Wednesday morning is divided into above and below. The separation occurs just before the eleventh hour on Marienplatz, while Çağlar Yiğitoğulları sits on the floor in front of Ludwig Beck’s shop, pauses for a moment and then rolls onto the ground towards the Marian Column. It runs slowly, not even dead in a row. Moving in zigzag lines, Yiğitoğulları pulls his head and rolls over the shoulder blades from left to right. Then he lies on his back, leans to one side, pulls his legs, turns around, and lands on his back again. Under it are paving stones in the square, and above them they begin to fall. Yiğitoğulları is varied, sits and propels himself with his hands and heels. Stubbornly and stubbornly, despite the hustle and bustle of the city center, he was strangely lonely, slowly crawling on the ground.
Yiğitoğullarıs Painful Movement is an art project by Kammerspiele. The performer set it up for ten days, and it will run until Thursday. On the third day of his performance, he made his way through Marienplatz and then towards Stachus. Yiğitoğulları has a delicate yet well trained stature. However, after two days, he already feels “completely helpless,” he says. You can hardly tell about it on Marienplatz. The 43-year-old is outside, roughly in the technical tunnel, although in reality he creeps naturally across the ground. And this gets wet and damp, and it’s raining, Yiğitoğulları leaves traces because his cotton clothes absorb moisture from the paving stones. Its effects can be seen for a while before the rain makes them disappear again.
In April, Münchner Kammerspiele announced that a performer from Turkey had acquired one of four residences in the city. 124 groups and individual artists bid for the tender. Yiğitoğulları presented his idea that he wanted to explore the rolling city on earth and document this in a movie. In this way, he deals with the community of his adopted country and his role in it. Yiğitoğulları, a permanent member of the Istanbul City Theater troupe and was on his way internationally with his performances, decided to leave his homeland for political reasons in 2017. In Germany he has a temporary residence permit. He says it remains uncertain whether he will be able to survive permanently.
Despite all the ordeals – especially weather-related ones – Yiğitoğulları continued to cross Marienplatz this morning to perform. The effect of this movement is amazing. Anyone sitting alone on the floor of downtown and automatically letting in childhood seems to slide too far into the social hierarchy. There, where Yiğitoğulları rolls and crawls, the arch in which pedestrians usually walk around its species is larger. They mostly caught Yiğitoğulları shortly before then and then drew their curve, their gaze directed elsewhere. For many, some kind of relief occurs soon afterward. And that’s when they discovered Zoe Schderer. Accompany the performer on his way with the camera. The film should come out of their filming. Even if not everyone deciphered the interaction between crawl and camera as a work of art, responsibility could be delegated to people on the ground once Schmederer focused.
“They see me, but they don’t look at me,” says Yiğitoğulları. “Obviously, you are changing your line of sight.” However, some may also provide help. However, these are only short connections. Yiğitoğulları indicates that everything is fine. “I’m not in the mood to talk while I’m performing,” he says. He still wanted it: a reaction. Anyone who changes course, changes direction of vision, also reacts. He believes that his performance, which he considered for Munich, will also succeed elsewhere. Within Europe, where social classes are severely separated from one another. Yiğitoğulları wishes to raise awareness of the lower class, “another level of struggle that is not often seen.”
Even when many look the other way, there are other reactions as well. These look like rays of light. There is, for example, a family man who suddenly comes to you and asks if you belong to this man, what he is doing there, and if he needs help. The answer seems to be an art project and that The Man on Earth is an actor, calming him for now. But then, his gaze followed Yigitogulari’s path, and he fell on passers-by with tears flashing in his eyes. “How did we get it this way? We already have everything. Why can’t we help others?”
The confrontation in the pedestrian zone is of course an immediate confrontation, not a confrontation for which you are preparing like going to the theater. The idea is not new. In the 1960s, Valley Export drove her partner Peter Whipple through Vienna on all four rides. But ignore this: Yiğitoğulları’s performance is strong because it makes the separation between top and bottom very clear, also in a metaphorical sense. He does not urge people to pay attention to him, rather he just gazes for a while. Most of them did not accept the offer.
The rain stopped in the meantime. The floor dries up quickly. Now Yiğitoğulları presses the moisture of his clothes into the stones. His route already takes nearly an hour. He pushes himself forward with tension, repeatedly slowing down for a moment. Physically, Yiğitoğulları goes to the extreme in his performance, says Munich-based musician and organizer Tuncay Akar. He escorts the 43-year-old across town to protect him in danger areas, for example when a garbage truck in a pedestrian zone approaches dangerously close to the man on the ground. Akar has known Yiğitoğulları for years and brought him to Munich for art projects.
While Akar cares and assists his fellow artist, there is also opposite behavior in the pedestrian zone. It is an almost ridiculous confrontation. A young woman stands near Michaelskirche with her cellphone held in her hand held up, taking pictures for several minutes. Yiğitoğulları crawls in his direction in time, meter by meter. The photographer continues to check her photo, holding the cell phone again. Yiğitoğulları invisibly slides at its feet. In fact there has to be some kind of reaction, a step back, a look, but: nothing. It is as if Çağlar Yiğitoğulları did not exist. A bitter moment reveals that there is something more humiliating than looking away, which is: not even looking. The family’s now grieving father’s words resonate again: How did we come to be like this?
“Çağlar Yiğitoğulları: On the ground” will be broadcast live on Friday, May 29, at 7 pm at 7 pm. www.muenchner-kammerspiele.de
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