26 April 2023, 19.30h, Druckereihalle/Ackermannshof Basel (free admission/collect).
SÛR – a scenic-musical installation by Eren Karakuş and the vernissage of his new book SÛR.
With Eren Karakuş, Ferhat Keskin, Anina Jendreyko & Suleyman Çarnewa (vocals), in Kurdish, Turkish and German.
SÛR is the old town of the Kurdish city of Diyarbakir/Amed in south-eastern Turkey. It is the home of the visual artist Eren Karakuş, who now lives in Basel.
In the winter of 2015/2016, a curfew was imposed on the city of Amed/Diyarbakir by the Turkish state. The city centre was occupied by the Turkish military, cut off from the outside world and largely destroyed over the course of the months. Numerous people were arrested and many were forced to flee. Eren Karakuş has documented the time of isolation and destruction of his hometown through photographs and collected conversations with people on the ground – conversations marked by a longing for everyday life and normality.
27 April 2023, 19.30h, Druckereihalle/Ackermannshof Basel (free admission/collect).
“A Space Bounded by Shadows”, a reading and talk with Emine Sevgi Özdamar
Emine Sevgi Özdamar will read from her autobiographical novel, followed by a discussion moderated by Anina Jendreyko.
Emine Sevgi Özdamar uses her own experiences to look at being a foreigner and being made a foreigner, at the loss of language and the empowerment of language, questions the way we deal with history and repeatedly poses the question of how and where one can be at home.
After the 1971 coup d’état in Turkey, the military imprisoned not only people’s lives but also their dreams. Among many others, artists, opposition activists and intellectuals feared for their existence. This also applies to Emine Sevgi Özdamar, who flees Istanbul across the sea to Europe, carrying in her luggage the wish to be able to work as an actress in Germany and the unconditional desire to make known and keep alive the cultural wealth of her country, which has been so abruptly cut off. And this without allowing herself to be limited to mere origins in the “zoo of languages”.
“Once you have left your own country,
you never arrive in a new country.”
(Emine Sevgi Özdamar)
This realisation runs through the novel in surprising volte-face and is at the same time always counteracted by the vanishing point of art.
29 April 2023, doors open at 6.30 p.m.: poster exhibition and aperitif, from 7.30 p.m.: reading, film excerpts, music, song, discussion Druckereihalle/Ackermannshof Basel (free admission/collect).
More than theatre? – How can our work be politically effective? A discussion event on the work of the Volksbühne Basel and other committed theatre projects at the interface between artistic and political work.
Interculture was and is a living reality within Volksbühne Basel, often challenging and always enriching. Interculture understood as a process that sees the diversity of our society as wealth, that presupposes openness to each other and that questions power relations.
In our theatre works we tell stories of people from different perspectives. They are stories of resilience in difficult, sometimes threatening life situations. Running through these stories is the search for perspective and the possibility of action.
It is important to us that we use the power of theatre to open up spaces in which different people can meet, experience, reflect and exchange together.
An essential moment of our work is to understand the diversity and difference of the participants as a source from which common artistic processes emerge.
Many social and cultural conflicts are intensifying, crises and war are omnipresent. We understand our artistic work as socially relevant and would like to use it to stimulate reflection and action. Along the challenges of our time and in search of possibilities for action, we invite you to an evening where three cultural workers will present their work at the interface between artistic and political work and then enter into an open exchange with those present.
Singing: Süleyman Çarnewa, Özlem Yilmaz
Music: Eser Gül, Mazlum Gül
Tina Leisch, film, text and theatre worker, Vienna, introduces “The Silent Majority”, an international artists’ collective that artistically negotiates issues around flight, arms production and migration. With short film clips.
Tuğsal Moğlu, theatre director and author on topics including migration/racism and right-wing extremism: staged reading from his plays on the NSU trial and the murder victims in Hanau.
Anina Jendreyko, director Volksbühne Basel and lecturer of the CAS “Theatre work in conflict and crisis areas locally and internationally”: with short film clips on productions and the international work.
Moderation: Ciğdem Akyol, journalist (WOZ editor, among others), writer (“Generation Erdoğan” and other books and book contributions).
The Volksbühnen-Tage are supported by Swisslos-Fonds Basel-Stadt, Fachstelle Integration und Antirassismus, Christoph Merian Stiftung, Stiftung Edith Maryon