Biennale Bonn:The Bosporus,looking at each other and at ourselves

Walking newspapers, biographical theater and the Istanbul State Ballet. This year’s Biennale Bonn focuses on Turkey and its people. Visitors will find a mind-boggling mix of modern and traditional Turkish art and culture

Dorte Huneke
BONN – Turkish Daily News

This year the German city of Bonn's annual festival celebrating artists from different countries around the world will feature Turkish art, music, theater and film at the lively event on the banks of the Rhine.

From June 14 through June 22, artists from Turkish state theaters and the Istanbul State Ballet, as well as independent groups and artists, will be performing on various stages across the former German capital as part of Biennale Bonn.

Among the participating artists are Zülfü Livaneli, Perihan Mağden, Ara Güler, Dolapdere Big Gang, Taksim Trio, and Berlin-based DJane Ipek Ipekçioğlu, the daughter of Turkish immigrants to Germany and a star of the Berlin club scene since the mid 1990s.

In addition, a wide range of Turkish movies will be shown, from the award-winning Takva and Beyaz Melek (White Angel), to action and comedy films.

Introducing Turkish culture

A major reason for making Turkey the focus of the 2008 Bonn Biennale was to transform people's vision of contemporary Turkey. According to organizers, the festival will be a chance for the audience to discover different aspects of Turkish performing and visual arts, along with music and film.

For many visitors it will be the first time that they hear the names of some of Turkey's most popular artists and are exposed to the performer's talents.

The Biennale is, however, more than simply visual spectacle. Audiences will be invited to share and discuss what they see and hear with other visitors and participants. Most of the dance and theatre productions will provide opportunities for the audience to talk to the artists after their performance.

Among the main themes raised in the productions are question of identity and about European-Turkish relations. Where is Turkey going to position itself between Europe and Asia? How is the European Union's enlargement process going to affect Turkey and the rest of Europe? What role does Islam play in Turkey and in Europe?

The festival team also cooperated with the city's schools, with the aim of introducing local students to contemporary Turkish culture beyond preconceived stereotypes, and to look at how young people of Turkish origin can contribute to modern culture in Germany.

Given the strong presence of Turks and Turkish culture in Germany, the festival is also a chance to take a closer look at Turkish-German relations.

Bursa-born Muhsin Omurca who, with his partner, Şinasi Dikmen, founded the first Turkish cabaret in German (Knobi-Bonbon in Ulm) and is therefore considered the "father of migrant cabaret" in Germany, will present his popular show �Die EU manen kommen� (The EU manes are coming), in which he humorously dissects the difficult, sometimes ridiculously complicated relations between Germans and Turks and their attempts at getting to know one another.

Turkish life stories

Frank Heuel, the director and artistic director of a Bonn-based fringe ensemble, says he learned a lot about Turkish culture while preparing his own contribution to this year's Biennale.

His experimental reality-theater-production �Geschichten, getürkt � eine Expedition� (Stories Turkicized � an expedition�) will premier on June 12. The key question his play examines is how Turkish migrants live in the city of Bonn. In order to find answers to this question, Heuel interviewed migrants of Turkish origin living in Bonn who were interested in telling him about their lives. �We found a highly heterogeneous Turkish community,� says Heuel.

Among the people Heuel and his group met was an insurance broker, a butcher, a hotel reservation supervisor, a boxer, a housewife and mother, a 16-year-old boy in a wheelchair, a jobless gastronome, and a dilettante. �The youngest person we interviewed was 17 years old,� says Heuel. �The older generation was more difficult to approach, but we also talked to some people in their 50s.� Their stories will be presented on stage in the original words of those interviewed but performed by professional actors and actresses.

According to Heuel, the collected stories represent a cross-section of experiences within Turkish society. There is an upwardly mobile generation that does not want to have too much to do with the Turkish community, and a young generation which is struggling to integrate itself into German culture and language.

�What worries me most is the tendency among the third generation of Turks in Germany toward �ghettoization,'� said Heuel. Unlike the second generation, they hardly speak German and have established themselves in their own Turkish worlds within the German society.

Reading and writing a city

The cultural and social connections, essential for every form of dialogue, will be explored by the Turkish-German co-production The display Walking newspaper, part of the Tauschen (Exchanging) exhibition is a performance art piece in which several Turkish and German artists explore the city and use their experiences for their art. The walking newspaper will result in an actual newspaper that can be taken home as part of the Tauschen exhibition, which is presented in the Künstlerforum Bonn.

The idea of a walking newspaper was developed by German artist Hans Winkler who calls it a �self-made� publication in living opposition to the outdated historical practice in public spaces of �plop� art--the tradition of �plopping� sculptures in public spaces to beautify urban environments without there being a direct connection between the art and its context.

Winkler claims walking through a city, discovering aesthetic elements of daily life and working on objects found in the streets is like reading it. In 2005 Winkler produced his first walking newspaper in San Francisco and later conducted the same project in New York, Istanbul, Havana, and Sierre in Switzerland. The Turkish version of Winkler's walking newspaper was called Yürü.

The full program of Biennale Bonn can be seen online at biennale-bonn.de.

Inform,07.06.08