‘South: The Border Oath Version’ by Istanbul Queer Art Collective

Video (8:52): ‘South: The Border Oath Version’ by Istanbul Queer Art Collective at Sound Acts festival in Greece, 2016.
Founded by the three artists Tuna Erdem, Seda Ergul and Onur Gökhan Gökçek in 2012, the Istanbul Queer Art Collective is a performance collective based in Istanbul.

The co-funders of Istanbul Queer Art Collective Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergul explains about their sound performance: ‘”Sound Acts” is a festival that focuses on sound art and there are many fluxus scores that fall in this category. We looked for something that we could queerify and something that would have some resonance to the fact that we would be performing in a neighbour country. In the Fluxus performance score “SOUTH no.3”, Takehisa Kosugi asks the performers to turn the word “South” into sounds by pronouncing every syllable and letter, in every combination possible. In remaking SOUTH, we replace the word “South” with a specific text: the military oath Turkish soldiers are obliged to take each and every time they start their border watch duty. We performed to an audience that did not speak Turkish. However, most of the performance consisted of meaningless sounds where knowledge of Turkish was irrelevant. In fact our aim was to steer away from the inherent stability of language, toward the unstable, performative, immediate, humorous and playful world of sounds. By doing so, we hoped to call into question the inherent stability of physical borders and the conceptual foundations that lie behind our need for them. With that aim in mind we made military costumes for ourselves that were as always also drag queen costumes.’ – INTERVIEW: ISTANBUL QUEER ART COLLECTIVE
 by Mine Kaplangi

Related Link

Tuna Erdem and Seda Ergul’s blog (in Turkish)
THE ISTANBUL QUEER ART COLLECTIVE IN LONDON by Cuntempory.

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