Call for ceasing fire against protesting Kurds and countrywide peaceful negotiation

Open letter

Addressing the public of Kurdistan, first of all we would like to express our greatest respect, support and gratitude for the audacity and determination of the people in Slemani at this very moment of protest. We believe that it is a transformatory event that will give the basis for a stronger self-organisation and sense of citizenship in Kurdistan in the nearest future. When the people say “no” and expose themselves to risk in the protest in the public space, when they fill the streets with their presence and disagreement, we should not take it for granted but start working from this. Kurdistan, as we know it, is not only the “the other Iraq” – a safe and economically developing Northern region. It is a country of people, who by their own courage went a long way to escape from internal conflicts, genocide and the tyranny of Saddam. There is peace and growth but there is no satisfaction and feeling of justice among the citizens. And the people are determined to say “no” again and now this “no” is happening in the framework of a democratic independent region. They say “no” because they do not have a feeling of inclusion in the governance of their own country and disagree with the social and political unbalance.

We are writing propelled by the urgency of violent events that recently took place in Slemani, when armed regional forces began to shoot their own compatriots on the streets. And we do remember and observe the sudden violent deaths of protesters and journalists. We are concerned that major Kurdish intellectuals, journalists and activists are being persecuted or detained for the critique expressed within the democratic framework. These events are not fitting certainly either to the image of “the other Iraq” or to the history of struggle for independence.  It is the moment when the question that is set in the end of any revolution must be put: are we ready to accept that freedom is not only for “us” but also for everybody?

Economic processes in Kurdistan were rapid and had a strong impact on traditional social bonds, forms of living and values. As in any other country undergoing a transformatory phase, certain steps with regard to governance and economy are being introduced without looking at the social costs of those changes. And on top of all this, they lack transparency. Without including citizens themselves in the very process of change it cannot be achieved in a satisfactory manner. The chance that was given to the Kurds must be shared with everyone and not remain in the possession of political elites.
We believe that the basics in a properly functioning public sphere are:

• Freedom of speech, protest, creativity and media.
• Freedom from discrimination according to political affiliation, gender, age or sexual orientation.
• Freedom to participate in transparent decision-making processes.
• Freedom and equality in access to public funds, which includes funds for strengthening non-governmental organisations, innovation, culture, women and youth without servility to politicians. 

More than a year ago we brought to Kurdistan a book by the Polish-American writer Elżbieta Matynia, “Performative democracy”, with the intention of translating it into Kurdish, which we hope will happen soon. This special book that takes on direct democracy in Poland and South Africa through the round-table discussion of representatives of all groups of society is a very good example of how democracy can be performed by its actors – the citizens, bloodlessly, in peace and with the shared understanding that we are destined to talk to each other with respect and a clear understanding of the common good.

In fear that the violence against one’s own society will grow and that civil liberties will shrink even more, we are calling for the round table of Kurdistan that, besides those in power, includes the opposition and people working for non-governmental organisations. We are calling for a transparent discussion that is public and transmitted on TV. We are calling for a peaceful way of solving the problem through which people can live in the country with a feeling of dignity and shared responsibility for the common good. It is not about being ruled but self-governance.  Democracy cannot only be declared, it must be performed.

We are writing this letter because we do believe in the Kurdish people and the country we both love, work for and want to support with all possible means. But now it is a time of not just being a nation but also a society, where everyone has equal rights and access and to become a leader of such a position in the region. The overall atmosphere of the demand for social change that is spreading around in the Middle East is a sign that the momentum is now.

We all see clearly that Kurdish society needs this moment of directness, of argument, of diversity that is not a threat but a potential.

Hiwa K, Kurdish artist, Berlin, Germany
Aneta Szylak, curator, Director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland
Estrangement Project
February 25, 2011

Join us for opening on April 20 @ The Showroom :)

ESTRANGEMENT
21 April – 5 June 2010
Preview: 20 April 2010, 6 - 8pm,
Hiwa K’s performance at 8pm
Opening hours: Wednesday – Saturday, 12-6pm
63 Penfold Street, London
www.theshowroom.org

The Showroom presents Estrangement, part of an ongoing project initiated by Polish
curator and artistic director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Aneta Szylak, and Iraqi-Kurdish artist Hiwa K. The project seeks to capture tensions between European cultures and the various past and present constructions of the ‘Orient’.

Involving artists from both regions through international residencies, research and projects, Estrangement seeks ways to rethink cultures of representation and postcolonial relationships as well as create a space for intimate and individual encounters. In London, Estrangement presents works and contextual material gathered from its earlier incarnations, alongside two new commissions by Hiwa K and Polish artist Joanna Rajkowska following their residencies in the Church Street neighbourhood and Edgware Road areas, together with an exhibition and events programme.

