:Gülpınar

What is Bulu!ma Noktası [Meeting Point] project?

Bulu!ma Noktası [Meeting Point] project aims at federating

local, national and international communities from both rural

and urban areas, with different social, religious and cultural

backgrounds, around issues on art, creativity and cultural

heritage through educational, intercultural, interdisciplinary &

socialising civil actions. The project will use various creative art

disciplines to harmonise differences, raising respectful

awareness on self & each other’s rights, duties and on the

complementary nature of differences, in an innovative manner.

What does Bulu!ma Noktası [Meeting Point] project consist of?

Aiming to take place in a different village each time, the

project’s duration will be 10 days in total. The last four days of

the 7 days intense education program will be juxtaposed with a

7 and 4 days long festival program. The project will be an

education program during the day and a festival at night. All

activities and education processes will take a multi-disciplinary

and inter-disciplinary approach as a foundation for bringing

together different nations and cultures. The location of the

project is chosen to be a rural settlement, both to broaden the

horizon and knowledge of the participants and visitors of the

project and to increase the visibility of an otherwise calm and

relatively remote village. Thanks to the location of the project:

- The city dwellers of Turkey will discover their own existing

culture and its sub-cultures,

- International participants will not only have a chance to

come into contact with contemporary Turkish performing

and visual arts and artists, but also will be able to see ‘the

real Turkey’ which is a lot broader than represented by the

foreign media,

- Arts will be brought into the village, allowing the villagers to

discover and observe international and national arts, artists

and urban cultures,

- People living or having holiday resorts nearby will become

aware of the communities in close proximity and have the

chance to observe their relationship with different forms of

art.

The education program consists of three different workshop

groups, one of which will be led by the inhabitants of the

village and the other two by international experts on the

subject. The workshops led by the villagers will be an aid in

understanding the local culture from its original source,

allowing the whole activity to become an intercultural dialogue,

instead of a monologue of the urban community. Participants

from different cultures will broaden their horizons by attending

workshops emphasizing that artists could become more

productive and creative; art forms more diverse when

nourished with cultural and disciplinary differences.

The festival will gather theatre, music and performance groups

that will reinterpret their work focusing on existing cultural

values (like shadow puppetry) or those becoming extinct,

through their interaction with the village and from a

contemporary point of view. The audience of the festival

(Turkish and foreign participants, inhabitants of the village,

people living or having holiday resorts nearby) will not only

experience an inter-disciplinary, inter-cultural and multi-national

dialogue in the form of an event, but also be subjects of a

program of social education. The festival and education

program is mainly about raising an opportunity for

accommodating different cultures and ideas next to each

other, in a gathering aimed at learning from each other, sharing

spare time, co-operating and exchanging information, working

and having fun together. The whole process will become a

model in sharing cultural, social, perhaps even ideological

differences in a peaceful way.

diyalog derne!i promotion of cultural exchange Molla Çelebi Çe"me Çıkmazı 1/3

34427 Beyoglu/Istanbul Turkey

email: info@diyalog-der.eu

phone: + 90 - 212 - 292 41 34 fax: + 90 - 212 - 292 41 36

http://www.diyalog-der.eu

The non-profit association DIYALOG Derne!i is a cultural

initiative based in Istanbul, Turkey. Its principal objectives are

the promotion of cultural exchange and cooperation in order to

carry out an intercultural understanding to strengthen as well

as above all the cultural dialogue between Turkey and

international scene.

The basic research and work of the association focuses on

collaboration in old and new media, technology, and theory

with an emphasis on social contexts.

The association emphasis professionals working in different

creative disciplines (e.g. media-creatives, satirists, visual

artists, writers and film-makers); they are brought together in

order to develop and open on international levels sources for

the realization of cultural works, projects and activities.

Members of the association are creative professionals from

different cultural backgrounds who are living and working in

Turkey. In the board are Ramize Erer, cartoonist, Sabine Küper,

TV journalist/filmmaker, Hüseyin Alptekin, artist, Thomas

Büsch, artist/filmmaker, Tuncay Akgün, cartoonist,

and Thomas Kummerow, photographer.

The primary activities of the association are the support of its

members and associates in realizing cooperative creative works

in different fields and the residency program of professionals

as a collaboration between Turkey and abroad, exhibitions,

lectures and symposiums.

For 2007 we are planning several public presentations of films,

lectures about cultural dialogue and civil society and small

exhibitions of the members and its associates. In addition we

will schedule several special events exclusively for members,

partners, associates and sponsors of the association. A flyer

introducing the activities will be published at the beginning of

the summer 2007.

The program 2007/2008 is based on different sections of

creative initiatives

A workshop series – based on video and the internet and

taking place in Turkey, Ireland, Belgium, Germany and Moldova,

with a participation of 100 and an audience of approx. 30.000. A residency program covering an exchange of creative professionals between Turkey and Germany

A fine art exhibition, inspired by a novel of Jules Verne, reflecting the Black Sea region; it will be presented in Turkey, Georgia and GermanyThe publishing of an anthology about satire from Turkey published in Turkish and German language

The development of an interactive online network that enables and trains the audience to use the internet as a platform for cultural expression in the civil society, with an audience of approx. 40.000

T H E M E

The Raw and the Cooked The theme flowing throughout the whole project this year was

proposed to be “the Raw and the Cooked”. All the implicit

connotations of the two phrases were thought to be both

appropriate and fruitful in dealing with issues of the urban and

the rural, of the developed and the under-developed, the

processed and the unprocessed.

