Gut Feeling Thomas Hirschhorn’S Superficial Engagement James Westcott

CriticalActs Gut Feeling Thomas Hirschhorn’s Superficial Engagement James Westcott

Theatre plays no role in my work. I don’t like the the 1987 movie Hellraiser. Taped to the walls spectacular in an art work, nor the shocking. are seemingly endless Xeroxed and blown- —Thomas Hirschhorn (in Bonami 2001:93) up banal newspaper and magazine headlines rationalizing and pondering war—like lines This statement, by the Swiss artist Thomas in a sinister, senseless poem: “It Is Real,” Hirschhorn, seems rather disingenuous, even “Evil Chem Plan,” “How The World Sees It,” for such a master of reflexive counterintuitive- ness (a confident and prolific interviewee, Hirschhorn has said that he likes the “hum- bleness” of Japanese tourists, hates fussy Figure 1. Thomas Hirschhorn, Superficial Engagement, 2006. Installation View. Gladstone atmospheric lighting, and believes art can’t Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo by David Regen; answer anything (in Jouannais 1994, Gingeras © Thomas Hirschhorn 2006; courtesy of 1998, and Bonami 2001)—while presenting a Gladstone Gallery, New York) thousand possible answers in his deliberately overdetermined works). Hirschhorn’s latest “display”—he prefers this term to “installation,” since it implies the directness and honesty of a shop-window—features horrific photographs he found online and in “specialty magazines” (Saltz 2006) of mangled corpses in Iraq and beyond, apparently victims of Bush’s War on Terror, replicated dozens or even hundreds of times, and juxtaposed with the kooky but calming geometric drawings of the Swiss visionary healer Emma Kunz. It’s a test to see if art can outdo destruction. Destruction wins hands down. The images and drawings are crowded onto three ramshackle platforms that resemble carnival floats. Made of Hirschhorn’s typical ostentatiously cheap materials like packing tape, cardboard, paper, timber, tinfoil, and wire, the floats dominate the gallery. Also on display on these structures are a number of naked, androgynous mannequins standing

and gazing blankly, punctured by hundreds Acts Critical of nails and screws, like the boogieman from

James Westcott is editor of artreview.com, and he is currently working on a biography of Marina Abramovic for MIT Press.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 “A Little Nervous,” “A Bridge to Nowhere,” theorist Georges Bataille. In Cavemanman “Hot Times,” “Global Risk.” (2002), his previous display at the Gladstone The overwhelming stimulation and bully- Gallery, Hirschhorn made tunnels and caves ing bravado of this processional display— out of cardboard, stuck famous philosophy you walk dutifully, dumbstruck around books to the walls next to sticks of tinfoil it—created an immersive, claustrophobic, and dynamite, made strategic piles of garbage, quite traumatic experience for visitors to the and scrawled repeatedly the cryptic slogan of Gladstone Gallery in New York in January solidarity 1 man = 1 man. In London in 2001, 2006. The ride was more painful than any he created another scene—a stage set?—where of Hirschhorn’s pieces since he emerged in potential class solidarity and social isolation the mid-1990s, which all share a similarly combine: a Laundromat. (Laundromats in confrontational and excessive style. Superﬁcial London are uniquely miserable places, like Engagement, the knowingly apt title of this being inside a Smiths song.) Hirschhorn’s spectacular and shocking “display”—yes, Laundromat was made from cardboard and spectacular and shocking—was undeniably tinfoil plastered with newspaper cuttings, theatrical. If Michael Fried could apply the and featured TV screens showing gruesome term “theatrical” to Minimalist sculpture for random news footage. Hirschhorn has made creating a situation that “includes the behold- several rough-and-ready street altars—like the er” (1967:153), then Hirschhorn, though he real ones that spring up after deaths and disas- couldn’t be further from Minimalism, must ters—to Raymond Carver, Gilles Delueze, also qualify. The work is desperate for atten- and Baruch Spinoza; and he’s made “kiosks” tion, and in fact can’t exist without your (walk-in cardboard boxes) displaying informa- (preempted) response, your gut reaction. tion on Fernand Léger and Emil Nolde. Hirschhorn trained in Geneva and Paris Maybe his most outstanding piece is as a graphic designer and originally wanted to World Airport, the project for the 1999 Venice work not for others but as a “graphic designer Biennale, in which Hirschhorn made dozens for myself” (Gingeras et al. 2004:9). When of cartoonish airplanes out of cardboard he found this impossible, or when he realized (each one representing a nation-state), a this might actually be a good definition of tinfoil runway, and waiting areas where view- an artist, he became one. This background ers could read up on Rosa Luxemburg and may explain the emphasis on bold commun- Antonio Gramsci and pay respect at shrines ication—never mind of what—in his work. to Nike and Puma. There’s an exhilarating A revulsion for the slickness of graphic design openness, enthusiasm, and clear-eyed horror may explain Hirschhorn’s violent rejection to the piece that sums up Hirschhorn’s concern of a conventional aesthetics of quality and lux- about a hypercomplex, underglobalized world ury in his work, which he describes as a kind that’s gone to pot. “Airports are a typical space of two-dimensional sculpture, purposefully of today,” Hirschhorn said later, “a world- flimsy and impermanent. (He once filmed reversed mirror of what is going on: citizenship garbage collectors taking away one of his or not, luxury shops next to the expulsion of dismantled displays.) Hirschhorn’s confusing, the ‘sans-papiers,’ high technology mixed with crowded displays are always made out of cheap, folklorist travel groups from some remote trashy materials because, he has said (rather country. An airport is a nonspace, where patronizingly), “people understand them” everything is so close, but so far away, never (in Saltz 2006). mingling [...]” (in Bonami 2001:90). At Documenta 11 in Kassell in 2002, Airports, Laundromats, altars, commu- Hirschhorn snubbed the exhibition center and nity centers...the few remaining public spaces instead set up three rickety shacks in a poor in a world of globalized and exacerbated housing project miles away, populated mostly inequality, and re-created in such aggressive by Turkish immigrants. Bataille Monument was simulations for bewildered visitors to experi- a community center of sorts, consisting of a ence—these displays are positively brimming café, a library, and a video room—all dedicat- with theatricality. It’s not (only) that the piec- ed to researching the down-and-dirty French es call for a physical and mental interaction Critical Acts