Hiwa K is collaborating with Jim White, a former American soldier and now a caretaker at a German art academy, on a live performance of Ennio Morricone’s score for the final duel scene from Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Western Once Upon A Time In The West. The work is an enquiry into the redistribution of dominant cultural representations and competences. Hiwa K and Jim White – who was taught to play country guitar music by the artist - will perform the work with a live brass band accompaniment at the Cockpit Theatre on 20 April 2010. The performance takes place against the screening of the actual film scene and will take 10 minutes. Rajkowska’s project refers to the history of Edgware Road as an ancient thoroughfare. Her proposal is an object – a chariot, partly made in collaboration with the Edgware Road community. Chariots originate from Central Asia but were in use longest in Britain. The piece explores the Middle Eastern origins of this vehicle whilst considering ideas of destination, arrival and circulation of cultural forms.

Estrangement does not intend to represent cultures or make them visible. Instead, the focus is on the potential of the works of art produced and the possibilities it may present in terms of discussion and making. In keeping with this idea, the resource room at The Showroom will include materials from projects in Kurdistan, dialogues with artists residing in Europe, documentation of workshops, texts and notes as well as videos and photographs by artists Rozhgar Mahmud Mustafa, Sherko Abbas, Shirwan Fatih, Shirwan Can, Diary Muhammad Osman, Poshya Kakil, Horen Gharib, Hemin Hamid, Gaylan Amin, Bitwen Ali, Mattias Olofsson, Knutte Wester, Anton Katz, Maryam Jafri, Azer Othman Mahmud, Zeria Adnan, Nehro Shawki, Soran Rafat and Hardi Kurda. A single issue publication with contributions by all the artists, the curators and Irit Rogoff, Francesca Recchia, Cihat Arinc and Janna Graham will further develop the themes.

For further information please contact Natasha Tebbs on 020 7724 4300 or natasha@theshowroom.org.

Estrangement on Edgware Road starts April 20

More information about Estrangement Project at The Showroom and on Edgware Road coming soon....

Estrangement team arrived at Kurdistan

next Estrangement workshop in Iraqi Kurdistan starts in September 2009

Estrangement Team goes to CASCO

photo: Estrangement

Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, Utrecht


Discussion on Estrangement with curator Aneta Szylak (director of Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk) and artist Hiwa K. on their collaborative initiative 'Estrangement'.
Thursday 9 April at 20.00 at Casco, Utrecht
In the framework of Antagonistic Link curated by Binna Choi

The Antagonistic Link is an experimental setting for drawing transnational links in the form of an agonistic process that assumes the opposing parties to be in a state of conflicting coexistence. The Antagonistic Link uses 'Bye Bye Kipling', a historical satellite event conceived by Nam June Paik in 1986, as a point of departure. The exhibition combines this piece with three other projects initiated by artists and designers from South Korea, as well as other related activities. All these works explore the constructive possibilities of overcoming the sense of distance and antagonism that is the paradoxical product of advancing globalization.

"East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet", the first line of The Ballad of East and West, a poem by Rudyard Kipling, opens up Paik's live satellite link-up of Japan, Korea and the United States – a broadcast featuring different sorts of cultural events and performances. Paik designed and coordinated the event with the intention of countering this poetic declaration (which, to be fair, is also undermined in the rest of Kipling's poem as he suggests that individuals are capable of this after all). The video is a shorter edit of the original broadcast and reveals various ironic and fractious moments in such a linkage. This may be a starting point for questioning the complexities and contradictions inherent in today's communication channels and global links — an inquiry that neither denies nor blithely celebrates the possibilities of transnational connection.
[source: CASCO press materials]

Emily Pethick is the new Estrangement partner

Emily Pethick is the director of The Showroom, London. From 2005-2008 she was the director of Casco, Office for Art, Design and Theory, in Utrecht, The Netherlands. From 2003-2004 she was curator at Cubitt, London. She has contributed to numerous catalogues and magazines, including Frieze, dot dot dot, GAS, texte zur kunst, Artforum and Untitled, edited books, such as Casco Issues X: The Great Method, with Peio Aguirre, and Casco Issues XI with Marina Vishmidt and Tanja Widmann.

New Year, New Partners, New Locations!

