029 Urban Songline (Song For Beyaz Gül), 2015 – Istanbul Biennale, Parallel Event, Chapel of the Dutch Consulate, Istanbul, Turkey

This is a song for Beyaz Gül, the mistress of Cornelis Calkoen who died of a broken heart when the Ambassador was relocated in 1743 and didn’t return as he passed away before he could. This song is to accompany Beyaz Gül on her long nights wandering the gardens where she is still occasionally been seen. Using the pipes of the disused organ of the chapel on the grounds of the embassy a haunting wail sounds for the return of her beloved.

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Part of the project Urban Songlines, a utopian/dystopian series of collaborative translations of buildings, urban structures and public spaces into music through site-specific sound-generation. These performances are a way of connecting to places by listening to them as well as a research into how we use and experience the public domain and to what degree we can claim ownership over it, discussing notions of inclusion, becoming and belonging.

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Performance by Okan Kaya, Serkan Emre Çiftçi, Can Ömer Uygan, Fehmi Mert Alatan & Allard van Hoorn.

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This performance was generously supported by the Dutch Consulate of the Netherlands in Istanbul