetition or staging.
In other words, there are two kinds of performance: the first is performed
not for the sake of performance, but for any other reason, either to
continue the flow of life (like eating or sex) or to serve a cultural
reason (like discipline or punishment). I call this life performance
as opposed to live performance. The second is performance made only
for the sake of re-performing these first forms of performance. It is
pure repetition, but we are somewhat afraid to call it so. We call it
art instead. We call it theatre. Brecht said “everything is theatre”.
It is true, but then why repeat it on stage and ruin it? I have gradually
come to have a problem with this. When I was in the first years of my
acting studies I absolutely loved the idea (of mimesis), but now I prefer
the first form of performance, the natural one. Actually you don’t
even need to describe it as natural because there should not be an unnatural.
Just like the Chinese do not specify gender in language, so being male
or female doesn’t mean anything and being naked doesn’t
mean anything either... I want the Western world to be more like this
in terms of performance.
It would be interesting if there were no theatre for a while, no stage,
no performances, just a very long hiatus; during which period we can
come to accept that everything is an act of performance by itself, without
direction by another. The world exists and moves by itself, not by mankind.
The whole idea behind Western performing arts is the central figure
“I”. And this is why I don’t like the theatre we see
everywhere, or the performances we see in the art world. The most selfish
“I” is still too central. Both the actor and the director
think that by putting themselves in the foreground they will achieve
something. What they achieve is a perfect repetition. Or perfect egoism.
But, I think to re-present a performance (of the first form) by another
un-live medium like video is more interesting. This is why I started
to document performances of the first kind and apply my own direction
with a very little editing, just to help link the timing of the individual
segments into a single work. I don’t want to add more to the original
performance I have simply filmed.
There seems to be a strong tendency for artists in the region of
the South East Mediterranean and East Europe to work in the medium of
video and often by using some form of documentary technique. Reasons
for this include the relatively cheap cost of shooting simple handheld
video footage, the ease of sending work abroad for exhibition and the
perception of curators from overseas who still seem to prefer work that
depicts other cultures as succinctly as possible. Along with a shift
towards photography this similar approach to video was prevalent in
the Free Kick exhibition presented during the 9th Istanbul Biennial
and in which you participated. Can you comment on the commonality of
video in the region?
I think it is not only these practical reasons that make video a preferred
medium amongst artists in the Middle East. I think we have much to tell
and video seems to be the perfect medium for this. Video is an extension
of film, which is an extension of theatre, which is an extension of
performance, which is an extension of ritual. All of these creative
forms contain drama in it one way or another. Or rather a form of story
telling, if we attribute an Eastern term instead of the Western use
of “drama.” If you look at the region’s past; painting
and sculpture have not been a common artistic practice for story telling.
While in Christian culture they prospered due to their depiction of
religious myths backed by the church. Islam and Judaism prohibited any
visual representation of religious figures or myths. Therefore, painting
does not exist in the same way as a driving force for contemporary fine
art practice in this region. In the same way periods such as Abstract
creativity did not emerge in the medium of painting, but proffered more
in the form of literature (mostly poetry), and much later, via a borrowed
modernism, from film. A clear example of this is the strength of filmmaking
in Iran. On the other hand, for us documentation is also a way of story
telling, because I think there is so much happening in the region that
it cannot be interpreted in a logical way. We like to capture and represent
narratives with no personal commentary, either visual or verbal. So
the documented event tells its own story.
This does not mean that our Western counterparts have less to tell.
But I do believe that they have been saying the same things for over
a century now. Back in the 30s, one of the strongest critics of the
modern Western individual, Robert Musil argued in his The Man Without
Qualities that “in history there is no change.” The exhaustion
of the Western civilization, and the Western self (again the “I”)
was almost complete at the time of his writing. Since then the dam has
not broken, it has not even cracked. Western society continues to chew
over what it already had in its mouth back then. I think in the Eastern
parts of the world we have more food on our plates, so we don’t
hold it in our mouths for so long, we either spit it out in anger, or
digest as much as we can. I think mediums that have more “storage
space” for story telling transform our large resources and our
desire to project them in a more productive way. Painting, sculpture
and even photography have less storage space in this sense, so maybe
that’s why we resort to video.