The phrases are chosen also for their openness to

interpretation. They would let anyone consider them at each

and every level of conceptual abstraction. These two phrases

(we hope) would act as a guiding polarity against which we

shall measure ourselves, ideas, objects and perhaps even

situations.

F E S T "V A L

Tiyatro Tem

Since 1982, #ehsuvar Akta! and Ay!e Selen have been

working both together and separately with several

different theater companies. Their credits include

directing, assistant directing, stage and TV and film

acting, screen writing, and professional translations. Since

2000 they have been working under the name

tiyatrotem.

Lahana Sarma is intended for ages 7 through 97. It is a

combination of Puppet Theater, shadow play and other

traditions in the Turkish theater. The show takes place

between two shadow curtains on each side and a table in

the middle. On the "midway" area shadow figures become

three dimensional puppets.

F E S T "V A L

Baba Zula

With its specifically unique sound created by melding

traditional Turkish musical instruments with electronic

elements, Baba Zula has brought a brand new dimension

to Turkish Folk Music. Baba Zula's music is basically an

amalgamation of recorded natural sounds with both

traditional and modern acoustic and electronic musical

instruments, a culmination of disparate electronic effects.

Starting out by improvisations, later fixed into musical

elements which make up their music such as theme, tune,

style and sound, reached through recordings and

rehearsals, the group has carried this method of

"defined improvisation" into concerts, movies,

theatrical plays, use of video, slides and films, prepared

by the additional members who have joined forces with

the core group in its live performances.

The group will meet the local musicians on the stage

creating new sounds and experiences.

F E S T "V A L

Xavier Bobes

Playground Company PLAYGROUND is a method of working and researching in the

world of the object, giving it new meanings in surprising

contexts. It expands the role of the puppet and it became the

protagonist on the stage, enveloping ideas and symbolising a

human, but more importantly reversing the role between the

puppet and the actor/manipulator. Head in the Clouds was

rewarded with the Premi FAD Sebastià Gasch 2005 –

2006. It is a visual show that talks about adults through the

soul of a child, reflected by objects which are related to

children and are the protagonists of the performance: Toys.

It holds a great potential to enlarge imagination of the children

of the village. A session where children of the village will be

able to show their broken dolls to the artist and how these

dolls can be personated will be prepared.

L O C A L

C U I S I N E

W O R K S H O P

Women of Gülpınar The workshops led by the villagers will be an aid in

understanding the local culture from its original source,

allowing the whole activity to become an intercultural

dialogue, instead of a monologue of the urban community.

The local eating habits as well as the environmental usage

both as kitchenware and cooking items will be discovered.

Interventions by the resident cook will underline the

differences and investigate the paths for re-evaluating the

existing recipes.

P H O T O

W O R K S H O P

Ahmet Polat

Born in Rosendaal, as the child of a Dutch and Turkish

family, Ahmet Polat is the first Turkish recipient of ICP’s

(International Center of Photography) "Young

Photographer" at the 22nd Infinity Awards.

Although his photographs were initially displayed at The

Hague’s Town Museum, he carried the exhibition to a

public space in two large containers, in order to share his

work with the people who experienced this profound

change first hand.

At Gülpınar, Polat will search for new ways of narration

using the total environment of the village, including the

history, geography, food, eating habits and personal

history of the villagers. With his Dutch and Turkish

identity, he will mediate in between the local community

and the international participants both in terms of

creating art works and exploring each other. At the end a

huge collage and a booklet of the workshop will be

presented throughout the students’ photos.

The workshop also will visit a local artist studio in which

the usage of natural objects will be revisited.

V I D E O

W O R K S H O P

Sabine Küper and Thomas Büsch

German independent filmmakers and TV journalists Sabine

Küper and Thomas Büsch generate movies supplying

programmes through their investigation and research in the

following genres: contemporary documentaries, current affairs,

specialist features, new narration and daytime factuals. $$ They

are independent filmmakers based in Istanbul, Turkey,

facilitating creative programmes, documentaries from South

East Europe, Turkey and its neighboring countries. In 2007,

with “The Story of Water Sprite” they have won "Best Short

Documentary" award by the Brooklyn Arts Council for the BAC

41st International Film and Video Festival in New York City,

USA.

At Gülpınar, under the title entropyTV, the participants will be

taught how to shoot films with digital cameras in a single take.

Subject of the short digital movies will be the social and urban

environment of the participants. They will develop short

stories related to the environment of Gülpınar and the events

taking place during the festival. They will learn how to realize

these projects with digital cameras in one take and to publish

it over the Internet. The goal of the workshop is to train

participants in visual narration within film/video without using

editing facilities and the final publishing of the movies via

Internet as 'video-blog'.