A showcase of 25 square meters. Inside: a chamber pot on the floor, a bed, a table, a chair, a sink. Nothing more. This installation, called “Prison of Thought” recreates a cell of the high security prison “Silviri” in Turkey.
It is part of the exhibition “Museum of Small Things”, created by the Turkish journalist Can Dündar at the Maxim Gorki theater in Berlin. The museum displays a selection of objects from the daily life of political prisoners: a phone card, a paper plane, black tea. In the videos that accompany the installation, actors and actresses explain their use, giving an idea of the lives of the prisoners, their ways of communicating, of showing solidarity, of maintaining hope.
Can Dündar himself was in pre-trial detention in Turkey for three months, after reporting that the Turkish secret service had supplied weapons to Islamist militias in 2014, something that upset the Erdogan regime. Since 2016 Dündar has lived in exile in Berlin; 27 years in jail awaited him in Tuquía.
A video installation of the prison.
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Free through art
The exhibition was symbolically inaugurated within the framework of the digital festival “re: writing the future”, which took place between February 25 and 28 in Berlin, and was organized by the Maxim Gorki Theater, the Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Artistic Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The facilities will remain closed to the public until regulations to halt the spread of the coronavirus in Germany allow museums to reopen their doors.
Since the attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016, opposition journalists, Asian journalists, academics and politicians have experienced state repression. Many of them choose a life in exile, facing the danger of being imprisoned.
Can Dündar.
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But: is it possible to continue artistic creation and live the freedom that it implies from prison or exile? How can resistance in prison be documented? Can Dündar discussed these questions with the author Aslı Erdogan, the Kurdish artist and journalist Zehra Doğan and the sociologist Nil Mutluer in the virtual panel “Undoing Prison”, also in the framework of the festival “re: writing future”.
“We don’t want to create a Madame Tussauds type museum, where visitors can see how people were treated in the past,” he explains to DW Dündar. “The situation is in force. We want to show: The repression exists. But the resistance also exists.”
Prison as art – art in prison
Artist and journalist Zehra Doğan knows what it’s like to fight to keep a little freedom in prison. In 2016 she was arrested for creating a painting of the city of Nusaybin in a state of emergency. During the three years she was incarcerated, she tried to maintain creativity. One of her pieces shows a crouched woman’s body, in which she embroidered the hair she lost in prison.
For the physicist and writer Aslı Erdogan, the four or five months that she was in prison changed her relationship with her mother tongue, which was also her homeland. “Prison changed my relationship with the language, suddenly Turkish became the language of authority,” he says.
The uprooting of exile also influences the language. Can Dündar knows that life abroad is not synonymous with freedom: “It’s like being a hostage. Everything you say can harm your family, who are still in your homeland. Not being imprisoned does not mean being free.” And a country, in which one is not free, cannot become a homeland. Only texts can become a kind of homeland, according to Dündar.
For the journalist, the “Museum of Small Things” is a dream come true. His goal is to bring the exhibition to his homeland, Turkey. He wants to go back to Silviri, the jail in which he was imprisoned. Although this time he will be, instead of a recluse, a visitor to the museum.
– .
A video installation of the prison.
–
Free through art
The exhibition was symbolically inaugurated within the framework of the digital festival “re: writing the future”, which took place between February 25 and 28 in Berlin, and was organized by the Maxim Gorki Theater, the Allianz Kulturstiftung and the Artistic Program of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). The facilities will remain closed to the public until regulations to halt the spread of the coronavirus in Germany allow museums to reopen their doors.
Since the attempted coup in Turkey in July 2016, opposition journalists, Asian journalists, academics and politicians have experienced state repression. Many of them choose a life in exile, facing the danger of being imprisoned.
Can Dündar.
–
But: is it possible to continue artistic creation and live the freedom that it implies from prison or exile? How can resistance in prison be documented? Can Dündar discussed these questions with the author Aslı Erdogan, the Kurdish artist and journalist Zehra Doğan and the sociologist Nil Mutluer in the virtual panel “Undoing Prison”, also in the framework of the festival “re: writing future”.
“We don’t want to create a Madame Tussauds type museum, where visitors can see how people were treated in the past,” he explains to DW Dündar. “The situation is in force. We want to show: The repression exists. But the resistance also exists.”
Prison as art – art in prison
Artist and journalist Zehra Doğan knows what it’s like to fight to keep a little freedom in prison. In 2016 she was arrested for creating a painting of the city of Nusaybin in a state of emergency. During the three years she was incarcerated, she tried to maintain creativity. One of her pieces shows a crouched woman’s body, in which she embroidered the hair she lost in prison.
For the physicist and writer Aslı Erdogan, the four or five months that she was in prison changed her relationship with her mother tongue, which was also her homeland. “Prison changed my relationship with the language, suddenly Turkish became the language of authority,” he says.
The uprooting of exile also influences the language. Can Dündar knows that life abroad is not synonymous with freedom: “It’s like being a hostage. Everything you say can harm your family, who are still in your homeland. Not being imprisoned does not mean being free.” And a country, in which one is not free, cannot become a homeland. Only texts can become a kind of homeland, according to Dündar.
For the journalist, the “Museum of Small Things” is a dream come true. His goal is to bring the exhibition to his homeland, Turkey. He wants to go back to Silviri, the jail in which he was imprisoned. Although this time he will be, instead of a recluse, a visitor to the museum.
– .
