Art und Weise: It All Started With a Song

A gentle breeze passed over us
From the split of the valley
Oh breeze, for love's sake
Take me home
Mansour El Rahbani

It all started with a song is the audio-visual representation of Pınar Öğrenci's autobiography intertwined with collective stories. Born in Wan, Turkey, the artist's voice was assimilated by the classical Turkish songs she learned in choirs during her childhood. While her adolescent years were shaped by the 1980 military coup, her voice became strong and politicized with songs and poems of revolution and prohibited books of the time. The following years, the artist tried to create her own language of rebellion, blended with her efforts to preserve her Kurdish roots. At times, the foundation of the relationship with language and sometimes an escape from the weight of it - songs were always an invitation to the impossibility of translation.
Invited by Zach B. Feldman to the Goethe Institute New York, Öğrenci has created an experimental artist talk where she tells the stories of her transitional and transformative years in Wan and the impact they had on her video work in a form of a long song of longing and resistance. This poetic narrative transcends borders, expressing a longing for Anatolia's multilingual essence prior to the First World War, and the ethos of coexistence.

Host or Publisher Goethe-Institut New York