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 driven postphenomenological effects like this (forget the flatter- ing fun of a Dan Graham), doesn’t seem a violent enough term for what Hirschhorn does to you. “Art doesn’t give satisfaction,” he once said. “Art poses problems. Art gives questions. Art inflicts sadness” (in Bonami 2001:93). Appropriately, Superﬁcial Engagement was brazen and bru- tal, entirely oriented around and in anticipation of the viewer’s inevitable visceral response to pic- Figure 2. Thomas Hirshhorn, Flugplatz Welt/World Airport, tures of exploded skulls, spattered 1999. Installation view. 48th Biennale di Venezia/d’APERTutto, brains, a dislocated eyeball, guts Venice. (Courtesy of the artist and Musée d’Art Moderne spilling: revulsion. The experi- Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg) ence became a test of will: Are you going to let what Hirschhorn calls (stopping to pay respect at a shrine, for exam- a kind of narcissistic oversensitiv- ple, or educating yourself in a kiosk—all the ity (in Douglas 2006) take over and insulate while shuffling, stooping, and being careful you from these horrific images and the reality where you tread). What’s more striking than they reflect? Such a macho challenge made this familiar kind of performative interaction for a one-way, abusive kind of theatre, with a is the way your personal, internal response severely limited range of possible responses becomes something of a performance in itself. and a diminished or perhaps nonexistent In an essay for Artforum in November “radical participatory potential.” 2001, Benjamin H.D. Buchloh identified There was one way of directly participat- Hirschhorn’s forebears in theatricalized ing, but it soon felt pathetic. Using the drills sculpture: Joseph Beuys, who “expanded [the] and hammers provided, visitors could add a concept of sculpture” into the social realm screw or nail to one of the tree-stump totems (through lectures and performances), Allan on each of the floats (individually titled Kaprow with his “performative architecture” Chromatic Fire, Spatial Front, and Concrete (like his blocks of ice dumped on the streets Shock, although there didn’t seem to be much of L.A.), and Dan Graham’s pavilions playing difference or development between them). But with the influence of architecture on human after completing this cute little gesture—like behavior in public spaces (2001:109). Buchloh adding a rock to a cairn—you look up at a pic- writes that Hirschhorn’s theatrical sculptures ture of a corpse with a hole in its chest where imply a “radical participatory potential” (110). the heart should be, the skin melted away This may be the case with Bataille Monument from the chest cavity up to the jaw. “Why do and the artist’s shrines out on the street, but they have this drill here?” I heard someone Superﬁcial Engagement is more of a violent ask. “In case you feel aggressive. I don’t feel shutout. Hirschhorn’s exaltant paper-thin aggressive though,” his friend replied. There cacophony of images and orphaned, abject was a rare feeling of shared experience in the snippets of text-made-meaningless don’t cul- gallery—a mutual dumbfoundedness, a weird- tivate the viewer’s perceptive and intellectual ly respectful silence that was only highlighted experience so much as bury her in a glut of by the aberration of someone near me starting globalized chaos, offering but ultimately a loud and very normal conversation on her withholding, through the useless excess of cell phone. It seemed a morally reprehensible, Acts Critical information, any kind of globalized con- idiotic response to what was going on around sciousness. The “decentered subject” (Bishop her, a failure of nerve. On reflection, I became 2005:128), the academic nicety for politically more irritated with the overall situation

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 evidence that the motto (or is it the logo?) of the developed world is now, “Only discon- nect.” Our reliance on images is intimately bound up with this severance. The less we understand—or feel responsible to—the world, the more we rely on the shorthand of images to “explain” it to us; the more we rely on this shorthand, the less we understand. They are custom-made, too, for those who enjoy a nice bath of deep feelings—cluck-clucking over the misfortunes of others—while dispensing with the difficulties of critical thought. Tears are Figure 3. Thomas Hirschhorn, Superficial Engagement, 2006. cathartic, but they often occlude Installation view. Gladstone Gallery, New York, NY. (Photo vision. The photograph can by David Regen; © Thomas Hirschhorn 2006; courtesy of introduce us to experience, or at Gladstone Gallery, New York) least events; it can also, and eas- ily, separate us from the world, whereby one’s own behavior and that of others parse meaning, sever us from - becomes the main event, and cannot possibly the past [...]. Do we approach the photo graph as spectators, or as citizens of the answer the horror on display. No response to it would be adequate. world? (Linfield 2001) This is an ethically and intellectually crip- Hirschhorn said in an interview shortly pling situation, one that John Berger warned after Superficial Engagement was completed against in 1972 after looking at photographs of that, “These images don’t tell us the ‘truth,’ suffering from the Vietnam War. The viewer they are not there to inform. It’s not about can’t emerge from contemplating the photo- actuality, I am not a journalist!” (in Douglas graphed moment and return back into his life 2006). But he can’t—or shouldn’t want without perceiving the resulting discontinuity to—abdicate all responsibility for connecting “as his own personal moral inadequacy. And us to suffering in a healthy and at least poten- as soon as this happens even his sense of shock is tially productive or revealing way. Elsewhere, dispersed: his own moral inadequacy may now he’s described his project in pure and earnest shock him as much as the crimes being com- terms: “No progress in the world permits one mitted in the war” (Berger 2001:281). Looking to ignore that never before have so many been at the photographs in Superficial Engagement dominated, starved, and in the end crushed you feel similarly impotent and self-centered, [...] My noncomprehension of this situation nurturing a heavy disgust and dismay in your and my disagreement give me the energy to belly that indeed soon becomes strangely work” (in Bonami 2001:93). reassuring, more about you than about the But all we get in Superficial Engagement situation that produced the human destruc- is an alienating—but ultimately perversely tion in these images. comforting—gut wrench. This performa- The photography critic Susie Linfield has tive solipsism combined with intellectually also questioned the efficacy and ethics of pho- depraved and physically repulsive imagery tographs like the ones Hirschhorn displays: where the ethical stakes are so high but also unreachable—it’s a nasty and corrosive trick The global village has turned into a Hirschhorn is pulling. global plantation, and there is ample Critical Acts

