?Solo

Body is the soil; my body is my land.
Taldans, Solum

A special significance has been attributed to the "solo" in dance, theater and visual arts in 20th century. The so-called founding "mothers" of modern dance have been listed under the same grade of importance in all dance history books: Isadora Duncan, Loie Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, Mary Wigman... Images of these figures as "unique and free women" enthralled their contemporaries and proceeding generations in terms of their personalities, scandals around and about them, and their attitudes against political events much more than their works ever did.

It has been quite a while since the conviction in singularity, rarity, and the creative genius of the artist has been questioned by (feminist) art history, sociology and post-structuralist thought. So, is our festival which focuses on the "Solo?" this year a belated Turkish addition to these already asked questions, or is it rather a proposition to rethink the significance of the solo in terms of the challenges it poses about the possibilities for creative freedom and freedom of expression of individual difference?

Although it has been claimed earlier that the aura of the work of art disappeared in the age of mechanical reproduction, we have seen throughout the latter part of 20th century not only that the aura stayed – by shifting to a name, to an artist, to a signature, to a logo – but also that it has been strengthened in our design intensive world, even in the circulation of those artistic practices that question the idea of singularity - perhaps including in a way our festival. Therefore, we still think the questions enabled by the solo have not lost their validity.

Granting that artistic field in general and the field of dance in particular have been the history of "positions" and "position takings", strategic maneuvers with or against dominant positions and institutions like in any field of production, we are well aware that this festival itself and the works presented are certain kinds of "position taking".

Some of the position takings presented at the festival are against dominant choreographic methods, and attitudes towards what dance has ontologically said to have been and/or normatively what it ought to be, as well as being positions against why and how the body should appear, how it should be worn and presented, and against the market value of so called identities in socio-cultural policies.

Having once believed in the necessity of formulating a framework for the festival program [because it looks better, because that’s what some other festivals do, because we do not believe works speak for themselves like modernist assumptions would claim], we had gathered the works presented, under three thematic threads: Bodies’ Matter (Self Unfinished, What a Body You Have Honey, Solum, aKabı, How Heavy, Three Girls Matter), History Matters (Visitations, 1-9-4-7, Dervish, I am a Demon, a mysterious Thing, said e.e. cummings), and Exiles and Neighbors (An Attempt…, When I Laugh…, Missing In Action, and the concerts).

Works under Bodies’ Matter, highlight the organic actuality of the body; its fluidity, permeability, amorphousness, reversibility and its capacity to be other than what it appears to be. In a way, these works explore whether or not the solo can be thought of as the expression of singularity by exposing embodied multitudes.

Under History Matters we find works that are built on engagement with traditions and show that a relation with history and tradition need not be conservative, and highlight that even those works which are allegedly "new" are informed by historical conditions of possibility. They gesture towards the fact that no act is an isolated soloist’s act, who lives in a vacuum and that every action is related to historical, cultural and social dynamics. These works also underline the fact that the producer of the sacred aura of the "creative genius" is not the artist, but the whole field of cultural production.

Exiles and Neighbors involve works from or on our geographical focus Palestine and its neighbors. They expose the mobility and hybridity of identities and expose the problems with imposed categories, and imply the difficulty of translating historical and social problems to the level of physical body and to the available languages of dance.

However, having realized that there is nothing left among the works, outside of the field of intersection of these three themes, we decided not the use them and have been saved from the trouble of trying to make the same word games in Turkish! Common denominator, then, is the body, prerequisite of all life, which is more than the sum of all ideas and images we have about it, and which can wear any appearance, object, and identity under construction.

Although the body is not a "given fact" and is an ongoing process of construction (by historical, ideological conditions and various techniques), because of its ultimate frailty, its capacity for moral and physical pain, it does not matter what it wears or does not, and we hope, that our hope for a common ethics is not worn out, and its ground can be the body.

Gurur Ertem