Ateş Alpar
Looking at the Ruins
Performance
2 days, 5 hours a day
Mardin Old Town Streets
In collaboration with Performistanbul.

People turned a blind eye to the demolition of Hasankeyf. Aren’t the ghosts of the people who once lived there still lurking under the water or on the bridge? Aren’t the desires, memories, hopes, joys as well as the violence that happened to the dispossessed still reflect on the surface? No matter how damaged it is, isn’t the bridge there to be walked on and to unite the earth? The bridge is calling for us. The bridge becomes ‘us’. As we become the bridge.

The performance titled Looking at the Ruins, dealing with remembering, reminding, memory and mind, aims to draw attention to the annihilation of thousands of years of multilingual, and multi-cultural heritage while tracing down Hasankeyf and focuses on the displaced people’s history, culture and the loss of biodiversity due to being submerged by the Ilısu Dam.