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 For Hirschhorn though, the superficiality Bonami, Francesco of these images, which explain nothing about 2001 “Thomas Hirschhorn: Energy the situation we find ourselves in and don’t Yes, Quality, No.” Flash Art 216 even offer the slightest insight into it—such (February):90-93. superficiality is a virtue, and maybe even Buchloh, Benjamin H.D. a first step toward understanding: “To go 2001 “Cargo and Cult: The Displays of deeply into something, I must first begin with Thomas Hirschhorn.” Artforum 40, its surface. The truth and logic of things are 3:108–15. reflected on their own surface” (in Douglas Douglas, Sarah 2006). Hirschhorn wants an impressionistic 2006 “The AI Interview: Thomas and instinctual cognitive process, not a ratio- Hirschhorn.” Artinfo.com. http:// nal intellectual one. Burned bodies, dumb www.artinfo.com/News/Article. headlines—this is indeed the immediate truth aspx?a=10763 (9 February). and logic of the War on Terror, and to go Fried, Michael deeper into things might be its own kind of 1967 Art and Objecthood. Chicago: evasion. As if we don’t already have enough University of Chicago Press. of it in the world, Hirschhorn fights for weakness and stupidity. “How can we struggle Gingeras, Alison today? With stupidity. We cannot be more 1998 “Thomas Hirschhorn: Striving To Be clever than Capital. That is futile. I don’t want Stupid.” Art Press 239 (October):19–25. to be clever, I strive to be stupid” (in Gingeras Gingeras, Alison, Carlos Basualdo, and Benjamin 1998:24). Will this free us up to have a more H.D. Buchloh robust and active ethical engagement with the 2004 Thomas Hirschhorn. London: Phaidon. world, unburdened by distracting details and Jouannais, Jean-Yves unassimilated into ideology? The wager— 1994 “Thomas Hirschhorn: Wagering on and I say it’s a complacent, theatrically abject Weakness.” Art Press (October):56–58. wager, and surprisingly camp given the tough- Linfield, Susie ness of Hirschhorn and his work—is that “intentional weakness makes it possible to 2001 “Capture the Moment: On the Uses overcome the weakness that is imposed, put and Misuses of Photojournalism.” Boston Review (April/May). http:// up with” (Jouannais 1994:57). www.bostonreview.net/BR26.2/ References linfield.html (9 February 2006). Saltz, Jerry Berger, John 2006 “Killing Fields.” Village Voice, 2001 Selected Essays: John Berger. New York: January 27. Villagevoice.com. Vintage. http://www.villagevoice.com/art/ Bishop, Claire 0605,saltz,71953,13.html (9 February). 2005 Installation Art: A Critical History. New York: Routledge.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 The Anatomy of Blasphemy Passion and the Trial of Dorota Nieznalska Magda Romanska

On 27 July 2005 in Gda sk, a large town religious feelings” of the League of Polish in northern Poland, there was yet another Families’ members. The sentence was changed courtroom showdown of a case that had been to six months of “unpaid penal labor” (Zaremba dragging on for over three years and has 2003:104).3 Nieznalska filed an appeal and the received much Polish media attention. The case continues, with the same circus/witch hunt trial’s subject was Dorota Nieznalska and her scene replayed at each hearing. gallery installation, Pasja (Passion), exhibited Wyspa is famous for breaking various in 2001 in Wyspa Gallery (wyspa translates as Polish taboos, and the exhibition of Passion “island”), located within the Gda sk Academy was no exception. The installation consists 1 of Fine Arts. The legal dispute over Passion of a large iron Greek cross hanging from has revolved around a paragraph, § 196 k.k. the ceiling, with a photo of male genitalia (Legal Codex), in the Polish legislature, a attached to the cross at its very center, and a 1997 legal provision against publicly “offend- large projection with a close-up of a male face ing someone’s religious feelings,” of which convulsed in strenuous exercise set behind the offense is punishable by up to two years in cross. The work was meant to be a commen- prison. At each hearing, upon entering the tary on the relationship between masochism courtroom Nieznalska has been greeted by and masculinity, but it was the combination fervent believers from the League of Polish of male genitals with the cross that became Families with large crosses and rosaries in the object of contention and of the legal their hands, chanting religious songs and battle. Seen in the context of Nieznalska’s shouting curses at her, a scene reminiscent previous works,4 Passion continues the artist’s of a medieval witch burning. This surreal, lifelong interest in straddling the thin line carnivalesque atmosphere prompted one jour- between masculinity, violence, and the dis- nalist to call the proceedings “Circus in the course of the sacred in Catholic-dominated 2 Courtroom” (Romanowski 2005:1.3). On Poland. In the context of works by other 18 July 2003, the judge sentenced Nieznalska contemporary Polish artists—such as Alicja to six months in prison for “offending the ebrowska’s 1994 video Grzech Pierworodny

1. Since the case began, Passion has been considered “evidence” and it is still stored at the Gdansk´ police department. 2. All translations from Polish are by the author. 3. The sentence was supported by only 18 percent of regional Polish public opinion, as tracked by the regional Polish newspaper Dziennik Bałtycki (Bielas 2005:2). 4. Absolucja (Absolution; 1999) was Nieznalska’s first installation connecting religion and sexuality, consisting of a large wooden confessional, a black-and-white photograph of a naked man crawling on the floor, and a black-and-white seven-minute looped video of a woman in white dress. She jumps and falls on the floor; when she stands up, her hands and her dress are dirty. The correlation between the confessional, a naked man, and a woman in white dress conjures the relationship between the Biblical story of original sin, guilt, and sexuality. Wszechmoc II: Rodzaj: meski (Omnipotence II: The Male Species; 2000/2001) was another multimedia installation for which a room was set up like a gym and sounds of exerting men were projected from speakers. Omnipotence was the inspiration for Passion, and it marked Nieznalska’s first examination of the gym as a space of self-conscious masculinity.

