How did this grant contribute to the realization of your project in regard to artistic exchange, local cultural development and/or the promotion of cultural diversity?
During my residency at Utopiana in Geneva I explored the concept of Choreo-Geo-Graphy, a performative research body investigating movement as place-making. Bodies can move physically, imaginatively, collectively, aesthetically, culturally and politically. By moving in these different ways, bodies produce and generate spaces. How and in what ways can moving bodies become geographical? How do bodies participate in the process and practice of thinking geographically? In what ways are cultural geographies also corporeal geographies? Based on these questions, I produced performances on site at the Utopiana residence and its garden, as well as in the urban context of Geneva. The RCF travel grant enabled travel to and from the residency and therefore played an integral part in the realization of my project. Through the residency program I was not only exposed to the Geneva art scene, but also to a diverse network of art professionals, artists and thinkers. Attending local cultural events allowed to me create contacts for future intercultural projects promoting international artistic exchange and cultural diversity. These opportunities formed an invaluable aspect of my time here in addition to having the time and space to fully work on my personal artistic project while at residence here in Geneva.
How does exchange, networking and international contacts contribute to the development of your artistic and cultural project?
By providing a platform that facilitates exchange among international and local artists and theoreticians, the residency offered a unique and invaluable space for reflection, discussion and experimentation, both individually and collectively. Immersed in a network of individuals from across many disciplines, I was engaging with a trans-disciplinary platform where people from different backgrounds came together to reconsider art: for itself, and beyond. Especially in current times of global political upheaval and uncertainty, it is acutely important to create spaces for new thoughts and platforms of shared outcomes. Rethinking and reimagining collectivity by creating spaces for mutual learning and understanding, as well as critical collective inquiry, the residency provided constant dialogical exchange in addition to providing a space for the development of my project. My goals in participating in the residency lied precisely in this type of exchange: in not only singularly creating my individual work, but also in co-creating a space for artists and thinkers so that together, we can re-evaluate our thinking and ways of creating in these turbulent times. This is exactly the quality of exchange, networking and the building of international contacts that I seek, in that it pushes and expands (my) conceptions und understandings of (my) art practice in relation to a wider context.
Can you elaborate on the learning and knowledge you have gained and shared throughout this experience?
In my performance-based work I seek to investigate relations and frictions between corporality and spatiality. In the form of collective actions, I stage choreographic interventions with groups of people in a variety of spaces examining the social and spatial dynamics of the placed and the displaced, the actor and the observer, the inside(r) and the outside(r). Through these works, I have become increasingly invested in the role of the facilitator. To choreograph is to facilitate, to organize not only bodies in space, but also the social relations of the context. To facilitate is to constitute a community. Choreo-Geo-Graphy then is a social activity that not only connects bodies to form a community but also organizes the relations in which these bodies exist to interact. The project Choreo-Geo-Graphy enables the perfect framework to expand my artistic methods and techniques in creating such work. My goal with this project here was to deepen my ability in creating choreographic interventions within a multiplicity of geographical and cultural contexts. My aim was to examine both choreography and geography in their expanded sense, ranging from urban, rural, psycho and experimental geography, including architecture, to choreographies of public space, pedestrian movement and the everyday. During these turbulent times, it was not very easy for artists to work in the public sphere in Turkey. There are many limitations involved through police security and violence. In Geneva I felt a certain freedom to experiment with new forms of public choreographies, e.g. my current project includes nudity in public spaces, virtually impossible in Turkey without consequences - which is not my main concern to cause the latter. These public experiments here in Geneva will inform and inspire my future works immensely in creating choreographies outside. By choreography I mean not the art of making dances, but a complex means of approaching spatial and corporeal organizations of society.
Please indicate a link to your current work (website/facebook page)
http://muratadash.com/
