ABOUT

'intersectionality or velhasılıkelam' is the preliminary video of my work-in-progress, a feature-length essay-film, that claims to be an autobiography made out of an assemblage of biographies; and that is based on oral-history research with the first generation women workers to Germany from Turkey (1961-1973) who migrated alone, and their audio-visual (mis/dis)representation at the time.

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FRAGMENTS FROM THE PANEL DISCUSSION:
'intersectionality or velhasılıkelam' is an attempt to talk through the overlapping experiences of migrants from Turkey to Germany from different generations through a gender perspective. A 'guest-worker', Hatice, who came to Germany alone in 1973 when she was 18 is in focus, and the new-comers reflect upon her long-running experience while they share theirs. Difference and repetition constitute the video when the speakers enter into a continual dialog with each other; when the new listen to the wise advice of the old-comer. The experienced and the less-experienced encounter with each other in the audio-visual space created, and they construct a discursive space in which they dwell together.

'intersectionality or velhasılıkelam' is also a follow-up of the documentary 'Welcomed to Germany?' which I did in 2018. The speakers in the first video were the new-comers, and its focus was mainly the speakers' relation to the departed country, Turkey. The main focus is now the arrived country, Germany. Thus, this time there is a shift in paradigm, a change in perspective: My initial focus was migration then, and now it is the city.

This change in axis also points out a shift in my relational position and condition in Germany, following my second year here. The concepts are related and inseparable of course, but there is a nuance I feel, a tiny shift that changes my position as a subject, and the ways I produce. Very basically: not a migrant anymore that is rooted elsewhere, but a city habitant, a political subject here... migration as part of the history of the arrived-city, rather than part of the history of the departed-country; stories of the migrants as a constitutive element of the history of the city for a more democratic history-writing...

Thus, the subject matters I deal with as an artist alter as well. That shift in my perspective, motivation, and focus re-shape my works; and reciprocally, this change in works alter my position in Germany as a subject. A multi-directional movement, on-going interaction..
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