Magda Romanska is Assistant Professor and Head of Theatre Studies at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts. She has two chapters forthcoming, “Hamlet, Masculinity, and 19th-Century Nationalism,” in Gender, Ghosts, and History, and “Feminist as Terrorist: Gender, Ethics, and Representation in Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine,” in a yet-to-be-titled anthology (both from Cambridge Scholars Press). Critical Acts

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 (Original Sin), a take on the 1993 abortion ban5; Zofia Kulik’s series Bro Symboliczna IV (Symbolic Weapon IV; 1997) of male nudes framed by various political and religious symbols of power and domination; Katarzyna Kozyra’s (Men’s Bath House; 1999) a short video filmed in a Budapest men’s bath house, that offers take on Ingres’s The Turkish Bath (1862); and Kozyra’s photograph Wi zy Krwi (Blood Ties), a 1995 work commenting on the Yugoslavian conflict and depicting two sisters’ mutilated bodies lying under religious symbols of Catholicism and Islam; or even Zbigniew Libera’s video Jak tresuje si dziewczynki (How to Train Little Girls; 1987) and sculpture Uniwersalna wyci garka penisa (Universal Penis Expander; 1994), a “device for penis elongation” that attempts to deconstruct religiously structured gender roles while mocking the Polish patriarchal culture—Passion should still appear to fit into the general discourse on the sacred and profane that is currently taking place in contemporary Polish art. But perhaps it is because no other current work has made such a direct connection between male sexuality, religious Figure 1: Dorota Nieznalska, Pasja (Passion), 2001. discourse, and religiously sponsored Installation view. (Photo by Wojciech Nieznalski; gender difference, that Passion arouses courtesy of Dorota Nieznalska) such heated debate. Since 1989, the year that officially its supposedly morally lax attitude toward marked the end of the communist era, Poland the female body and sexuality. The climate has become a battlefield between religious has been fruitful ground for a number of art- and liberal fanatics; a country in transition ists (mostly filmmakers, performance artists, between communist rule, during which the and painters) to pursue the paradoxes and Catholic Church (with the Polish former ironies of the Catholic discourse vis-à-vis Pope John Paul II as its spiritual and political gender differences and sexuality. Artists such leader) played a leading role as the nation’s as Kozyra, ebrowska, or Libera, who either moral consciousness and political force, and mock or shock Polish public opinion with a burgeoning capitalist society, in which radical juxtapositions of the sacred with the Catholicism’s overtly repressive rule following profane, have created scandals through work the fall of communism clashed with a new- that has been deliciously deconstructed by found freedom of expression and the influx both the media and the religious apparatus. of Western (particularly U.S.) culture with

. Acts Critical 5. Izabela Kowalczyk describes Zebrowska’s piece: “Original Sin recalls a Bible story from the Book of Genesis, where the first woman, Eve, stands accused of humanity’s fall and exile from the paradise. Her punishment is that she was subordinated to man, condemned to give birth in pain, and her sexuality identified as threatening or as something shameful and sinful. [...] The film shows a vagina provoked by fingers and an artificial penis. These scenes were preparation to the most important sequence of the video: simulation of childbirth, but instead of a child in the opening of the vagina the head of Barbie doll appears” (1999).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 In this sense, Poland has come to represent a impossible and predictable predicament: typically liminal society of the modern era, a heterosexuality (and thus heterosexual gaze familiar microcosm of the larger global debate directed from woman to man) was thought between the politics of religious patriarchy on of as the “impossible” (61). In the context of the one hand and its role in policing and con- Western feminist art, Nieznalska’s instal- trolling female sexuality on the other. lation proposes a totally new “impossible” At the crossroads of old Poland’s tradition- approach: a refusal to make oneself the subject ally Catholic-centered mentality and new of one’s art. Unlike most feminist artists who Poland’s emerging class of women who are have used their own bodies as raw material 7 unwilling to submit to it, Poland and Polish for their art (in the tradition of Shigeko art represent a larger, global paradigm shift Kubota, Carolee Schneemann, VALIE in the politics of sex and representation. In EXPORT, Rocio Bolivar, Linda Montano, this context Nieznalska’s work is emblematic or Annie Sprinkle), it is the male body that of not only the most pressing conflict that is now becomes the object of aesthetic and intel- dominating the global political and art scene, lectual inquiry, and it is the male body that but also of a late 20th-century and early 21st- becomes an object of violence. century trend in feminist art that attempts Nieznalska considers the male to be an to “return the gaze”—to make the male an enigma that needs an explanation and she object of aesthetic and intellectual inquiry, assumes both the artistic authority and the and to make statements about the feminine legitimacy to provide the intellectual and condition by representing and tampering with aesthetic analytical framework. She proposes male-centered imagery.6 Passion is part of this a radical “deconstruction of masculinity,” as trend in that it breaks from the traditional fem- Katarzyna Bielas puts it, on sexual, politi- inist (art) discourse that once focused primarily cal, and personal levels (2002:6). Nieznalska on the female body; and collapses the visible is proffering a kind of medicalization of the and invisible signs of the Christian sacred, male subject (similar to the way that femi- thus questioning—through profanity— ninity, historically, has been medicalized by the politics behind religiously structured Freud and others). From early in her artistic gender differences. career, Nieznalska has been fascinated by what Jill Dolan argues that since woman “can she believes to be a male claim to violence assume neither disengagement nor aesthetic and authority. Starting in 1998 with Modus distance from the image, she is denied the Operandi, which focused on rape, her work has scopophilic pleasure of voyeurism” (1989:62). tackled the problems of male/female violence, “[F]emale spectators,” Dolan writes, “[can- with the male represented as a raw, irrational, 8 not] be placed in positions of power that might and uncivilized force. allow for the objectification of male perform- Passion both objectifies the male “other” ers” (61), concluding that woman could never and also, to a degree, makes an earnest effort hope to control the image of the male, and to sympathize and to understand the pressures masculinity, with the degree of voyeuristic of the male psyche. Illustrating the terror of and intellectual pleasure with which the man masculinity on the male body, Nieznalska said can control the image of woman. According to in her courtroom testimony: Dolan, woman has been conditioned to avoid Passion is a critique of a cultural model engaging in a dialogue with the masculine of masculinity, a certain pattern of other, on the grounds of its fundamentally behavior in young men, who force

