Not Sitting on the Fence: ‘Diyarbakır. Tourism. Romanticism. Activism’
Identity, culture, love, sexuality, and struggle.
Nadir Sönmez voices the subjects we recognize, albeit distantly, with a courage we are not accustomed to. He stages these intricate topics through a unique language of expression drawing from a fusion of disciplines such as documentary, theater, video art and performance. With a critical humor, he twists a sociological research that examines the existence of other identities into an autobiographical narrative of personal testimonies, relationships, and romantic experiences, leaving no room for reservations.
Taking the LGBTI+ movement in Diyarbakır, a city in southeastern Turkey, as a starting point, Nadir Sönmez's video art + performance titled Diyarbakır. Tourism. Romanticism. Activism was on view at Bant Mag. Havuz/Bina on February 3rd.
Not satisfied with merely listening ("Solidarity")
Projected is a presentation with a white background and page numbers in its corners; a narrator in the front. This serious ambiance, which makes us feel like a class is about to start, soon dissipates when Nadir Sönmez starts to speak. In the first section titled "Solidarity", we first discover the past that led him to research queer activism in a city he was unfamiliar with. We witness a community as he talks about his teacher who unknowingly guided him to live his identity comfortably, the photographer he met in a nightclub in Paris, and how he found narrators to read his play Les Fils des Hétérosexuels. Perhaps because he is aware of the favorable discrimination that organic ties can create, Nadir Sönmez is not content with just listening to the problems while researching queer activism in Diyarbakır; he makes them visible and perceptible to the audience.
"Speaking" freely and being political
The narrator does not remain an outside observer but involves himself into the subject in his research. As much as he listens first-hand to the struggles of the Keskesor LGBTI+ organization working in Amed and its vicinity, he also comes into contact with Hevjin, known as the first Kurdish LGBTI+ magazine, and writers from Kurdish literature such as Mehmed Uzun and Baki Koşar. A particular characteristic about the performance is that it doesn’t care about being politically correct within the framework of a shallow social sensitivity or staying within the boundaries of an anthropological study. Nadir Sönmez also shares his encounters with the men he met on dating apps. He respectfully disregards the issue of closeness, which is often a subject of debate in ethics; instead, he becomes close with Boran, who argues that the thrill of being caught makes everything beautiful, and with Berat who is dating a man and a woman at the same time. He does not approach these people as research subjects; he invites the viewer into not only queer activism, but also into queer lives that are perhaps unaware of the activism in their surroundings.