Those who left Turkey in the 60/70s to follow opportunities in Europe
and America rarely returned. But, now the trend appears to have shifted
and this generation find it more productive to divide their time between
home and away, and to communicate the inspiration they get from life
in Turkey elsewhere and to share their experience of living elsewhere
back home. Your movements over the last six years, with periods spent
in Istanbul, London and New York, exemplify this tendency. But you maintain
that your inspiration nearly always comes from home, in particular from
Istanbul. Do you therefore find it beneficial to produce work elsewhere
with distance from the original subject and in the context of a different
form of cultural perception and how do you differentiate the way you
experience and are inspired by your home city of Istanbul and other
cities you have lived in such as London and New York?
I have never been as inspired by any city other than Istanbul. This
doesn’t mean that most of my works taste of Istanbul, as they
say. I think it is the embodiment of the city and its character in my
work, and in my character. In a city you grow up in and interact with;
you copy attributes of its architecture, its people, its public transportation
system, its nightlife. I operate pretty much like the architecture of
Istanbul for example. And with architecture I am talking about is the
architecture that you wouldn’t even call architecture. It is an
architecture that develops not according to styles or creators (again
the “I”), but according to necessity and flow of daily life.
So just like the two forms of performance I described earlier, architecture
also comes in two forms. It is the first form that integrated with my
body, but the second I was taught to integrate my body with.
Unfortunately, in modern Turkey we are being taught to live in the organized
and self-centred created by Western culture. Just imagine: teaching
a child of Istanbul to live as a Western urban citizen in an organized
system. Imagine what he sees around him and what he is taught. This
is why the new expensive schools in Istanbul are built outside the city
like gated communities of say 70s/80s London, so that the children of
wealthy or pretentious Western-type families can’t see the real
world outside. This points out the most obvious character of Istanbul:
it is a city of dichotomies. This city is the epitome of being ‘bi-’.
It can embody any given attribute in two or more different states at
the same time with an absolute chaotic comfort. For example, if you
leave it to its most natural form, many Western attributes will not
apply here. But, we don’t leave it to its natural form. We force
it to change. We raped this city and its people to look like, to feel
like, to walk like, to dress like Westerners. The petrified, mutant
body that comes out of this rape is what inspires me the most. And ironically
I am one of these mutant bodies, so I constantly question my own existence
and my own positioning in Istanbul first as a micro-cosmos and also
in the world as a macro-cosmos. Therefore, being away from Istanbul
and re-thinking it from a Western geography and
culture does lead to a more cohesive understanding of my own self and
culture.
On the other hand, in Western cities I am more interested in the minorities
than the indigenous community. In New York for example, I am inspired
by black culture. Although we Turks have no immediate historical or
geographical similarities with them, I feel closer to them for some
reason. I think it is something to do with trying to distance oneself
from colonial attitudes. I first felt this attraction to black culture
at a nightclub, in one of the old Body & Soul parties. Everyone
was dancing with the same enthusiasm and exorcism I saw in the countryside
of Turkey. I was not taught to dance like that, I was taught to imitate
the Western detached way of dancing. It is very hard to explain. I can’t
describe it with words...
Two recent works in particular reflect on the mutant body. The first
is “Untitled”, 2004 and the second “I, Soldier”,
2005. In Untitled you present a series of self-portraits of yourself
applying and donning a variety of headscarves in different styles and
with different ties devised by a range of Islamic traditions. Viewing
a man undertake this procedure at first gives the work a comic stance,
but the austerity and seriousness of his intent and later his tears
imply the societal contradictions and trauma that this solitary appendage
induces. Whereas “Untitled” is concerned with a female,
religious relationship with the bigger societal picture, “I, Soldier”
presents the opposite extreme of bodily trauma experienced in Turkey,
that from a male, secular position. Filmed during a national day dedicated
to the youth of the republic, this two-channel work shows a soldier
voicing with grandiose authority a nationalistic military poem. In Turkey
every male youth must complete a period in the military and many view
this imposition as a form of mental and bodily trauma. In “I,
Soldier” it is not only those in official uniform that are seen
going about their regulated duties, but also boys from the military
school who perform rehearsed activities either in synchronisation with
the rest of the group, or its antithesis - in competition against one
another. Can you describe your interest in specific cultural bodily
trauma in the two works “Untitled”, 2004 and “I, Soldier”,
2005.