6. See Schor (1997) for representations of the penis and its significance in 1960s visual art. 7. Some early feminist performance art, for example, as Kathy O’Dell notes, bordered on uncomfortable masochism calling into question the artists’ intent, motivation, and purpose. Some works, which aimed to empower, actually seemed to teeter on a self-indulgent embrace of victim status. See especially O’Dell on Gina Paine (1988:97). 8. The installation Modus Operandi, for which Nieznalska researched the archives of the Institute of Criminology, consisted of a set of empty chairs covered by women’s panty hose, with drawings from victims’ descriptions of rapists listed in the archives projected on to the wall while women’s testimonies played through speakers. Reading various memoirs of male criminals (serial rapists, serial killers, and perverts of various kinds), Nieznalska

Critical Acts came to associate uncontrolled violence with masculinity and with the male body.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 violence upon themselves, torturing meaning of the cross, the Leaguers considered their own bodies. The result is suffer- blasphemous any attempt to recontextualize it. ing brought by the extreme exertion Szumska added: of their bodies in gyms. It is the suffer- I don’t know whether Ms. Nieznalska ing of the male body that I wanted to should go to prison for what she did. refer to in the image of the cross. However, I do know that she cannot (in Janowski 2005) hurt with her work other people’s reli- In this sense, the cross was meant to be not gious feelings. This is what respect for a religious symbol, but a symbol of suffering another human being requires. She has in general: Christ’s Passion was connected to be careful about what she is creat- only implicitly to the male body’s self- ing. I believe that the artist should be mortification. Pushing himself beyond his free to do whatever he wants to, but his physical limits in an attempt to conform to the work has to take under consideration increasingly present ideals of masculinity, man other people’s feelings. For me, as a Pole became a kind of martyr bearing the cross and a Catholic, the cross, which Ms. of the ever-present cultural phallus.9 Thus, Nieznalska so blasphemously offended, if earlier women artists were deconstructing is the most sacred symbol of my reli- women’s obsessive behaviors (e.g., eating dis- gion. It is the symbol of both Christ’s orders, bodily dimorphic disorders, etc.) fueled suffering and also his resurrection. You by the beauty-conscious patriarchal status can’t profane this sacred object. (in quo, Nieznalska is recognizing, in an almost Bielas 2005:2) compassionate gesture, the same oppressive Other members of the League have been mechanisms that police and govern the mas- less nuanced, testifying wholeheartedly that culine subject. “Passion,” as a word, might be Nieznalska has been most certainly possessed read as both the suffering and the compulsion by Satan, a declaration that left the judge, to suffer. Both men and women are prisoners Nieznalska, and her lawyer dumbfounded. of their gender; Nieznalska seems to suggest: Men are victims of the violent behavior that It was the juxtaposition of the meaning they must conform to in order to assert their of both the cross and the male genitals that sexual identity, while women, by proxy, are appeared offensive. Asked by the judge what victims of male violence. Therefore, to make a the male genitals symbolize, Robert Stark, statement about the female condition requires one of the plaintiffs, responded, “They are an attempt to understand and deconstruct the something shameful, and should be hidden. male condition. If I took my pants off now in front of your Honor, you would throw me out of the court” This is the so-called artistic context of (in Dziennik Bałticky 2005:3). Trying to soften Nieznalska’s installation, but it is not the con- both symbols’ symbolic meanings, Nieznalska’s text which can be translated into the religious defense lawyers called as witnesses art-history discourse. “I saw it on TV. I concluded that my critics who drew various connections between religious feelings have been offended. It was Passion and other modern and Renaissance a profanation of the holy cross,” said Mariusz works. Historically, Christ has been a popular K., who initiated the case (in Janowski 2002). vehicle of transgression, from Lucien Ropes’s “[E]xposing male genitals is considered vulgar 19th-century image of a naked woman wear- and inappropriate. Connecting this with the ing a thorn crown and nailed to a penis-shaped cross offends the religious feelings of every cross, to Andres Serrano’s highly controversial Catholic,” said Gertruda Szumska, from the Piss Christ (1989). But also, as Leo Steinberg League of Polish Families (in Bielas 2005:2). showed in his incredible study, The Sexuality of Feeling a sense of personal ownership of the Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion Critical Acts Critical

9. Julia Loktev’s Press Shots (2000), in the traveling exhibit “Will Boys Be Boys?: Questioning Adolescent Masculinity in Contemporary Art” organized by Independent Curators International (iCi) of New York City (touring November 2004–January 2007), shares similar imagery and premise as Passion, but Loktev’s work is tamer, consisting of TV-screen close-ups of male faces during strenuous exercise without the addition of the cross.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 (1983), there is a long tradition of repre- pondered Nieznalska’s “true intentions” senting the dying Christ with an erection. behind making her installation: what she Rummaging through the basements really meant and whether or not she wanted of various museums, Steinberg gathered 246 to offend each and every Catholic in Poland. such images. “The 246 illustrations produce A large portion of the courtroom activities also an oddly squirmy, comic reaction, as they ren- consisted of deciding which images of male der the divine penis visible. It’s the visibility genitals could and could not be offensive to that offends,” Steinberg writes (1983:326).10 someone, and deciding Nieznalska’s “state of Add to this the tradition of phallic wor- mind” during her making of the work. Having ship practiced in Ancient Greece and Rome, fresh in mind the memory of communist among other places, and the fuller picture totalitarianism and self-censorship out of fear of Nieznalska’s installation emerges. The of being either killed or persecuted, some of relationship between patriarchy and religion Nieznalska’s supporters voiced their discomfort is always implicit: the penis has to be always with what they perceived to be a new theocratic hidden behind its phallic construction. As totalitarianism of the Christian Right. Jean-Joseph Goux has pointed out: “The As of 8 January 2007, there have been 20 phallus is a fabrication. It is a constructed court sessions in regard to Passion. In an act model. It is an artifact that simulates what is of desperation, the judge, choosing from a list missing, at the same time rendering it sacred of names submitted by Nieznalska’s lawyers, and larger than life to make it a cult object” assembled a special committee of experts from (1992:43). Nieznalska unintentionally made it the universities in Warsaw, Cracow, Poznan, explicit, thus stirring uncomfortable emotions, and Opole—anthropologists, religious studies suggesting, to quote Jane Gallop: “Phallus professors, art critics, art historians, and soci- cannot function as signifier in ignorance of ologists whose job is to decide whether the penis” ([1981] 1988:128). Symbols are instru- work should be treated as a cult object and ments of power, and Passion’s juxtaposition thus, whether there are grounds for “religious of sacred and profane made visible a concep- offense.” The judge has also decided that the tual connection between faith, obedience, work will be temporarily reinstalled, offering and masculinity. a last chance to view it, as, if Nieznalska loses all appeals, Passion will be destroyed by order Nieznalska’s trial itself wrestled with the of law. Garnering international attention, juxtapositioning of two laws. The judge was the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights clearly torn, trying on one hand to enforce has sent its official observer to watch over the country’s blasphemy law, but at the same the trial. And the trial, now in its fourth time to adhere to the freedom of speech doc- year, continues... trine that Poland signed when it joined the European Union in 2004. The two laws—the References latter guaranteeing freedom of speech (and Bielas, Katarzyna clearly included in the Polish constitution) 2002 “Dekonstrukcja ” and the former, evident in paragraph 196 of [Deconstructing Masculinity]. the constitution, which grants protection Gazeta Wyborcza/Wysokie Obcasy, from religious offense—are mutually exclusive 16 November:6–12. and in no way can be reconciled in cases such 2005 “Czy kara artystów?” [Should we as Nieznalska’s. The judge focused, instead, punish the artists?] Dziennik Bałtycki, on the motive (Did she mean to offend any- 21 January:2. one?) and the outcome of her act (Were there Dolan, Jill grounds for feeling offended?). Her lawyer, 1989 “Desire Cloaked in a Trenchcoat.” the judge, and all the interested parties rep- TDR 33, 1 (T121):59–67. resenting The League of Polish Families

