Two workshops to explore performance art, love

Artist, choreographer and art writer Ayça Ceylan produces space-specific experiments about our perception processes by combining disciplines such as dance, psychology, literature and technology. These experiments are mostly comprised of performances and workshops, and soon Ceylan will host two workshops in Istanbul. The workshop "Cover, fill, bury, what is love?" within the body of Narmanlı Sanat, located in the historical Narmanlı apartment in the Teşvikiye neighborhood of Istanbul, will take place from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 9, under the direction of Ceylan.

The workshop is an interactive memory event to explore how we perceive love and consolation. Participants are being invited on an intellectual journey through various definitions of love. Rituals, descriptions of love in various cultures, stories and ordo amoris tea, a herbal tea of licorice root, chamomile, oxtongue and anise, will accompany the participants on the timeless journey. The tea is the artist's family recipe and derives its name from the concept of the "order of love," which Saint Augustine describes as the short and true definition of virtue. At the end of the workshop, each participant will write a love letter.

Before starting the workshop, there will be a tour of the Bilge Alkor Collection House with Duygu Barlas in which the themes of love and the lack of love addressed in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," written and staged by Shakespeare in 1594-1595, and "Winterreise" ("Winter Journey") composed by Franz Schubert will be discussed.

The second workshop prepared by Ceylan is "So, What Is That Performance Art?" The four-week workshop will be held at Narmanlı Sanat on Thursdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., from Feb. 6 to Feb. 27. At the workshop, the participants will be informed about the daily performances of rituals in the present day, the history of performance art, the types of performance art and the methods of analysis of these genres as well as the issues we should pay attention to when constructing a performance. At the end of the workshop, participants will experience a physical memory survey on how the body and space make sense of each other and structure each other.

They will also learn how to read a performance, the effects of Christianity and Islam on body perception, the reflections of the social movements in the 1960s-1970s on performance art, the interaction between video art and performance art, and how to construct a performance at the end of this event. To register and learn more detailed information, you can visit www.narmanlisanat.com.