WEDDING

whats in germany? by metin türköz. satirical classic about turks view of germans

2012-01-16T12:46:00.001-08:00

another one from the ATTF ( choir of turkish workers in europe) 70s

2012-01-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

TÜRKİYE İŞÇİ SINIFINA SELAM / ATTF İŞÇİ KOROSU

2012-01-16T12:37:00.001-08:00

avrupa türkiyeli toplumcular federasyonu korosu - 1970 ler

2012-01-16T12:36:00.000-08:00

kurdish wedding from van, turkey

2011-07-11T04:30:00.000-07:00

via november paynter

WEDDING still 02 - girls and money

2009-11-04T02:42:00.001-08:00

WEDDING still 01 - boyz dancin girls lookin

2009-11-04T02:41:00.001-08:00

Ian White on the Representation of Rituals in Köken Ergun's Work

2009-11-02T07:34:00.000-08:00

Koken Ergun: Personal works of public ceremonies

Koken Ergun’s work is about ritual. That is, about ritual, circling contemporary popular ceremony as its subject of examination, picking at the unwitting detachment and wilful fervour of its participants, looking at what we would see on the television and at what we would not, pointing as much to its ragged edges as its transformative social power. It records these public situations (and also sometimes (re)constructs them) not to extend them into personal or collective memory, nor as the imprint of propaganda, but as the means for a broader analysis which finds its form in a visual language that is at once off-hand, casual and precisely because of this acutely, carefully revealing. It is a practice that might be read through that to which it is opposed, to uncover the coordinates of what it is for.

Ergun’s work in general, and his two signature video installations The Flag (2006) and I, Soldier (2005) in particular form a paradigmatic opposition, for instance, to Leni Riefenstahl’s landmark film of the 1936 Berlin Summer Olympics, Olympia (1938). Olympia is a work of bravura filmmaking - iconographic, idealising – in which bodies and actions become (pure) form, almost to the point of abstraction, or to a point at which they lose any semblance of human fragility; crowds without the mess of life, high divers who never hit the water, discus throwers who turn but might as well not, so closely do they resemble classical sculpture. Riefenstahl’s are indivisible images, reinscriptions of spectacle. Like her fabrication of the “ancient tradition” of the Olympic torch carried by a series of athletes from Mount Olympus to Berlin - in fact a fiction existing solely in the film and only subsequently adopted as a feature of the build-up to the Games - they are absolutely invested in the generation of myth as if the film is in and of itself a ritual. What it proposes as aesthetic, if not also ideological certainty, Ergun’s videos transcribe as a question mark.

The Flag and I, Soldier record different events in a stadium, not in Berlin or Greece, but modern day Turkey, the exhortations of two connected annual national rituals that celebrate the founding of the Turkish republic and imprint its values onto its subjects: Children’s Day held on 23rd April and the Commemoration of Atatürk, Youth and Sports Day held just weeks later on 19th May. Unlike Riefenstahl’s, Ergun’s camera occupies an unofficial position, unchoreographed and shakily recording each event as it unfolds. The margins are everything in its framings. What we see are two things at the same time, in tension: the orchestration of a mass public occasion, individuals performing prescribed roles, becoming a group and something else, their anti-iconographic, entirely ordinary surroundings, scrubby grass, flickers of boredom or self-conscious smiles, empty plastic seats in the stadium. Both occasions eulogise the state through epic poetry with a metaphoric magnitude that is continuously undermined by the camcorder aesthetic that makes it known to us. Huge emotion is undercut by ambient noise, spectacle unravelled by an itinerant attention.

In The Flag the love, support and nurturing of the country’s children professed by the occasion becomes an imposition, a manipulation continuously threatened by the uncontrollable, only for it to be re-asserted. In the stands children are seen through a wire mesh fence. In I, Soldier the stadium address - a poem shouted as a display of uber-masculinity by a uniformed soldier to the gentle strains of lyrical music – becomes a love song to his colleague who we see on the opposite screen in slow motion, simply turning his head, an icon occupying an altogether different cinematic register and a homoeroticism that maps onto the display of troops running, marching and performing gymnastics.