10. Focusing on Christ’s genitals, Steinberg writes that the Renaissance artists attempted to bridge the gap between Christ’s human body and divine status: “the same principle holds for the self-touching posture of the corpse following the descent from the cross: the artists who introduced the motif understood it as human; they depicted

Critical Acts the gesture because its performance was God’s” (1983:13).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 Dziennik Bałtycki Kowalczyk, Izabela 2005 “Gdyby si poseł obna ył” [If the 1999 “Feminist Art in Poland Today.” Deputy Would Take His Pants Off]. n. paradoxa 11. http://web.ukonline. Dziennik Bałtycki, 7 July:3. co.uk/n.paradoxa/kowal2.htm (10 Gallop, Jane January 2007). O’Dell, Kathy 1988 [1981] Thinking through the Body. New York: Columbia University Press. 1988 “The Performance Artist as Goux, Jean-Joseph Masochistic Woman.” Arts Magazine 62, 10:96–97. 1992 “The Phallus: Masculine Identity and the ‘Exchange of Women.’” Romanowski, Czesław In The Phallus Issue, edited by Noami 2005 “Cyrk w s dzie” [Circus in the Schor and Elizabeth Weed, special Courtroom]. Dziennik Bałtycki, issue, Differences: A Journal of Feminist January 20:1.3. Cultural Studies 4, 1:40-75. Schor, Mira Janowski, Dariusz 1997 WET: On Painting, Feminism, and Art 2002 “Zbrodniarka Nieznalska” [Criminal Culture. Durham: Duke University Nieznalska]. Głos Wybrze a, 20 Press. November. http://www.trojmiasto. Steinberg, Leo pl/wiadomosci/news.phtml?id_ news=5743 (10 January 2007). 1983 The Sexuality of Christ in Renaissance Art and in Modern Oblivion. Chicago: 2005 “ ” [Bigots, Bigoci, dewoci, krzy owcy University of Chicago Press. Devotes, Crusaders]. Głos Wybrze a, 20 January. http://www.trojmiasto. Zaremba, Piotr pl/wiadomosci/news.phtml?id_ 2003 “Kto ma kłopoty z tolerancj ?” news=14956 (10 January 2007). [Who Has Issues With Tolerance?]. Newsweek, 27 July:104.

On the Stages of Istanbul Atatürk and the New Young Turks Ilka Saal I had drifted asleep to the chants of the muez- Kemal’s counterattack against the Greek zin; now I woke to the blaring sounds of a forces in Western Turkey in May 1919. The marching band. Below my hotel window a campaign eventually led to the founding of number of high-ranking military, state, and the Turkish Republic in 1922 under Kemal, city officials were gathering on a hot May renamed Atatürk (Father of Turks). I listened 2006 morning around Cumhuriyet Aniti as the revels culminated in the playing of (The Republic Monument) on Istanbul’s busy “ stiklâl Mar ı” (Independence March), the Taksim Square, the modern heart of the city. national anthem, which brought the traffic Together they went through the annual ritual on the square to a sudden standstill, com- of commemorating the launching of Mustafa pelling pedestrians to stop and join in the Critical Acts Critical

