Opening Program DOTE Festival 2019
A special opening program that taps into the vision of the festival. It will mark the start of the festival’s journey, interweaving presentations such as our collective writing project Second Hand Body and the installation 2048 – What Does Not Make Us One. Following this is Onur Karaoğlu’s performance Light Theory, a powerful meditation on the question of forced and willful departments.
2048 – What Does Not Make Us One: Alaa Minawi has developed this installation specifically for DOTE. 2048 is an inquisitive installation, which invites each spectator to venture within themselves in search of a genuine sense of belonging. Entering the installation means activating our own bodies and our awareness or our personal point of departure.
Second Hand Body: Five writers, from the Middle East, North Africa and The Netherlands, were invited to write a text collectively. Fadi El Tofeili, Driss Ksikes, Liwaa Yazji, Lina Mounzer and Babs Gons. The first writer started from our proposal of Second-Hand Body; by attributing the protagonist of the text with a second-hand body, quality or identity that has been used and embodied in a history of its own. The writers were invited to embark on a journey through different pages, using writing as performative in itself, where the text, its writers and protagonists move between different lives, lived and imagined, between borders, cities, socio-political realities and (hi)stories.
Light Theory: Anna is a scholar in medieval Istanbul, Feraye is a young student who fled the war in Syria and came to Istanbul, Kaan is an actor who is preparing to leave Istanbul for good. Though in different times, all of them are forced to leave a place, and just before they shut down their suitcases, all stop to think whether they’ve forgotten something.An archaeologist from the distant future introduces us to a discovery, through which she is able to tell us these stories. Our lives are the irrevocable consequence of obligatory journeys, and Light Theory imagines the potential meanings of the marks left on our shared futures.
“While (Light Theory) is truly original, creative and mind opening, it is also gentle and sincere …” Zeynep Aksoy, Sanatatak
“(Kaan) tells the story of today’s queer communities strong bonds with their country while they are almost ready to leave it” Kultigin Akbulut, T24
After Light Theory, multi-talented Seval Okay will sing and play the saz in de Zindering.