These are personal works of public ceremonies. Images divisible from the spectacle they otherwise witness. They refer back to Ergun’s first video, Untitled (2004), in which the artist drapes himself in various headscarves as both a protest against the discrimination of a secular government and a private expression of rage that is also a parody of the Pieta. And they provide the template for TANKLOVE (2008), a constructed situation Ergun organised in a small Danish town recording the public’s response to an actual tank rolling down their high street and WEDDING (2007), a three-channel video installation that documents and visually commentates the phenomenon of contemporary Turkish nuptials.
Ergun’s work might most often be concerned with the rituals of his own Turkish identity, but it does so not as a closed text, to generate myth but for the sake of its opposite. Not rituals themselves, but footnotes to the fictions they picture, these works are notes to us on the nature of all modern social, political and cultural constructs.

Ian White

Ian White is Adjunct Film Curator at the Whitechapel Gallery, London and also works on independent curatorial projects, and as the facilitator of the LUX Associate Artists Programme. He writes for numerous periodicals and is the co-editor of Kinomuseum: Towards an artists' cinema (Walther Koenig, 2008).

Originally written for the "Labyrinth of Memory" exhibition organized by Ars Cameralis, Poland, Fall 2009

Rules of rituals:

2009-09-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

The importance of the “choreography” or “direction” in rituals.

Ritual contains in itself a physical and mental side. The mental side is the set of believes or opinions concerning the sacred.

The material side is a set of rules which has to be applied in order for the ritual action to have its transcendental effect to the full.

While explaining these categories we must be aware of the fact that not all rituals are linked to some deity. There are those who are not. Wedding and funerals are one example. Here, Durkheim gives an example from the Jewish tradition and explains why the set of rules in rituals are important, and why they can be called ‘the first form of formalism”

“When, in the so-called Feast of the Tabernacles, the Jew set the air in motion by shaking willow branches in a certain rhythm, it was to cause the wind to rise and the rain to fall; and it was believed that the desired phenomenon would result automatically from the rite, provided it were correctly performed. This is the explanation of the fundamental importance laid by nearly all cults upon the material portion of the ceremonies. This religious formalism – very probably the first form of legal formalism- comes from the fact that since the formula to be pronounced and the movements to be made contain within themselves the source of their efficacy, they would lose it if they did not conform absolutely to the type consecrated by success."*

This in dramatic terms is the choreography or the direction.

* Durkheim, Emile [1912] 1976 The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Allen & Unwin LTD p. 35

non religious religious phenomena

2009-09-30T09:16:00.000-07:00

‘At the same time we find the explanation of how there can be groups of religious phenomena which do not belong to any special religion; it is because they have not been, or are no longer, a part of any religious system. If, for some special reason, a cult happens to be maintained while the group of which it was part of disappears, it survives only in a disintegrated condition. That is what has happened to many agrarian cults which have survived themselves as folklore. In certain cases, it is not even a cult, but a simple ceremony or particular rite which persists this way. This is the case with persists in this way.

Durkheim, Emile [1912] 1976 The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Translated by Joseph Ward Swain. New York: Allen & Unwin LTD p. 41

"Have a Good Journey Home"

2009-05-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

mardin uzerine bir yorum - fuat keyman

2009-05-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

"Çocuk, hamile kadın, namaz kılan yaşlı demeden bir köyün yarısına yakınını, 44 kişiyi hunharca öldüren, dolayısıyla soykırım, ailesel kıyım, toptan yok etme gibi insanlığa karşı suç niteliğine giren “Mardin felaketi”ni, sadece töre diyerek geçiştirmek mümkün mü? Bu felaketi, PKK terör sorununa, Kürt sorununa çözüm bulamayan, bu nedenle de, bu bölgenin aşırı silahlanmasına ve Giorgio Agamben’in terimiyle, “sürekli hukukun askıya alındığı bir toplama ya da mülteci kampına dönüşmesine” göz yuman zihniyetten soyutlayarak düşünmek mümkün mü? Bu felaket, son 30 yıldır Türkiye’de yaşanan aşırı silahlanma sorunundan, TV dizilerinde sürekli işlenen kadını ikinci sınıf gören “silah namusudur milletimizin” söylemini pekiştiren ve hukuk yerine silahı destekleyen paracı-milliyetçi sömürüden soyutlanarak anlaşılabilir mi? Mardin felaketi”ni, kamusal tartışmanın bittiği, eğlence-marka kültürünün egemenleştiği, ekonomik nema ve reyting uğruna TV haberlerinin bile savaş ve ölüme indirgendiği ve “her şey para ve kullanılacak meta”dır anlayışının hüküm sürdüğü bugünün Türkiye’sinden soyutlayarak düşünebilir miyiz?"