Both are similar in the way they deal with the mutant body I mentioned
earlier and its dichotomies (I deliberately use it as plural) - in both
works I celebrate these dichotomies. The headscarf piece Untitled
was inspired by a deliberate and ugly act of the current president of
Turkey. The wearing of headscarves is not permitted in state controlled
spaces in Turkey, such as its universities, court-houses and even the
parliament for that matter. Despite Turkey being one of the strictest
secular countries in the world, its public elected a conservative party
with Islamic tendencies, which was actually quite successful for a while.
However, as soon as they came to power the lowbrow, high-bureaucrats
and the army started to exaggerate the headscarf issue, which has been
an ongoing argument since the 70s. On the Republic Day the president
always hosts a ball at the presidential palace, which is also another
state space where headscarves should normally not be allowed. But, because
almost all wives of the members of the Justice and Development Party
wear türban (headscarves), in order to avoid this clash of the
secular and sacred, the president arranged for and
distributed one-person invitations for the ball, in effect allowing
only the husbands to attend. This outraged me and I wanted to apply
the stress of living with a headscarf on my own body. So I made Untitled
in which I wore different types of headscarves over and over until eventually
I burst into tears at the end.
The work I, Soldier is a personal exorcism about my fear of
the military discipline and also my secret attraction to its male qualities.
There are two national days in Turkey dedicated to certain age-groups:
the 23rd of April (denouncing the Ottoman parliament in Istanbul and
opening of the new Turkish parliament in Ankara in 1920) is dedicated
to kids of primary school age, and the 19th of May (the start of the
war of independence against the Allies in 1919) is dedicated to the
youth of high school age. So, during one’s schooling, you experience
both of these horrid relics. For the celebrations, children are trained
to take part in choreographed performances, which take place in the
biggest stadium in the city. And despite the bitter Istanbul weather
(it often rains during these two days and is even colder in the East
of the country) you are forced to wear tights, march around the running
circuit, salute the mayor and an available general, make ridiculous
movements, mimicking both the socialist-realist ceremonies (and some
of the Russian Futurists for that matter) and the Olympic games... So
one day, I decided to video tape all the state day celebrations of the
Turkish republic one by one, thinking that I would put them all together
at the end. But, there was one soldier that I came almost face-to-face
with in the stadium, screaming nationalism from the top of his lungs,
and it was his position that encouraged me to make a single work around
the May 19th celebrations. Every male citizen of Turkey has to do his
military service for twelve months and I still haven’t done mine
because I am studying. When I listened to this one soldier it occurred
to me that I would be trained in the same manner whenever I do my military
service. Even after months of completing the work, I am still afraid
of him, my hair stands on end when I hear him screaming. The more I
show him to other people the better I will exorcise him. So I think
it is a very personal work, but it also means a lot in different ways
to other people. One European curator resembled it to Leni Riefensthal’s
Olympia for instance.
Do you think that the bodily stress that you perceive in these subjects
is just that, a perceived stress from outside, or is it a stress that
is also endured by the subject and how do you differentiate between
the two?
In Untitled, it is her stress and my stress combined, and both are very
internal. In other words, I didn’t make this video as an Orientalist
would write about Beirut from his cold home in Weimar... The headscarf
issue has been an ongoing issue for the Turkish public as long as I
remember. It is all around us, whether you are a believer or not. So
there is absolutely no way of staying perpetually isolated from this
bleeding wound in our society. Over the years, my observations accumulated
to be able to have a general idea of what these women are facing and
prior to performing the piece for video, I spent time with friends and
distant relatives who wear headscarves. I have listened to their stories
about the hardships as well as the comfort of wearing a headscarf. You
would always read such stories in newspapers, or see it on television,
but this is perceiving the stress from the outside, because there is
the medium of “the media” in between you and the subject.
