Biography
Gizem Aksu is a contemporary dancer and choreographer, interested in art, politics and philosophy. She studied Political Science and International Relations at Boğaziçi University and then Contemporary Dance from Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts. Since 2009, Gizem Aksu has participated as a creative performer in various international festivals and biennials in the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. In 2014 she was invited by Ann van den Broek (Ward / waRD) and Meg Stuart for her new research project ‘Closer’. Gizem Aksu also took
participated in the ‘Park In Progress’ residency program in Mons, Belgium. In 2015 she was invited for residencies in Berlin, Antwerp and Zagreb with her recent work. In addition, she has been accepted for the danceWEB Scholarship for ImPulsTanz- Vienna International Dance Festival 2015.
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Photo: Gizem Aksu
In residentie YU
28.04.2018 – 28.04.2018
Yu is an “expanded performance” about research into organic wisdom through fascinated attention in a visceral garden.
This research is less about the essence of visceral organs than about the complex correlations of organs and life. Organic wisdom is about the sense of life with reference to the existence of visceral organs. As fascinated attention increases
consciousness expands to the ambiguity between the internal and the external, the visible and the invisible, the material (fleshy) and the immaterial (energetic), the performer discovers ways to feel, move and move the body with these archaic, organic and spontaneous wisdom that the visceral organs always offer to life.
Each of them could be understood as an independent body – without the other – and also as a collective attitude, correlationality, coexistence towards life. Visceral organs, with their ambiguity regarding internal-external, visible-invisible, material (fleshy)-immaterial (energetic), provide a radical way to delve into various layers of spatiality and temporality. They seem difficult to grasp with the linguistic categories and socioculturally produced properties/challenges of the body, such as internal/external, visible/invisible, abject/beautiful, black/white, European/Asian, the West/the East, naked/veiled, dark/illuminated, open/closed, life/death, past/present etc.
As all these categories get closer to organs, something always slips on the slippery ground of the visceral organs. None of these qualities could understand the dynamics that live within them. What kind of relationships might one discover if one were to regard them as a dynamic living reference for dislocated temporalities, spatialities and corporeities. Visceral organs, with their ambiguity regarding internal and external, visible and invisible, material (fleshy) and immaterial (energetic), provide a radical way to delve into various layers of spatiality and temporality.
This work is an attempt to think about body and life in a provocative and productive way; the electromagnetic spheres that all hearts/intestines/stomachs resonate with, that stir – meaning, reality and life. Silence and darkness welcome the unseen and inaudible presence deep within the body. With/in the silence of the muscular ground, perhaps it is time for the organs to dance, to shake and tremble the world!