Video performance 3 Channel Video Installation 2016

The artist Nezaket Ekici refers to the poems of her father Ziya Ekici (born 1937 in Turkey, died 1995 in Duisburg) from his poetry collection "Balik Bastian Kokar/Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopf her".

She reads an original poem by her father in three languages: Turkish, German and English. She has translated the poems herself into German and English. Her father wrote these poems in Duisburg in 1983. He came to Duisburg as a „guest worker“ in 1970 and the family joined him in Duisburg in 1973. The father had first worked in a factory and later resumed his original teaching profession, teaching Turkish classes in the primary school in Duisburg. In his poems, her father worked on the first generation of guest workers in Germany, covering the topics around: Migration, longing, home, flight, love, family, etc. ?Especially the poem "Conceited European" is about not being integrated as a Turkish citizen in Germany and Europe at that time. These topics from the 80s, which her father captured in his poems, are highly topical today and applicable to today's refugee problem. Are these people integrated today or do they live together in European ghettos? To what extent is integration achieved or are the refugees only temporary people, like the guest workers of the 60/70/years...

By reading the poem in a video performance, the artist transforms her father's poetry in terms of time and content. She creates more than that through her treatment of her own history, which is at the same time the history of Germany, which is a tested stone from which it is possible to understand, how the European Union of today is struggling for a concept for integration and anti-nationalism.

Performed live for the first time, „50 years of guest workers anniversary“, Fiction Occident, Tophane Istanbul 2011

special Thanks to Elmas Ekici and Dudu Ekici

Camera, microphone, sound, spotlights, costumes, dark room

HD MP4 16:9 each 1,50 min. sound, colour

Camera, Editing and Videostills: Branka Pavlovic