A Feminist Archeology of Collective Memory in Turkey. A Retrospective Look on Works of Movement Atelier with a Focus on "AHHval / cirCUMstances"

Abstract

Movement Atelier is a unique dance ensemble from Turkey made by women. They use oral history, literary texts written by prominent women writers of Turkey, and social science texts that theorize about public culture of Turkey as their starting points to develop performance works; which have the power of triggering a vast landscape of connotations for the Turkish audiences about the collective public memory of their country from an intergenerational feminist perspective. The focus of this paper is their 2009 performance cirCUMstances, in which the semiotics were constructed for the feminist blurring of public and private, and was realized through the female performers’ bodies that rapidly oscillate between affectionate and abject movements.