Göksu Kunak

Welcome to AN(A)KARA, a degenerated utopia as a sci-fi TV variety show, presented by Göksu Kunak. AN(A)KARA explores the late modernity of Turkey, with particular focus on the city of Ankara and the bodies of the neoliberal TV-presenters – who as monumental statues embody the nationalist ideologies and act as propaganda instruments. Göksu Kunak wants to overturn the statue of the young and athletic NEW MAN and replace it with shapewear underwear. The performance also explores the shift in a concept of time: from kismet, the idea that fate determines someone’s path, to the clocked, rapid pace of modernity and the friction in between.
In AN(A)KARA the memories and confusion of a Muslim child appear as voices and objects that speak from a past of the nineteen eighties and nineties. Whilst the performance offers an overview of this significant era for Turkey, Göksu Kunak simultaneously tackles the clichés and clashes between the East and the West and the ever-present (self-)censorship.

Göksu Kunak (Ankara, 1985) is a writer, performer and theatre maker based in Berlin. Göksu's interest lies in queer methodologies (especially chronopolitics) and hybrid texts that deal with the performative lingo(s) of contemporary lifestyles. Under the influence of the Arabesque culture and the late modern era, Göksu imagines new situations based on real-life encounters that address the problems of heteropatriarchal structures.

"The stage is simply an extension of my reality, of my lived experience. It’s certainly a crafted space and time, a curated space, but I feel the way in which we’re positioning certain images, certain questions, certain intimacies are rising naturally out of the lived experience. What it means to create a community together to be in real dialogue, exchange and to crystallize those moments. This is how I’m learning and redirecting my practice now." - in conversation with Jaamile Olawale Kosoko, Sophiensaele Berlin