10/05/2009 radikal iki'den alinti

murder at a ritual

2009-05-05T00:26:00.001-07:00

what makes a wedding attractive as a setting for a massacre? why do the killers choose 'ritual time' for their slaughter?

mythology and folk tales are full of such stories: vengeance gets more effective if performed over a community absorbed in sacred time, either it is a festive dinner (the house of atreus) or celebration of captives (samson) or the attack on al aqsa mosque by the evangalist australian tourist (name not necessary). the force of the community gathered at rituals might be posing a threat to the groups left outside. maybe a certain kind of jeaolusy, a deep one. this is worth examining later...

--

Dozens killed at Turkey wedding

Witnesses said the attackers threw grenades and sprayed the wedding hall with gunfire

At least 45 people have been killed in an attack on a wedding party in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, local media has reported.

Turkey's NTV television, citing authorities, said masked assailants with grenades and automatic weapons attacked the ceremony in the village of Bilge about 20km from the city of Mardin on Monday.

Besir Atalay, the Turkish interior minister, on Tuesday ruled out suggestions that the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group active in the country's southeast, may have been involved.

"According to our investigations so far nothing indicates that this is a terror attack but a larger investigation is being run by the regional prosecutor," he said.

At least six others were wounded in the attack. The bride, the groom and the groom's mother and sister were killed, according to the newsagency AP.

The village head of Bilge, Hamit Celebi, and 10 family members were also among the dead, Turkey's Anatolian news agency said.

NTV said the motive for the attack was thought to be a feud between rival groups of Village Guards – a controversial state-backed militia set up to combat Kurdish separatist fighters in southeast Turkey and provide intelligence.

Other reports have suggested that a "blood feud" among families had led to the killings in a region where tribal ties and rivalries sometimes eclipse the power of the state.

Turkish media said the motive may have been a feud between rival groups in Mardin

Ahmet Ferhat Ozen, the acting governor of Mardin, told the Reuters news agency that masked men stormed into a hall where wedding guests were assembled and opened fire with automatic rifles and hand grenades.

Another unnamed witness told Reuters how the gunmen immediately began spraying the wedding hall with gunfire.

"There were a few people, they broke into the house and started spraying the place with bullets, hitting both men and women, their faces were covered with masks," the 20-year-old women said.

She said there were some 200 people at the wedding party.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reporting from Istanbul, said the attack did not appear to be linked with the Kurdish separatist PKK.

Our correspondent said the use of grenades and Kalashnikov rifles seemed to be because the people involved were members of the Village Guard.

"This may be a situation where a local feud has resulted in these weapons being used on their own people," she said.

Following the attack Turkish soldiers sealed off the village, cutting off all road access, but military officials said pursuit of the attackers was being hindered by a sandstorm in the area.

Source:

Al Jazeera and agencies

William Robertson Smith on rituals (over myths)

2009-04-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

"So far as myths consists of explanation of ritual their value is altogether secondary, and it may be affirmed with confidence that in almost every case the myth was derived from the ritual, and not the ritual from the myth; for the ritual was fixed and the myth was variable, the ritual was obligatory and faith in the myth was at the discretion of the worshipper"

Smith, W.R. (1889) Lectures on the Religion of the Semites, First Series: The Fundamental Institutions, Burnet Lectures 1888/9, Edinburg: Adam & Charles Black

Ritual of Origin

2009-04-24T14:03:00.000-07:00

To start with; ritual is not something of the past, nor it is only religious. And to proceed; ritualS are not only symbolizations or representations of socials codes, they create these codes. In other words, social codes are representations of rituals.