Estrangement will continue in 2009/2010 through a collaboration with three leading partner organisations: Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, The Showroom, London, and A Prior Magazine, Ghent. It will involve a group of specialists, which will include: Janna Graham, Curator of Education at Serpentine Gallery, Emily Pethick, Director of the Showroom, Els Roelandt, Editor-in-Chief of A Prior, Francesca Recchia, lecturer and researcher at Kurdistan University (based in London and Irbil), and numerous artists. It will create a broad international collaborative discursive platform that will focus on process, encounter and debate as an open form of research into concept of Estrangement. The project will consist of a series of artist residencies, exhibitions, performances and interventions in public space in London and Gdansk, and will culminate in the publication of a special issue of the art magazine A Prior.

The concept of Estrangement developed through a series of discussions and collaborative projects between Iraqi artist Hiwa K. and Polish curator Aneta Szylak as an attempt to create a form for mutual translation and collaborative work that is not restricted to one cultural format. The first stage of the project was initiated during a workshop for Iraqi artists in the Kurdish univerisity city Sulaimany in 2008. The project will be also relaunched in Sulaimany in mid-June 2009.

Fundraisng break

Sorry, we are a bit busy with fundraising for the continuation of the project but new content is to be uploded soon.

Sulaimany by night seen from Goyzhe mountain

Hiwa was researching for Estrangement project in Iran

And he was in touch with us on skype

Saholeke Street in Sulaimany

Estrangement enjoyed Saholeke [Ice] Street, though the temperature was far from that of ice.
Busy, full of shops, teahouses and restaurants is one of the major merchant areas of the city. Also our favourite teahouse "Public" is here. Over mango smoothie we discussed how to translate the situation of the street and numerous encounters on our way to the nature of our workshop.

Shaáb Teahouse in Suli

Shaáb Teahouse is one of the Sulaimany most legendary places. Established in 1950s by Wasta Shareef under the name meaning "Public", remains until now the leading but casual and friendly meeting place for intellectuals and artists from the city, filled with books and images. Recently the site is being run by the founder's sons Omar and Baker, who can be seen in the second picture from the top. It was grat to meet him. Estrangement will come back there!

Saman Kareem and Sazgar Abu Baker worked with kids

Artists Saman and Sazgar worked with the kids in public space of Sulaimany. Here is a permanent result of their workshop on kindergarten outside walls.
The couple is to soon exhibit in Graz, Austria.

When walking in Sulaimany

on hidden, denied, sacrifice and courage

Back to Aram Gallery we were debating ethics on the backdrop of historic event, having as a point of departure two movies. First is Andrzej Wajda's "Man of Iron" [1981], tle legendary motion picture that build international image of Polish "Solidarnosc" [Solidarity] movement. Wajda depicts idealist social movement born country wide and helped to end communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe. Nearly exactly at the moment of its birth Wajda and the script author Aleksander Scibor-Rylski draw psychological sketches of those who were to undertake their decissions to support dissidents and the movement and those who regardless of all doubts submitted to the regime. In the center of movie's attention are two TV journalists who under the pressure of political events decided differently about ethics of their work and about the prices paid for that.
The other movie referred to was "Hidden" by Michael Haneke. Portraying closely parisian middle-class family of George, an influential TV moderator. Haneke puts important historic event that decades later ended integrity in the family, far away from our eye. It is a set of small personal decissions, envy and childish selfishness that ends chances of orphaned Algerian boy chances to live better life when George was himself a child. Majid lost his parents along with the deaths of 200 Algerians drowned in the River Seine during the clashes with the police on 17 October 1961. The dramatic and shameful moment in French history almost never spoken about in the country and failed to be properly covered by the media. In Haneke's movie it is been revealed as a a secret of the family life. It is not George's job that is in the center of attention, but his inability to admit and carry on the guilt for Majid being rejected from adoption and for his current sudden suicidal death.
So the trajectories of the movies are opposite. One of them panoramic, epic, incrusted with psychologic miniatures. The latter screen-wide analysis of the disruption of the faced of happy family life by lies and mistrust with never admitted piece if history in the background. In both movies though it is personal choice and responsibility that actually does make history.
Discussing the movies we have spoken about ethics, duties of public intellectual including the artist.

Debating memory matters

Amna Suraka

Estrangement Project participants and team met on the premise of Amna Suraka in Sulaimany, Red Security Building from the time of Saddam. Today it remains a site of memory and several culture and art organizations, such as war crimes museum, cabinet of curiosities and contemporary art exhibition space.

Here we discussed the evaporation of political issues from Kurdish contemporary art, urgencies of embracing memory and history issues and relation between esthetics and politics.

Discussing art and politics at Amna Suraka

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