Şafak Çatalbaş

L’espace – Text on the wall – Narrative Quotes

01/11/2013

L’espace, 2013, installation, detail
“Bufferzone: Check Point” exhibition, Apartment Project, DEPO, İstanbul, 2013

Le narrateur: What’s that big building? asked Odile.

Cengiz: Most people beaten, humiliated, abused and kicked out of this building by police last week have been traumatised. They are 16, 17 years old and they will never forget it. We are older. We’ve seen brutality before and can digest it. For them, it’s a shock.

Dreamer 1: Try to be the record of “Bande à part”.

Dreamer 2: What record?

Dreamer 3: You’ve seen Bande à part, haven’t you?

Le narrateur: Arthur said they’d wait for night to do the job, out of respect for second-rate thrillers.

Franz: Sometimes, if you don’t hide stuff, nobody notices. I read that in an American book.
Dreamer 1: You’re right.

[Running through the Lokmacı]
Le narrateur: Arthur, Franz and Odile beat Jimmy Johnson by two seconds.
Le narrateur: A group of youngsters embraced the Movement because it provided a space to question existing norms.

Kostis: For us, the Cyprus problem ended when we all met here and created this space in the buffer zone.
Arthur: The situation couldn’t be clearer. But what’s not clear is the part I’ll be playing.

Cengiz: It’s not just fun and games here, it’s very serious. We declared that we have already established peace and we are living it, living the solution.

Dreamer 1: So?
Dreamer 2: So if I get caught, I get deported.

Le narrateur: Well, don’t worry, little man, we’re not going to get caught. We are not the ones who disturb the peace by being here, it’s the two banana republics and their efendi (master) in the middle, said Kostis.

Cengiz: The real walls are in the mind. They say the United Nations is a peace force. They’ve been a peace force for 50 years here and nothing happened. What kind of peace is this? It’s just a ceasefire. The United Nations divides nations, divides people.

Le narrateur: Franz thinks of everything and nothing. He wonders if the world is becoming a dream or if the dream is becoming the world.

Le narrateur: Through organising events, using each person’s skills to good effect and contributions, the group has survived a very cold winter in tents in an effort to make their point.

Kostis: We’ve created an alternative model of co-existence in Cyprus. When we all met here, we didn’t know each other. Everyday life would create problems for anybody, but we tried to find ways to incorporate every difference in the space we were living. We’re putting new foundations for society.

Odile: All that is new is, by that fact, automatically traditional.
Dreamer 1: And if we beat their record…

Dreamer 2: It’s a movie!

Madame Victoria: I hope you go to class and not to the movies.

Odile: I hate movies.

Cengiz: I realised what we were told in schools about us and them was an illusion. The only way for us is to move forward. I cannot wait.

Dreamer 1: [Speaking French] You know what I’m thinking?

Dreamer 2: What?

Franz: A minute of silence can last a long time… a whole eternity.