In this quote from “Elementary Forms of Religious Life”, Durkheim elaborates this interaction between the social and the ritual:

“ Collective representations… presuppose that consciousnesses are acting and reacting on each other; they result from actions and reactions that are possible only with the help of tangible intermediaries. Thus, the function of the intermediaries is not merely to reveal the mental state associated with them; they also contribute to its making. The individual minds come outside themselves, but they do this only by means of movement. It is the homogeneity of those movements that makes the group aware of itself and that, in consequence, makes it be. Once this homogeneity has been established and these movements have taken a definitive form and been stereotyped, they serve to symbolize the corresponding representations. But these movements symbolize those representations only because they helped to form them.” (Durkheim [1912] 1995: 232)

That ritual is the source of culture, is a revelation to me, which not only completely changed my previous ideas about how to conduct this PhD, but also gradually, my understanding of life…

Individualism (not the individual) is a young phenomena, it is almost as young as some buildings, which still stand today, maybe a few hundred years old. Not very impressive, isn’t it?

Prior to this wave of individualism, humans described themselves in herds, groups, families and communities. Collective consciousness was the essential key to existence. Existence was actually defining co-existence, without the necessity to add the co-. Bonding was everyday reality, not outside of it. Ritual time had to be systematically repeated in order to maintain social bonds, hence to maintain society. Most important of all, bonding meant co-existence by way of keeping in time with the others’ rhythm and movement. Co-existence was rhythmic, performative.

Following the tides and after shocks of enlightenment, industrial revolution, secularism; as more and more humans defined themselves less of a community but more of a well-constructed and self-sufficient self, they also ceased to be in need of ritual time. Therefore, we could explain our modern times as anti-ritualistic.

However, cultural memories do not erase so quickly, and it is also an illusion to think that those (mostly Western) cultures who are now based on individual expression, and self-existence, can shadow or (even worse) re-define the other societies who still express themselves as collective, and co-existing. It is true they are dominant in many aspects, but I think this dominancy is coming from their vocality, which is necessary to maintain the individual’s position. Silent masses are still silent and they are still mass. For some reason which I shall try to elaborate later, silent masses do not need to vocalize, to express, to export ideas.

And when I look at Art now, or the art of before, I cannot help to think that it has been primarily based on the foundations of individual expression. This is my current suffocation about life and art, and I aim to ease this feeling of suffocation by researching on these topics.

To exorcise the individual out of the ‘soul’ of art, is my aim.

While seeking this rather impossible dream, I know that I must first look into life. How life develops, how culture is constructed and practiced. As I mentioned above, individualism is young, so then culture has undeniable been constructed by the co-existence of humans, by the ‘movement’ of the communities, small or big. That is to say they were created in ritual time. There is also no reason to believe/fear that it can no longer develop the same way…

to be continued...

PROFANE TIME versus RITUAL TIME - starting with durkheim

2009-04-22T15:44:00.000-07:00

“Life in Australian [Aboriginal] societies alternates between two different phases. In one phase (PROFANE), the population is scattered in small groups that attend their occupations independently. Each family lives to itself, hunting, fishing – in short, striving by all possible means to get the food it requires. In the other phase (RITUAL), by contrast, the population comes together, concentrating itself at specified places for a period that varies from several days to several months. This concentration takes place when a clan or a portion of the tribe… conducts a religious ceremony.

These two phases stand in the sharpest possible contrast. The first phase, in which economic activity predominates, is generally of rather low intensity. Gathering seeds or plants necessary for food, hunting, and fishing are not occupations that can stir truly strong passions. The dispersed state in which the society finds itself makes life monotonous, slack and humdrum. Everything changes when a ceremony takes place… Once the individuals are gathered together, a sort of electricity is generated from their closeness and quickly launches them into an extraordinary height of exaltation… Probably because a collective emotion cannot be expressed collectively without some order that permits harmony and unison of movement, [their] gestures and cries tend to fall into rhythm and regularity, and from there into songs and dances.”

Quoted from Durkheim, E., [1912] 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Edited and Translated by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press (216-18)

extract from an alevi semah

2009-04-08T13:26:00.000-07:00

EVLENMEDE ARANACAK VASIFLAR

2009-02-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

Yusuf Ziya Demirci'nin Muğla’nın Ula köyünde yaptığı araştırmalar sonucu hazırladığı bir folklor çalışmasından: Demirci, Y.Z. Anadolu’da Eski Düğün ve Evlenme Adetleri, İstanbul: Burhaneddin Matbaası, 1938.

