Our Love Memory with “Sevgi”
October 2023 - May 2024
İSTANBUL, ANKARA
Our Love Memory with “Sevgi” is an alternative memory project which will be exhibited within the context of the centennial of the Republic. Gender has been at the foundation of the Republic’s projects on nation- and identity-building and women’s position has been discussed and regulated in numerous different ways within the hundred-year period. Within such context, it is crucial to analyze how past transformations and discussions shaped today’s gender regime, and art in connection therewith, again through means of art. A video art project will be developed based on the life story of Sevgi Soysal, a writer, translator and radio host who lived between 1936 and 1976, a member of the first generation of the Republic, with an approach that renders the “unseen” visible, as opposed to the current remembering practices which greys out Sevgi Soysal’s social, creative and artistic memory. The produced video art creations will be included in a theater play about Sevgi Soysal’s life story, which will debut in autumn 2023, written by Duygu Dalyanoğlu and to be staged by BGST Tiyatro in a feminist troupe structure. The video art works will thereby be exhibited on stage, an area which changes and transforms with each individual performance, in combination with elements such as acting, dance, music, audio effects, costume, lighting, etc. and with the participation of the audience. To be produced by Kenan Özcan, the videos will combine and revisualize photographs and documents from Sevgi Soysal’s period and circle and analyze their relation with memory. They will also be based on the visual memory of the spaces where Sevgi Soysal lived. Within such context, the focal point will be how personal and collective memory affects representation. Archive material to be included in the videos will be as follows:
- Photographs, audio and video recordings, letters, testimonies, book covers, drawings and newspaper articles of Sevgi Soysal.
- Visuals, letters and newspaper articles from the archives of people acquainted with Sevgi Soysal, such as Adalet Ağaoğlu and Behice Boran.
- Written, audio and video press archive material from the 1936-1976 period.
- Visual archive material on places where Sevgi Soysal spent her life and mentioned in her literature (miscellaneous places in Stuttgart where she visited with the influence of her mother who was of German origin, Ankara where she lived throughout her life, Imbros Island where she went for holidays and observed the transformation of the ethnic-cultural structure of, Adana where she was exiled to and London where she went for cancer treatment).