And most of the media in Turkey is either pretentious (mimicking the
West), or
controlled in one way or another by the state or corporations who suck
on the tits of the state. But when you have a closer human contact with
the türbanl¦lar (Turkish slang for women who wear headscarf:
türbanl¦) you can appreciate their dilemma more. On the one hand,
you have the Islam religion, which says you have to obey the book, Kuran-¦
Kerim, which in turn says all female believers should cover every
part of their body, but the face and hands. If you consider yourself
a Muslim woman, you must apply this to yourself. At least this is what
they believe. Then on the other hand, you have a republic of only eighty
something years on top of an Islamic empire of five hundred years who
prohibits women covering their head in state controlled spaces. Is this
freedom?
Of course a third aspect to the story is radical Islam, which we Turks
knew and experienced centuries before the West woke up to its reality
after 9/11. Radical Islam is operated solely by male power and intellect,
and often uses the turban as a symbol for their case against the secular
state. They often use the word “chastity” in relationship
with the turban, placing the other women who don’t wear it in
the category of prostitutes, and this in return forces the turban wearing
women, to act like symbols of chastity. Can you
imagine a bigger stress than this? At the end, as you can see there
are three major kinds of stress imposed on a türbanl¦ women; one
by the religion which orders them to cover up, the other by the state
which “encourages” them not to, and third by the radical
Islamists who uses them as the symbol of their case/movement. Therefore,
women who wear türban cannot be free and detached from all these
major stressors, but they will also not go out there and scream at the
top of their voices that they are stressed. To think like this is very
naïve. So they often keep the depression inside, which I find very
sad, and unfair. It is these feelings, which bring me close to them.
I know that having been raised with a secular-Western attitude, I cannot
fully appreciate their situation, but I definitely got a hint of it
when I was wearing these turbans and constantly watching myself in the
mirror. It helps to deconstruct your given identity for a moment.
“I, Soldier” was shown in the hospitality zone
of the 9th Istanbul Biennial in the exhibition “Free Kick. A number
of works in this exhibition caused political backlashes. Were you concerned
that your piece could create controversy in this context?
I was a little bit concerned about the specific soldier in the work,
who reads the poem. I recorded his entire performance at a very close
angle and didn’t ask his officialpermission. But on the other
hand, this entire performance in the stadium is open to public and anybody
is allowed to film it. That is the whole idea behind this public performance,
promoting pride and honour of your homeland. I had infiltrated into
an area where only press is permitted, but still, as part of the loose
discipline that you see in Turkish police, the guards who are supposed
to control that area didn’t even ask me what I was doing. If you
look “different” enough, they wont touch you. They think
you are the other, eccentric media/artist type. This is part of the
chain of dichotomies that I keep talking about. The irregular but friendly
use of discipline in Turkey is something I absolutely adore. The Western
world would describe this as “uncivilized.”
Showing your works in different locations can result in complex
questions that relate to locality and geography. “Untitled”,
(2004) was recently shown in New York, how do you feel this work translated
in this specific context and how was the response to the work different
in New York to the response it received in Turkey?
Most viewers there found it beautiful, and intriguing. I can never forget
an Upper East side type woman with heavy make up and huge hair exclaiming:
“Oh wow! This is so beautiful, I’d love to have it in my
living room!” If you don’t know the wide conflicts around
the issue of the headscarf, it is natural that you would find it beautiful,
because in a way it is also playing with religious portraits in Western
art but this is not the primary concern of the piece. My concern was
more about portraying the stress on the female
Islamic persona, enforced by the secular state. First of all, although
America is defined in its constitution as a secular state, in practice
I believe that it does not truly maintain a secular situation. Therefore,
Americans are not familiar with the secular sanctions against religious
practitioners, as you would see in France or Turkey. It is not part
of their life yet, but I am sure it will be. This work can best be understood
by viewers who are enlightened about Islamic practices, because it is
complex and confusing enough and I like that, I like to point in one
direction, but shoot in another. For example, although I have a critical
approach to the military pride in I, Soldier, I also like the
fact that some elder women in Istanbul cried while watching the work.
