Sîpan Sezgin Tekin

Sîpan Sezgin Tekin – THE ‘CUD / CÛD’

Reserve your ticket

In The Cud, Tekin investigates whether audiences can connect with narrative in unfamiliar languages, probing performativity of language beyond cognitive boundaries, between metaphor and reality. Tekin shares the story of a wild mountain goat, known as Ibex, bringing together his investigations into multilingualism, the performativity of language, and sonic aspects of language. Wild mountain goats are mythological and sacred animals. However, the intention here goes beyond using them as a metaphor. It aims to question the identity-lessness and independence of both Ibex and the human species, by assuming the reality that the physical, biological, and vital conditions can influence each other on a conceptual and physical level.

The Cud is an installation that begins with a lecture on the anatomical and vital conditions of the goats. It then tells the story of two goats surviving a genocide and fleeing to a modern city, attempting to adapt to urban life and humanization while rebelling against their departure from their essence and their natural habitat. The Mountain Goat serves as a symbol of the identity-less subject, embodying abstract freedom through the de-identification of the self. The Cud bridges research presentations with lecture performances, investigating aspects surrounding political content and performative structures.

The Cud is presented as an experimental narrative, showing transitions between disrupting conventional language structures and immersing audiences in the sensory experience of unfamiliar linguistic embodiment. The Cud is considered as a reaction to, among other concepts, segregating forces of identity, nationality, nationhood, race, gender, and color, conceptualized linguistically. This performance sees the rumination of the digestive system, consumption, grinding, and perhaps the regurgitation of this conceptual garbage dump, as an attempt to question and challenge these divisive elements. Perhaps it offers a suggestion for relating to language and concepts on a different level...

Let me sing you a story...
A story
Less
Identity
Land
Border
Less
I
Bex
Will tell you a story
Only to you
Will you chew it for I?
For bex?
Will you chew them?

Sîpan Sezgin Tekin (Amed/Kurdistan 1996 – TR/NL) is a performer, theatre maker, and storyteller. As an artist and nomad, Tekin's quest for meaning takes shape through a rich blend of performance, music, language, sound, light, and documentary rooted in an oral tradition of narrative and storytelling. The work offers dynamic reflections of political and existential realities, using mythological and real stories to create experimental narrative performances that blur the lines between fiction and reality. By doing so, Tekin focuses on the political dynamics of language as a power dynamic, exploring multilingualism and the embodiment of language in performance in terms of accessibility and narrative diversity. His work is an ongoing research of embodied communicative and sensory potential of language use in order to create experiential theatrical and performative situations.

Tekin delves into the physicality of language with his experimental narrative form. Through an ever-evolving production process, he blurs the lines between reality and interpretation, inviting audiences to explore the nuances of language and narrative forms. Tekin invites the audience to establish a somatic and sensory relationship through performance that takes the form of an experimental narrative, drawing from music, documentary, choreography, singing and oral storytelling and shifting between undergoing structural disruption of common language and evolving into sensory experiences of an unfamiliar language and the embodiment of it. Considering the impact of identity politics in both Turkey and the Netherlands, Tekin believes there is an indirect relationship between identity distinctions and the conceptual development and usage of language. Therefore, he adopts an approach that explores, both artistically and personally, the idea of, what he calls: 'subject without identity’ or ‘identity-less subject’ in performance. During the process, Tekin, as a performer, surrenders in full dedication of the body in transformation, towards the inner self of another species.

Credits

Direction and concept: Sîpan Sezgin Tekin; Performers: Sîpan Sezgin Tekin, Roleda Yunus Bilir, Ira Brand; Music and sound design: Roleda Yunus Bilir; Text: Ira Brand, Sîpan Sezgin Tekin; Dramaturgy: Katja Hieminga; Choreography and movement: Sassand Saghar Yaghmaı, Laura Boser; Stage and costume: Andrea van der Kuil; Assistants: Yusuf Bilir, Yusuf Şengül; Documentary: Felat Erkozan