Takdİr. Die Anerkennung
Ten people were murdered by the NSU. Most Germans cannot even pronounce their names correctly. This is why Ülkü Süngün will invite passers-by to take part in a language course. A temporary memorial for Theodoros Boulgarides, Michèle Kiesewetter, Habil Kılıç, Mehmet Kubaşık, Abdurrahim Özüdoğru, Enver Şimşek, Süleyman Taşköprü, Mehmet Turgut, İsmail Yaşar and Halit Yozgat.
The performance starts with speech training: each time one person sits opposite the artist and practices with her the Turkish pronunciation of the letters “r”, “z”, “ı” and “ç”. Afterwards the participants learn to pronounce the names of the ten victims correctly and then recite them out loud together with Ülkü Süngün. The language course is broadcast using a speaker system and is amplified so that it can be heard all around. With every additional participant the “chorus of speakers and commemorators” grows louder.
Takdir is translated as appreciation, esteem. Memory and appreciation are generated through the act of repeatedly speaking their names, and a temporary memorial is established to the murder victims of the NSU. In her performance Ülkü Süngün investigates practices of remembrance culture in public spaces: who is recognised, who is honoured with memorials and who is not? How can remembrance take place publicly without being preserved with a monument? In what form can memory be contained in speech? And what does the moment of remembrance mean to each of us individually?
Production
An independent production by Ülkü Süngün.
Biography
Ülkü Süngün lives and works in Stuttgart, where she studied Sculpture at the State Academy of Art and Design. Her artistic research uses process-orientated and collaborative approaches to examine (the politics of) migration and identity and also memory. Her critical works focus on photography, installation and sculpture, and are also realised in the form of lecture performances. As a lecturer at the Merz Academy and the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design she has also worked on emancipatory issues around teaching. She realised her project ‘The Institute for Artistic Migration Research’ at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart. With the eponymous association founded in 2017 she makes her artistic and socially critical practice structurally visible while using spaces on a nomadic basis.