Ilka Saal is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Richmond, Virginia, where she teaches drama and theatre as well as American Studies. Her publications include numerous articles on American drama as well as her recent book, New Deal Theater: The Vernacular Tradition in American Political Theater (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 year brought together some 36 groups from 10 countries, includ- ing such illustrious names as Theodoros Terzopolous (Greece), Suzuki Tadashi (Japan), Jan Fabre (Belgium), Eimuntas Nekrosius (Lithuania), Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker (Belgium), Peter Brook and the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (France), the Cullberg Ballet (Sweden), the Piccolo Teatro di Milano (Italy), and the Taganka Figure 1: The official celebration of Atatürk’ü Anma, Theatre (Russia). Gençlik ve Spor Bayramı (Commemoration of Atatürk, The primary goal of this Youth and Sports Day) around Cumhuriyet Aniti (the Republic encounter was, as festival director Monument) on Taksim Square, Istanbul,. 19 May 2006. Spectators join in the singing of “Istiklâl Marsı” (Independence Dikmen Gürün stressed, to build March), the Turkish National Anthem. (Photo by Ilka Saal) a bridge between Turkish theatre and the theatre of the world, to bring prominent theatre groups singing. Suddenly this random and diverse and artists to the attention of flux of people merged into an attentive Turkish artists and audiences, and to promote audience, inadvertently recalling Atatürk’s joint projects and mutual exchange (2006a:17). famous adage, immortalized on hundreds of Last year’s festival motto also encouraged monuments all over the country: “Ne Mutlu venturing into the hybrid and threshold spaces Türküm Diyene” (How happy I am to call between and beyond fixed national, cultural, myself a Turk).1 and aesthetic identities. Gürün, who used to Ironically, even while Istanbullus work for an airline company so that she could celebrated Turkish nationhood, an interna- afford to travel to watch world theatre, strong- tional theatre festival, staged throughout the ly believes in the mediating power of art, its city, promised to move “Beyond Borders.” unique capacity to bring different cultures Such was the motto of the 4th into close contact and to facilitate mutual International Theatre Olympics, which in 2006 was hosted by the Figure 2: Three women struggle under the burden of their bags Istanbul Foundation for Culture in Bavullar (Suitcases, 2006) .by Tiyatro Boyalı Kus (Painted Bird and Arts ( stanbul Kültür Sanat Theatre). (Photo courtesy of Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı [IKSV]) Vakfı [IKSV]) in conjunction with its own 15th International Theatre Festival. In contrast to the Istanbul Theatre Festival, which was founded in 1989 as an annual festival and has operated since 2002 on a biennial basis, the Theatre Olympics are relatively recent, created in 1995 in order to promote the exchange of national theatre traditions. Previous Olympics have been held in Delphi, Greece; Shizuoka, Japan; and Moscow, Russia. The two festivals last

. 1. Research for this article was made possible by Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı as well as the Faculty Research Council

Critical Acts of the University of Richmond.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 understanding (Gürün 2006b). It was in this spirit that the festival opened with Terzopolous’s com- pelling binational coproduction of The Persians, in which Greek and Turkish actors performed Aeschylus’s ancient tale of war and conquest in their own respec- tive languages. The powerful presence of a now well-established world-theatre avantgarde did not, however, over- shadow the emergence of a vibrant Figure 3: Actors Yelda Reynaud and Altay Özbek wind their young Turkish theatre scene. One way through an iron maze as they attempt to make sense of of the primary goals of IKSV is to their relationship to each other in ki Kisilik Bir Oyun (A Play support and promote the work of for Two, 2006) by DOT Tiyatro (DOT Theatre). (Photo courtesy of IKSV) emerging Turkish artists—artists who are just starting out and have not previously presented their work commented on contemporary social at international festivals. The one and political issues—often in a highly condition for participation is that the artists satirical manner.2 submit new work. A number of them pre- The young theatre artists at the Istanbul sented their productions both at the regular festival, however, sought to abandon such festival and in an embedded special program text-based dramaturgy altogether. Their entitled Genç Tiyatro (Young Theatre). While productions purposely reduced speech, sets, these theatre artists keenly examined and and props to an absolute minimum, focusing absorbed the work of foreign directors and instead on the movement of the actors’ bod- companies, they nonetheless searched for their ies on the bare stage and their interaction own distinctive means of expression. They with music, sound, and light. Tiyatro Boyalı were eager to break with what Gürün calls Ku (Painted Bird Theatre, named after the “the established way of looking at the theatre,” 1965 novel by Jerzy Kozinsky), for instance, be it that of the Western avantgarde, the long- explored and criticized gender relations in standing tradition of critical realism that has modern Turkey in a humorous mime with marked Turkey’s state and municipal theatres, suitcases, entitled Bavullar (Suitcases), which or the Brechtian theatre praxis that has been was staged at the Kenter Theatre in Harbiye. the signature of many independent companies As three female performers struggled with (2006b). Under the influence of epic theatre as purses, bags, and suitcases—which at some well as native dramatic traditions, particularly point they addressed as fathers, husbands, and of meddah (storytelling), karagöz (shadow play), sons—a male observer looked on indifferently, and orta oyunu (a unique Turkish dramatic laconically asking at the end of the perfor- form that resembles commedia dell’arte), lead- mance whether anyone had seen his wallet. In ing artists of the past four decades like Mahir ki Ki ilik Bir Oyun (A Play for Two), directed Gün iray, Ferhan ensoy, Yildiz and Mü fik by Bülent Erkmen of DOT Tiyatro (DOT Kenter, and Haldun Dormen developed a pre- Theatre), two actors climbed through a maze sentational theatre that openly attacked and of metal scaffolding attached to the walls of