They thought it promoted the army in a very strong way. You see, nowadays
because of the new government the army is criticized a lot in public
and the elder generation finds it hard to believe because they are still
under the impression that they lived with its support for so many years.
When I showed it to my mother and aunts they also thought I was promoting
being a soldier in Turkey.
The performance “Homeland Security” that you made while
on residency in New York refers to a more recently enforced form of
bodily stress that in America became most evident after 9/11. By introducing
a security control at the gallery entrance were you more interested
in exploring the audience’s reaction or the effect of the work
as a statement within your own practice?
Both. It was a playful work, even a nasty one. Like in Untitled and
I, Soldier it points in one direction, but shoots in another.
It was dealing with a form of discipline we were already accustomed
to in the Middle East, but was new to the West at that time. When I
was working for the Istanbul Festivals I witnessed many Western audience
members complaining about our routine security checks prior to their
entrance to the concert halls. Some guests arrogantly attributed this
to Turkey being a police state, and some argued that it was a violation
of human rights. They simply didn’t comprehend why such controls
were necessary and didn’t have the remotest idea how they could
be daily routine for us. After 9/11 the “Free West” became
introduced to the security discipline of the “Policed East.”
However, the art world was still immune from these security checks,
so when I was invited to make a new work for a public art exhibition
called Public Execution that used Exit Art as their opening venue, I
wanted to see all the so called “art elite” subject to a
security check. Virtually every guest was surprised to see be confronted
by a metal detector and two security officials waiting for them. While
some guests were obviously annoyed, the majority entered in silent submission.
Almost nobody thought that it was a work in the exhibition, which I
liked a lot. I also deliberately used African American security officers
to add to the stress, and documented the whole process with three cameras.
In New York you did produce several works related to the local context.
How do you feel that the new influences that surround you in Germany
and Austria, where you are currently based, will affect your artistic
practice in the short and longer term? Will these other cultures ever
inspire you more than home?
They both trigger different kinds of inspirations. I have found home
away from home in Berlin for example. I am working with Turkish immigrants,
shooting their wedding ceremonies. Weddings are another form of life
performance for me and the Turkish community in Berlin is very “grotesque,”
stuck between their conservative but relaxed Eastern origins and a liberal
but uptight society. In a way, I have found the perfect Turkish mutant
bodies in Germany, and to see them perform with their confused identities
within the traditional ceremony of a wedding refreshes me. I am planning
to represent this condition of the “grotesque” in my new
works.
Of course, in Europe, wherever there are immigrants, there is also nationalism,
and even racism. In Austria this is strikingly noticeable. Last year,
during an election campaign, the ever-homogenous streets of Vienna were
adorned by the billboards of a right wing political party that read
“Vienna Will Not Be Istanbul”. This text was accompanied
by a portrait of the party leader, his arms crossed, trying to look
serious, but with a stupid grin on his face. It was frightening. This
form of constipated racism infuriates me, but it also gives me a lot
of material to work with. In general, I have serious issues with nationalism.
I find it dangerous and aesthetic at the same time; very performative.
In my works I have been trying to deal with this phenomena, and what
I see in present day Europe drives me to keep working with it. Ironically,
nationalism is as yet still a baby. It is a relatively recent product
of the dual revolution (the French Revolution and the British Industrial
Revolution). This new-born nationalism finally led the world to its
partial destruction in the 1st World War. Despite this destruction humankind
cultivated it into a form of racism, which in turn caused the 2nd World
War. I think that this history is only the teenage angst of nationalism
and there is so much more to come. I won’t be so naïve to
say that art can save us from this evil, but it can at least propose
a different perspective. I myself would be happy if I can facilitate
this slightly. Therefore, yes, in general the West
also inspires me.