Tarlabaşı

Director: Cynthia Madansky
Dance: Idil Kemer
Music: Cenk Ergün
Video ◊ 6 min.

With Tarlabaşı Cynthia Madansky interrogates and challenges a changing Istanbul over a decade since her first project in the city, Devotion (2003). As the earlier film observed the negotiation of a nation’s turn towards autocracy and neoliberal economics, Tarlabaşı traces these developments and advancements as they’ve increased in pace and ferocity. In particular, the film focuses on the city’s downtown, recently ravaged by the unsuccessful state-sponsored efforts to gentrify the district in the name of “development” or “urban renewal”. Whereas Devotion was guided by voice, here Madansky collaborates with dancer Idil Kemer to ground the devastated environment in a body, while composer Cenk Ergün contributes a raw and evocative score. Against images of scaffolding, empty lots, and storefronts Kemer not only moves her body in a series of mundane gestures—reaching, bending over—but also, repeatedly, remains still and immobile—an act of defiance and fortitude.