Gerek kadın ve gerek erkek için evlenmede aranacak şartlardan biri ve birincisi soy ve soptur. Hele kadın için cins ve soy işine daha çok ehemmiyet verilir. Soyunda, azıcık şüp’he ve bozukluk olan kızları alan bulunmaz. Bu soy bozukluğu yakın akrabalarda olursa kızları büsbütün kocasız kalır. Çünkü alınacak ve kendisi ile aile kurulacak kız her ne kadar kendisi eyi olsa da günün birinde veyahut herhangi müsait bir hal ve vaziyette soyu icabı kötülüğe, fenalığa meyledeceği kanaatı kuvvetle mevcuttur. Zaten gerek erkek gerek kız çocukları cemiyetin telakki ve an’anesine göre yetiştirmek ana ve babanın ülküsüdür. Bu endişe evlat mühabbetine tekabül eder.

‘Ölürse yer beğensin, ölmezse el beğensin’ denilir ki, bu fıkra bu yoldaki an’aneye olan derin sadakati gösterir. Soysuz, südü bozuk, suyu kaçık, mayası pis gibi an’aneleşen tabirler bu yoldaki kanaat ve hükümlerden doğmuştur.

Köyün bu genel telakki ve an’anesi aksine olarak sülalesi bozuk ve adı çekilen paralı ve zengin kızları alan bulunursa derhal türkü çıkar:

Atımı saldım engine
Damga vurmuşlar dengine
Şimdi itibar güzel ile zengine

Bu ve buna benzer hallerde çıkarılan türküler an’aneleri koruyan ve içtimai nizamı temin eden çok kuvvetli bir vasıtadır. Zira yakılan türkü tam manasile bir mizah ve teşhir olduğundan kendisine türkü yakılan kimseyi çok utandırır ve halkın yüzüne bakamıyacak hale koyar. Oğlana yakılan türkülerle beraber kız için de dedikodular başlar. ‘Kızın ayıbını para örttü’, ‘Çürük taş ile bina yapılmaz’ gibi söylenmeler alabildiğine devam eder. Ve bunların kuracağı ev ve ocak için (temeli bozuk), (kökü kötü) gibi dedikodular halkın dilinden düşmez.

(…)

Buranın halkı nazarında bekar kalmak hiç hoşgörülmez. ‘Bekarlık sultanlıktır’ sözü Türk köylü halkının telakkisine uymaz. Burada onun yerine ‘Bekarın ensesini bit, kazandığını it yer’ atasözü hüküm sürer.

Evlenme zamanı geçen delikanlılar için köylü ve halk: ‘evlenmeyi göze aldıramıyor’, ‘kazanıp ta eve, karıya bakamıyacak’ demeğe ve söylenmeye ve türlü türlü dedikodular
Çıkarmağa başlarlar. Bunlar delikanlı için bir onur meselesi olduğundan böylelikle gençlerin bekar kalmasına cemiyetin an’anesi müsaade etmemiş olur. Ev yapmak, eyi kız almak, çok ağır olan evlenme ve düğün masraflarını yapmak köy genci için büyük bir zaferdir. İşte bu zaferden sonra delikanlı, halkın aile telakkisine göre kurduğu ahenk ve manzumede mevkiini buluyor. Bekar, serseri, sergüzeştçi olanlar bu çerçevenin daima dışında kalır.

Buralarda evlenmek yerine evermek kelimesi kullanılır. Kanaatime göre evermek ev eri yapmak yani tam ev erkeği demek oluyor. Bu da bu telakki ve an’ane içinde pek kolay bir şey değildir. Burada delikanlıların hemen hepsi askerden geldikten sonra evlenirler. Askere gitmeden önce evlenenler azdır. (…) Evlenmelerde kız ile erkeklerin yaşları arasında pek çok fark olmamalıdır. Bazı yaşlı adamlara genç kızlar verilirse hemen türkü yakılır. Aşağıdaki türkü bundan 40 sene evvel genç ve güzel bir kızın ihtiyar birisine verilmesi üzerine çıkmıştır kızın ağzından:

Ana benim nedir suçum
Fırun gibi yanıyor içim
Koca adama verdiğin için

İhtiyar adamın merdivenden inişi
Oynaşırken fırladı gitti dişi
Ben genç iken ihtiyara verdiler
Verdiler de kanıma da girdiler

Dedem ile yatayım
Beşibirlik takayım

Sarı kavunun dilimi
Dedem bunu bilir mi?

