05/01/2024 | Writer: Gözde Demirbilek
The latest issue of the peer-reviewed queer studies journal Kaos Q+ was launched with the file “Death, Mourning and Ghosts” yesterday evening, at Frankeştayn Bookstore in Istanbul
The latest issue of the peer-reviewed queer studies journal Kaos Q+ was launched with the file “Death, Mourning and Ghosts” yesterday evening, at Frankeştayn Bookstore in Istanbul.
The event was attended by Dr. Aslı Zengin, editor-in-chief Aylime Aslı Demir and writers Birgül Karakaş, Jiyan Andiç, Ömer Tevfik Erten and Gizem Aksu.
Aylime Aslı Demir made a speech and narrated the process of getting Kaos Q+ started. Demir shared the dream of Kaos Q+ after the social movements that accelerated in 2013, of a peer-reviewed journal where students in academia can publish their articles on queer theory, critique of heterosexism and alternative politics.
Dr. Aslı Zengin, the issue’s editor, said the following about their working process on “Death, Mourning and Ghosts”:
“It is significant that this event is taking place in Frankeştayn. In this issue we have been working on the question of how death can become something productive rather than an end. We know the sociality of death, but there is also a normativity established within this field. What are the sovereignties that organize this field? What is our place in the field of death and the mourning that follows it? Are we on the inside or on the outside of this sovereign norm? To focus on what death tells us, we wanted to bring a queer trans perspective to the issue. What does it mean to have an erasure of queer lives through death? What is your position within norms, what is your power and limitations; what is given to you and what is not? And of course there is the aftermath of death, the organization of grief. The ghosts gain in importance. What does it mean that all stories collapse when we encounter a queer ghost? Death also has a lot to do with those who are left behind, it also has a lot to do with how to build a future from there. These are the questions we dwelled on.”
Following Zengin, Gizem Aksu, writer of the article titled “9/8fight41: Dansın, Dayanışmanın Doğurduklarına; Gözden Gözenekleşmeye Geçebilen Bedenselliklere (What dance and solidarity create; corporeality that can pass from eye to pore)” took the floor and shared the story of the film named “9/8fight41”:
“If you watch the film, you will see that this is my film about a dance with a ghost who lived in Germany and was stripped of his championship title because he boxed ‘by dancing like a Gypsy’. I think that the question ‘How to befriend a queer ghost?’ is fed by queer experiences. The way I feel and memorize my lost friends; Zeliş, Boysan, were experiences fed by being a queer feminist in Turkey. Johann Rukeli Trollmann, a boxer of Sinti-Roma origin, was actually a hero who was murdered by the Nazis. After seeing his memorial, the punches I threw for Rukeli were personal experiences, but I wanted to look at how resistance, unity, solidarity and sensation are built. And I brought that story to Istanbul. We are going through a very intense physical experience here, an experience that multiplies and transforms. I think it is important for me to be able to go from the eye to the pore, to touch our wounds and at the same time to get mutual agreement. As a political proposal, I would like to imagine an activism that shows the permeability of this eye, in which we feel with all our pores and do not judge each other from the point where we look at each other.”
After Aksu, Ömer Tevfik Erten took the floor and talked about their story “Latif”:
“I will tell you about my process of writing Latif: With the pandemic and the bans, I thought my family home was not important to me. I moved to Ankara to live with someone I met a month ago and flirted with. At first it seemed like it would be a short time, but when it became clear that the pandemic would last longer, I stayed with him in Ankara for 7 months. It was during this time that I realized that I had to mourn; I had the feeling that I had to mourn my existence. We worked on a series of photographs with him for a while. In that series, one day I took a picture where his head was missing because of the effect of perspective. That was actually the starting point for my story ‘Latif’. I created a ghost based on that photo. It was because I was lonely and Latif was a very good coping mechanism for me. When I was writing the story, I started to write an intertextual story, because I was thinking about who we had lost that year, what I was reading and listening to, who was alleviating my loneliness. I stopped at some point because the mourning process works in different ways for all of us and I am still trying to come out of that mourning. Now I am back in the throes of grief.”
Following Erten, Jiyan Andiç and Birgül Karakaş, co-authors of the article “’You Film but You Don’t Broadcast’ or How Do You Broadcast: Hande Kader Murder in Digital Newspaper News”, Jiyan Andiç and Birgül Karakaş took the floor. Jiyan began by talking about the effect of linking death and mourning through objects:
“I was in Diyarbakır in the last few weeks, I am from Diyarbakır and the day I arrived to Diyarbakır was the day of the murder of mother Taybet. It was a coincidence. As soon as I entered the house, there is a room where I put my things, I went in to put the bag down and I saw a freezer. At that moment my mother came up to me, she smiled and told me that they had recently bought it, but I couldn’t say anything. After a while my mother realized why I wasn’t talking and we went into the kitchen. That day we were actually remembering Cemile, who was killed by the state in Şırnak and whose family kept her body in the freezer for 11 days. What we witnessed there was the transformation of an object into an instrument of mourning. The introduction of the title of the article, from Hande Kader’s mouth, ‘You film but you don’t broadcast’, were the three conclusions we reached while working: This death was not treated as a social event, the commemoration of the murder was in passive language and the responsibility was attributed to the deceased. We see this in both Cemile and Hande, we are able to find an alliance in death.”
And Birgül said that Jiyan had encouraged her in her previous writings and that this work was important in terms of intersectionality in the field of media, which she had been thinking about:
“On the one hand, there is something related to being able to experience a common emotion, which Jiyan talks about, and on the other hand, not being able to share it in any way. We noticed this once again when we examined how the newspapers reported the news of Hande Kader’s murder. When we filtered the media with the things we have in common, we witnessed that we can find common ground on certain issues, and we noticed some efforts in favor of rights-based journalism, and they are actually being criticised in a certain way. In particular, in analyzing the news produced on the deaths and murders of trans women and sex workers, we have moved forward with commonalities of concern and emotion.”
The event was completed following the conversation with the participants.
Translation: Selma Koçak
Tags: arts and culture, life
