"Thistles of Sazak" on the weekend of performance over DISTANCE

DISTANCE
is a weekend of performances, talks, video and activity over distance.

DISTANCE TAKES PLACE:
Sat 19th June 13:00 - 00:00
Sun 20th June 14:00 - 20:00
STOKE NEWINGTON INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Unit F, 1-15 Leswin Place
London
N16 7NJ
www.stkinternational.co.uk
TICKETS NOW ON SALE - HERE

Full programme available to download as a pdf here

Distance has always been a part of our lives. Now, more than ever, we are expected to negotiate the complexities of near and far. From conquistador to ryanair to Skype to pilgrimage to chatroom to your neighbour's front door, a multitude of choices now affect how we experience and engage with people and places across the world and across the street. As technology offers instant presence and lifestyle choices increase in complexity, what are our relationships to distance? How do we live with absence, intimacy and speed? When do we desire to close the gap and when do we need to create it?

Over 19-20th June, experience a programme of work that responds to distance from multiple perspectives. Expect the infinite and intimate, the attempt and limit, the vital and current.

DISTANCE is curated by Third Party and Stoke Newington International Airport
Third Party, and arts collective Stoke Newington International Airport, have come together to collaboratively curate and produce this event. DISTANCE is an intial starting point of a longer-term investigation into the notion of distance as a conceptual, political and practical concern for the arts sector and wider public.
To contact us: info@fromadistance.co.uk
Third Party is a newly formed curating collaboration between Joon Lynn Goh, Neil Callaghan and Simone Kenyon.

Contributing artists include:

HAKAN AKÇURA, ANSUMAN BISWAS, CLAIRE BLUNDELL JONES, LAURA BRADSHAW & MURRAY WASON, DAVID BRAZIER & KELDA FREE, BABA BRINKMAN, DENIS BUCKLEY, MARIE CHRISTINE KATZ, CALCAGNO CULLEN, ANDREW DAWSON, WIRACHA DAOCAHI, ROBIN DINGEMANS, JOHN DI STEFANO, LOWRI EVANS, G.E.M.A (GRUPO EXPERIMENTAL MULTIDISCIPLINAR AUTÔNOMO,) GUERILLA SCIENCE, YOKO ISHIGURO, LEO KAY, BABETTE VOETS & LOTTE VOETS, CARL LAVERY, MARK MCGOWAN, MANIFESTO CLUB, OR-BITS.COM LANDS DAVID, RULE, STEVEN OUNANIAN, SINEAD O'DONNELL & POSHYA KAKL, PAUL PESCADOR, PLAN B, PLATFORM, SEARCH PARTY, STOKE NEWINGTON, INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, SALT GRIT FREE SHIT, AMY SHARROCKS, JEN SOUTHERN, THEY ARE HERE, CAROLINA VASQUEZ & BETHAN MARLOW, VERY SMALL KITCHEN, VIVI TELLAS, CECILIA WEE

To get there:
Bus : 149, 243, 76, 67, 349, 73, 106
Rail: Stoke Newington Station, Rectory Road, Dalston Kingsland Overground, Dalston Junction Tube... Or, cycle.

Thistles of Sazak / Sazak'ın Dikenleri



A documentary of the art performance

Producer: Open Flux, Hakan Akçura
Director: Hakan Akçura
Music: Dror Feiler
Camera: Hakan Akçura, Dror Feiler, Leyla Ferngren, Gunilla Sköld-Feiler
Edit: Hakan Akçura
41.31 min.
2010
Stockholm, Sweden

Sazak is a mountain village located in Karaburun, Izmir on the Aegean coast of Turkey and is just one of many Greek villages forcibly evacuated in 1922.

The Greek residents of this and surrounding villages, who once grew rosica grapes in their vineyards and produced delicious wines and molasses, were considered together with the Greek army that invaded Izmir. The Greek residents were driven to the sea at the coves around Karaburun, killed and deported and the villages they left behind were plundered, although they actually had the same rights in these lands as those who remained.

Since those times, for 87 years, Sazak remained desolate, solitary and unprotected on the steep slop facing toward the islands of Lesvos and Chios, where there are still stone houses and unique silhouettes.

In August 2009, about 50 citizens from Patras, Greece, came to Karaburun, Izmir in Turkey. They were the grandchildren of those who were forced to leave the lands which they would visit after 87 years as part of the 2nd Karaburun Peninsula Greek-Turkish Friendship Days.

As they were going to the Kucukbahce village for the first dinner to meet with the local people on the evening of August 6, their bus stopped and they got out. They looked at the village of Sazak, or Sazaki as they call it, lying far away in the falling darkness of the evening.

The second dinner would be at the village of Sarpincik on the next day.

I wanted to salute them by making an art performance at the village of Sazak on August 7, i.e. on the same day as that last dinner. I posted the performance announcement on walls in the town and the surrounding villages days before:

Thistles of Sazak

I will try to clear the village of Sazak from thistles, which covers its heavy emptiness like a heartrending veil, from dawn to dusk on the Seventh of August, 2009.
Your participation is welcome at my performance.

Hakan Akçura

For me, trying to clear the covering of thistles at Sazak is a symbolic cleansing meant to open the way for rescuing the village from the lonely, derelict, unprotected state in which it has been left together with its painful past for 87 years. Also to transform it to one of the symbols of Greek-Turkish friendship, which I believe will develop ever more with each passing day.

I asked for permission, in a way, from the earlier owners of each house, who are no longer there, before clearing the thistles.

Yes, my performance was open to participation. I spread my call not only in and around Karaburun, but I also informed all the guests, Greek and Turkish alike, who met at the first dinner. Only two persons came to the performance in addition to my team; a retired philosophy teacher and his daughter from Bergama, who were spending their summer holidays in Kucukbahce.

They shared their water and fruit with me.

I would like to thank them.

Hakan Akçura