2. Catherine Diamond (1998) and Petra de Bruijn (1993) have shown how contemporary Turkish theatre has Critical Acts Critical absorbed the traditional techniques of meddah, karagöz, and orta oyunu. Ferhan Sensoy, director of the company Ortayuncular, for example, successfully used storytelling in his celebrated performance of Ferhangi Seyler (The World According to Ferhan; 1987), an improvisational piece in which he addressed the most current topics and invited audience members up onstage to help him enact certain scenes and dialogues. Adapting Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera into Üç Kursunluk Opera (The Three Bullet Opera; 1995/96), a burlesque satire about Turkish politics, Sensoy moreover created an effective synthesis of epic theatre and orta oyunu.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 the small blackbox theatre on stiklal Avenue, down and start all over again—until finally while the audience followed their movements they took the first tentative steps on their own from swivel chairs placed at the center of the and stood erect, facing the audience. small room. As the man and woman were Emre Koyuncuo lu’s Ariza (Misfit) took slowly winding themselves through the intri- place in the basement of a defunct concrete cate iron structure—sometimes lightly and garage in the old district of Galata, located playfully, sometimes with visible effort, even north of the Golden Horn and at the far end suggesting pain—they unsuccessfully attempted of the popular stiklal Avenue, which con- to make sense of their relationship, having nects this district with the bustle of modern only single words and simple phrases, rem- Taksim Square. The stage consisted of a single nants of sentences, at their disposal. While large bed upon which the actors unfolded a they remained connected by the structures of colorful collage of relationships: relationships set and language, they were neither able to between friends and lovers, between couples touch each other, nor to complete a narrative and strangers; explorations of one’s self and that could bring them together. In the end, one’s relationship to God. What held these only one of them was able to finish the journey different relationships together was the bed, through the labyrinth, while the partner was the place in which everything in life happens: left behind, stuck in the iron structure. Another birth and death, lovemaking and arguments, piece, Phronemophobia (Fear of Thinking), quotidian routines and grand emotions, small choreographed by Tu çe Ulugün Tuna and intimacies and prolonged moments of solitude. performed at the Aziz Nesin Stage of the Only one of these sketches, dealing with a conventional middle-class relationship, used words; all others were presented through carefully choreographed movement suggesting the lovemaking and fighting of a young couple, or the anxieties and loneliness of a young woman, accompanied by popular and traditional musical tunes ranging from rap to folkloric Arabesk music. Ariza has a dual meaning in Turkish; it stands for mischief, like that of the two chil- dren (played by adult actors) who open the piece playing at undercover conspiracies and Figure 4: A wrestling match between a male actor pillow fights, but it also means misfit. As and a female bodybuilder in Ariza (Misfit, 2006), Koyuncuo lu explains, her main characters an Emre Koyuncuoglu project. (Photo courtesy of IKSV) are considered to be misfits, outsiders in contemporary Turkey: the gypsy hip-hop dancer whose presence on stage clearly took some of the spectators by surprise; a middle-aged Atatürk Cultural Centre on Taksim Square, woman who aspired to completing God’s abandoned the structures of text, narrative, work by decking herself out in extravagant and sets entirely, examining instead how the jewelry, a wig, and makeup; a smiling female body creates its own semantic, physical, and bodybuilder in a dominatrix costume, flexing psychological force fields. During this short her muscles as she wrestled down the male group choreography, five performers went lead; and an aged, once-celebrated film and through a series of movements that explored TV diva, condemned to listen patiently to the relationship of their bodies to their sur- the ramblings of a young actress. But these rounding space as well as to each other. outsiders, who are so strikingly different from Writhing on the ground, they were at times the throngs of hip, modern, secular, young supporting, at other times impeding each oth- Turks and Western tourists who inundate the er’s movements. But slowly they started to rise numerous cafes, clubs, and stores on stiklal from the ground, to crawl on hands and knees, Avenue, are not simply fictional characters. lifting themselves further up, only to fall back Critical Acts

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 and mass culture, to create metanarratives that expose the rigidity, narrowness, and futility of conventional structures of com- munication and thought and submit them to ridicule—a feat most humorously accom- plished when the middle-class couple ends up dueling each other with snippets from the most conventional and trite Turkish pop songs. It is precisely in this sense that Koyuncuo lu understands her work as political. Trained as a dancer and choreographer, she finds a language in the body, in music, in movement—a language uninscribed by the official lexicon and syntax of Turkish state rituals or by the commodity forms of media and consumer culture. Much has changed in the Turkish theatre over the past 10 years. The explicit political commentary that has marked Turkish theatre Figure 5: A choreographed tussle between two since its golden years of the 1960s has been performers as they present the various emotional upstaged by a young generation eager to and psychological tensions in a young relation- experiment and explore. Thanks to their icon- ship in Ariza (Misfit, 2006), an Emre Koyuncuoglu oclasm and to the continuing efforts of IKSV, project. (Photo courtesy of IKSV) the audiences have changed as well. “Ten years ago people walked out when Robert They are actual people: friends, neighbors, Wilson staged Persiphone,” Üstüngel Inanç strangers, who Koyuncuo lu invited to per- of IKSV lightly remarked, “now everyone form with her group. Koyuncuo lu brought sis a Wilson expert” (2006). Clearly this new these very different people and their stories generation is ready to break with the estab- together in a humorous performance that lished ways of looking at things. The new speaks of love and life. “We came together. ways they are probing seem to have little to We looked at each other. And laughed. And do with Atatürk’s invocation of pride in call- then again. And then we wanted to laugh alto- ing oneself a Turk, nor with his insistence gether” (2006a:67). This common laughter that Turkish theatre affirm a secular Western was the basis of Koyuncuo lu’s production. It identity and infuse its audiences with patrio- turned the misfit into the mischievous child tism.3 While admiring the work of an aging who mixes things up, creates trouble, and gets Western avantgarde, the new directors and into trouble for doing so, and yet laughs her artists seen at the festival are setting out in way out of it again and again. When I asked their own direction. This direction might not Koyuncuo lu how her theatre fits into the be clear yet, and sometimes the steps they contemporary Turkish scene, she too laughed take seem awkward, but the path these young and replied: “I don’t do Turkish theatre” Turks are beginning to discover is entirely (Koyuncuo lu 2006b). In fact, what drives her their own. work, and the work of many of her colleagues, is the desire to move away from the established and clichéd language of state ceremony Critical Acts Critical

3. Atatürk was a strong supporter of modern theater in Turkey, seeing it as a means of Westernization and secular- ization. He insisted, however, that it had to be in the service of the Republic, which meant that it had to condemn the old, Ottoman regime; glorify nationalism and modernism; and promote patriotism (see Diamond 1998:343).

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/dram.2007.51.2.176 by guest on 28 September 2021 References 2006b Interview with author. Taksim Hill Hotel, Istanbul, 26 May. de Bruijn, Petra Inanç, Üstüngel 1993 “Turkish Theatre: Autonomous Entity to Multicultural Compound.” 2006 Interview with author. Taksim, In Theatre Intercontinental: forms, func- Istanbul, 24 May. tions, correspondences, edited by C.C. Koyuncuo lu, Emre Barefoot and Cobi Bordewijk, 175–92. Amsterdam: Rodopi. 2006a Program of 15th International Istanbul Theatre Festival/4th Diamond, Catherine International Theatre Olympics. 1998 “Darkening Clouds over Istanbul: Istanbul: Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı. Turkish Theatre in a Changing 2006b Interview with author. Harbiye, Climate.” New Theatre Quarterly 14, 4: Istanbul, 28 May. 334–50. Gürün, Dikmen 2006a “Theatre Is a Rebirth.” In program of 15th International Istanbul Theatre Festival/4th International Theatre Olympics. Istanbul: Istanbul Kültür Sanat Vakfı.

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