MARDİN SESSION @ MARDIN BIENNIAL
PARTICIPANTS - so far
Mehmet Hadi Baran
Mardin Cinema Association
Mehmet Sait Tunç
Film Maker
Şerif Kino
Artist
İlkay Bilgiç
Mezopart
Ömer Kılıç
13m2
Büşra Akgeyik
13m2
Îrfan Amîda
Writer
Mahmut Celayir
Sanatçı
Derya Yücel
Curator
Nazlı Gürlek
Curator
Hakan Irmak
Creative director
Ignacio García Sánchez
Visual Artist
Amaia Molinet
Visual artist
Tomas Matauko
Visual artist
Alvaro Fierro
Economician
Josu Rekalde
Visual artist
Carlos Calleja
Writer
Iranzu Guijarro Plaza
KULTURSISTEMA Coordinator
ABOUT
Let us introduce you "My First Century" briefly.
As xy generation, we are all born in 20th century and continue our lives in the 21st century. The writing of 20th century's art history is not yet complete.
Getting started from the question asked by James Elkins “Is art history global?” My First Century team; Ayşegül Sönmez & Zeynep Okyay gets close-up views on the art history norms and geographical choices. The linear narrative of history is shaped with arbitrary criterions. Who made the norms and criterias?
With this project we want to question the unquestionable norms of the art history. My first century proposes ways to remap, de-center, and reorient the art history's canonic framework.
The project already kicked off in Mardin, during the 4th edition of Mardin Biennial. And it will take place in different cities of the world. In these cities we organise participatory performances by inviting local people from the artistic and cultural scene, academy, political science, sociology, philosophy or architecture background.
Each time, the project will be realised on site, as a participatory project.
We will make a circle, the performers and audience and each performer will come to the middle of the circle, tell their 20th century’s art history with their own narratives.
This format will help to build visibility to many artists that many of us may not know about, thus, it will grow the pleasure to discover new cultural elements and artistic practices. In each city, My First Century sessions will be realised with the participation of many local actors from the artistic and cultural scene. These actors are asked to tell their own 20th centuries' art history and their reasons.
My first century is a big challenge for everyone in order to get free of the spoken framework and to create new discourses.
We would definitely like to meet you and collaborate with you.
Please write us back: my1stcentury@gmail.com
MANIFESTO
How many unwritten histories are there?
Clouds, rains or rainbows, are they all under the unique climate? How many ways can they be? only way to liberate from history may be not the crash or end of the history but rather it is the plurality of histories.
The thing that will be History should get through or lodge in the plurality of history, from the shores and the harbours from which the history can open itself to personal histories…
As My First Century, we promise you what will be the history, the shores, the harbours of the oral history.
We want to go all the cities of the world that we can reach and to meet their histories.
The histories of the ones which are mostly left alone, marginalised from this century, the poets, artists, authors, political scientists, sociologists and everyone known as intellectuals in other words every thinking person.
My First Century will start its advanture during the Mardin Biennale and will continue its journey within the histories of the cities which are not at the center of the world but in fact each of them can be regarded as a center for the one ahead, nearby.
It brings together the intellectuals of the city and ask them who are in the histories of the 20.C -which is the century they are awaken- according to them.
Which images and voices?
They are excluded from which art History?
Unwritten, untold, unspoken, unsaid, silent dodges, loud dodges?
Even the ones which are never mentioned?
Sessions will be realized orally as a performance with the contribution of a group of intellectuals of each city and describe his/her own century for each participant.
In this long journey we want to squeeze everything into one century yet with the consciousness that it can’t be squeezed thing overflow within us. We wish to touch the other centuries, their unheard voices and unseen images…
medıa
