Forest Silent Gathering
For her new performance Forest Silent Gathering, the audience is invited into a forest at sunset. There is no leader figure, the audience itself is the host and follows a soundtrack through headphones. The audio provokes its own social rules and leads to new forms of togetherness. Each way of listening is an invitation to certain types of behavior. How can, through listening, a new awareness of communal space emerge? Forest Silent Gathering makes us reflect on how we look at each other, what we project onto each other. Erciyas invites us inside an audio-social architecture in which we can possibly be alone together.
As part of her research, Begüm Erciyas will be in residence at Klankenbos twice during the period 2021-2022. Forest Silent Gathering will then also become part of OORtreders Festival 2022.
While studying molecular biology and genetics in Ankara, Begüm Erciyas got involved in various dance projects in Turkey and became part of [laboratuar], a performing arts research and project group. Later, she studied at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria. She was artist-in-residence at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 2007/08, at K3- Zentrum für Choreographie Hamburg in 2009 and at the Villa Kamogawa / Goethe Institute Kyoto in 2014.
Between 2014-2016, Begüm was committed to a longer research period around one's own voice. She wanted to make a performance that is experienced in complete solitude, a performance that happens between oneself and one's own voice. The resulting performance Voicing Pieces(2016) has kept her busy until now.
From 2018 until 2020, she has been researching the topic of artificial intimacies, while continuing the search for new theatrical formats that would allow audience to have a solitary experience. In Pillow Talk (2019), the audience is invited to engage in a conversation with an artificial voice coming from a pillow, while being immersed in a large-scale collective scenography.
In 2020, during the lockdown, she got interested in the tension between isolation and political collectivity in Sam Melville's letters written in prison. In Letters from Attica, the fragmented text is passed on from mouth to mouth, from audience to audience, in public space.
In 2021 she will return to Japan with a fellowship at Tokyo Arts and Space (TOKAS). Between 2022-27, she will be creator-in-residence at DE SINGEL Antwerp.
In collaboration with C-TAKT.