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Orientalien

Ceylan Öztrük

Performance and installation, 60 min

English with German translation

27.11

20:30-21:30

«When she turned to me I had this sudden transformation, I couldn’t hold my body, I was able to see the same but obviously was not seen the same. People were staring at me eyes wide open, their bodies were getting farther and farther from me, with an obvious gross out. First I realized my arms – 6 of them – it was not surprising at all. The guy in front, with an apron on, pointed at me, his mouth wide open. I could see myself from the reflection on his eyes. Then I recalled the morning. When I woke up this morning from unsettling dreams, I found myself changed in my bed into a Blatta Orientalis.»

 

In Orientalien, Ceylan Öztrük tells about adoption, self-transformation and embodiment of otherness in a performance that connects her own biography with theoretical and philosophical ideas. Digging down to the roots and purposes of the words orient and orientation, how does being the oriental stranger orient the body?

 

The performance with Ceylan Öztrük and Schirin Ghazivakilli dives into the aspects of being an alien, being an oriental and being another – offering a new orientation and a new proposal to appropriate the alienation. It holds oriental dance in an existential experience with light and stage installations. In a setting of mirrors, gazes are crossing while Ceylan Öztrük in a way creates a moment for herself to embody the alienation on stage, on her behalf, becoming another other with other others. 

Ceylan Öztrük (she/her)
is an artist who lives and works in Zürich. She completed her practice-based PhD (2016) in Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University (Istanbul) after she initiated her subject in Vienna in Academy of Fine Arts on Post Conceptual Art Practices in 2014. She received her graduate (MFA-2011) and undergraduate (BFA-2006) degrees from the Fine Arts Faculty at Anadolu University. Ceylan Öztrük opens up accepted forms of knowledge and focuses on how it was built to shift a specific flow and thus become tools of the structures of power. She aims to break the flow of information in the mainstream with a multi-disciplinary approach, offering to setup new channels that co-exist with and sometimes replace the existing ones. She creates «autotheory» and employs interventions in her practice as a methodology with which she tries to transform existing situations and frameworks.

 

Orientalien was premiered at Gessnerallee Zürich in November 2020 – on the last day they were supposed to show the performance, Switzerland went into lockdown. So the performers played two shows in a row the day before. One year later, they find an audience back at BONE_21. Orientalien will be shown Saturday, 27.11. 20:30-21:30h.

Credits

Concept, realisation, stage design, performance: Ceylan Öztrük

Performance: Shirin Ghazivakilli

Conceptual collaboration: Felizitas Stilleke

Dramaturgical advice: Mona De Weerdt

Choreographic advice, sound design: Manuel Scheiwiller

Costumes and styling: Laura Beham, Angela Thurnherr

Lighting, technical assistance, stage design: Demian Jakob

Production: Oliver Roth, Lisann Anders

Oeil Exterieur: Teresa Vittucci

Translation: Miriam Laura Leonardi

Text editing: Merve Ünsal

Music arrangement: Leilaa Moon

Co-production: Gessnerallee Zurich 

http://ceylanoztruk.com/project/orientalien