An Obscure Performance in Life and Education

Abstract

After the military intervention of 1980, Turkey's intellectual and social democrats were devastated – imprisoned, escaped to exile, silenced, killed – in the hands of the coup d’état and all the prohibitions that came with it until the first half of the 1980s. Then the famous Turgut Özal government with its unprecedented liberal economic policies came into the picture. Towards the end of the 1980s, a new generation of theatre and performance artists started to stage their response to all this madness and became visible to older generations who had long lost hope and vitality in terms of artistic and humanitarian production. I had the chance to get involved in this artistic endeavour through some of the emerging initiatives, such as Green Grapes Dance Company, Bilsak Theatre Company, Şahika Tekand, Kumpanya, Dance Factory, DAGS (Interdisciplinary Young Artists Association), Hüseyin Katırcıoğlu and Assos Theatre Festival. The works were relentless and new. Bodies were in need of fresh air, and artistic expression in performance did not follow the traditional routes or accepted notions while fully embracing the possibility of not being seen. Actually, the emerging artists did not give a damn. Interestingly – or obviously – enough, most of them were outcasts coming from other fields such as sociology, literature, engineering, law and so on. In relation to this, the artistic and performative visions they put forward were truly interdisciplinary. The contemporary visual art scene and performing arts were in an honest conversation perhaps for the first time in Turkish art history.