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| Photo by Maria Pamouki |
Ayşenur found it extremely hard to pinpoint processes of exoticfication in the city of Athens. After long discussions with the locals she concluded that potentially this happens because she comes from a place which has always been “exotic”. Crises and conflicts are a normality in Turkey, cultural clash an everyday ritual. With the Blue Mosque in the background, a suicide bomber may explode, a blaze of colours ravenously blending in the nightfall. Allahu ekber! Allah is great! The sweet voice of the imam comes to soothe the hearts of the people, so that life can go on. And it does go on. If exotic means not being dull and uninteresting then her normal way of living is exotic.
And to live in Istanbul. Oh, the glorious Constantinople! Isn't this exotic by default?
Istanbul. Constantinople. Byzantium: a city that straddles two continents, Asia and Europe - East and the West.
The most glorious city in the world. The City of all the cities. The waterway that runs through it, the Bosphorus, a palimpsest of magnificent epochs of triumph and squalor. To be able to see it by day is exhilarating; to view it by night is enchanting. The lights on both sides of the water shine like luminous beacons and touch the souls, hearts and minds of past and present inhabitants alike.
There is no other city quite like Istanbul. The heart wishes to go to Istanbul, to be reunited with it's desires...
Back to Athens. It was impossible for her to see what could constitute Athens an exotic destination.
She was frustrated. She did not want the other participants of the workshop to think that she is simple and naïve. The night before she stayed awake. Highly anxious she started biting her nails again and broke one of them. By the end of this sleepless night, she had her eureka moment: There was nothing wrong with being exotic. She had to help Athenians get rid of their inner demons that prevented them from enjoying their exotic charisma: they had to return to their local roots, to revive the partisan heroes of the national resistance and peasant women from Epirus loaded with mountains of straw like animals. All Ayşenur did for Locus Exoticus was just to elucidate the ways she sees things; Athenians can learn from Istanbulites. From her perspective, she presented her experience of an alternative tourist walk by Maria Bandouka that took place around Omonoia square.
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| Photo by Eva Giannakopoulou (Video Still) |
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| Photo by Eva Giannakopoulou (Video Still) |
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| Photo by Maria Pamouki |
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Ayşenur is an invented persona. Her external over-sexualised, queer appearance is contrasted by the content of her speech. Ayşenur functions as a disrupting agent that reexamines prevailing art discourses from exotic and extreme perspectives.
Connect with Ayşenur on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011798803077&fref=ts)