Gene gelinlik çağına gelmiş bir kızı daha kendine gelmemiş bir çocuğa vermeleri de hiç uygun görülmez.(…):

Sabah olur çarığını giyemez
Akşam olur ekmeğini yiyemez
Yatar uyur bana bir söz diyemez
Ana beni neden verdin çocuğa
Çocuk bilmez yar almayı kucağa

Sabah olur çocuk gider oyuna
Oyna oynar taş doldurur koynuna
Günahlarım zangin babanın boynuna
Ana beni neden verdin çocuğa
Çocuk bilmez bağlamayı donuna

KIZ ALMA SÜRECİ:

Mahalle ve komşuda bir kadının ve kızın yoldan çıkması da oranın delikanlıları için bir şeref ve haysiyet meselesidir ve civar köy delikanlılarının yanında mahcubiyetlerini mucib olur.

Bu sebepledir ki delikanlılar kendi köylerinden uzak yerlerde yoldan çıkan kadınları getirerek onları metresi gibi yanlarında bulundururlar. Ve ancak bu gibilerle eğlenirler ve cünbüş yaparlar.

(…)

Fakirlik ve zenginlikten evvel alınacak kızda ciddiyet ve terbiye aranır. Zaten ufak bir muhit içinde gerek oğlan gerek kızın herhal ve vaziyeti her vakit bilindiğinden aldanma tehlikesi çok azdır. Düğün ve bayramlardan başka zamanlarda kızıllık, aklık sürme gibi şeyler kullanılmadığı gibi zinetli ve süslü elbiseler de giyilmediğinden kız tabii halile daima ortadadır. Köy ve iş hayatı kızların süslenmelerine ve sirinmelerine manidir de…

Bunun zıddına olarak süse ve eğlenceye heves eden kızlar olursa muhitte kıza karşı bir şüphe uyanır ki bu hal daima kızın alıcıları içinde endişe teşkil eder.

ALINACAK KIZDA ARANILAN VASIFLAR:

Ev işinde ve tertibinde: Evini övdürmeli
Mutbak ve yemek işinde: Pişirdiği yenmeli, yüdüğü geyilmeli (yıkadığı giyilmeli)
Ev iktisadında: Evinin arısı olmalı (biri iki etmeli)
Çalışkanlıkda: elinden her şey bilmeli
Kızlık bekareti: Çok mühimdir. ‘Bey beyliğini verir ama kız kızlığını vermez’ sözü ile kızın kızlığının beyin beyliğinden kralı tacından daha büyük ve kıymetli olduğunu ifade eder.

EVLENECEK ERKEKLERE LAZIM VASIFLAR:

Evlenecek delikanlı işkin evini yaptırır. Kira ile tutulan evde evlenmek onura dokunan bir haldir.(…) Bir de erkek karısını boşamamış olmalı. Bu gibilere rağbet az olur.

Bunlardan başka erkeğin babadan andan kalma mal ve mülkü satmamış olması, zevke düşkün ve müsrif olmaması lazımdır. Zaten ana babadan kalmış malların azını bile satanların halk gözünde mevkii çok küçülür. (…) Atalarından yadigar kalanları saklamayan ve kazanmadan hazırdan yiyen delikanlılara kimse kız vermez.

Bütün bunlar tamam olduktan sonra kızın gizli bir ayıb ve kusuru olup olmadığının incelenmesi kalır. İnceleme çok gizli bir surette ve hiç kimseye hissettirilmesden yapılır. Oğlan tarafından ve kıza en yakın olanlardan bir kadın bu işi görür. Kızın ev hali, odası, yatağı, temizlik ve tertibi de bu incelemeye dahildir. Bu araştırmalar yasanlanma yani kızın alınacağı şayi olmadan yapılır.

(…)

Kızın ağzının kokması ve daha başka kuruları varsa iyice anlamak ve bilmek için bu kadın bir fırsatını ve münasebetini bularak kızla da birlikte yatar.