Speak to the Water, 2021/2022
Performance
Diren Demir
The performance is based on the belief that the effect and emotional state of bad dreams can be healed by explaining it to the water. This belief has been a part of the Anatolian paganism and shamanism. Diren uses the wine, as a symbol of the subconscious, dreams, secrets, unknown and deep knowledge. Diren reads various fragments of the dream diaries that they have been recording since 2012. Narrationing their dreams into the red wine, Diren invents a dream library consisting of wine glasses. Each glass is labeled with the date of the dream it was recited. Each dream is then offered to the audience to drink. The narration of each dream is added to the sounds that increase with this offering. The end of the performance becomes an archive where all the dreams appear together on the loudspeakers, filling the space with sound and wine. The area revealed by the performance realizes the disclosure of the subconscious and opens a space for psychoanalytic readings, providing a research area for experimental archiving techniques.
Under The Bridge Festival, Kunstbrücke am Wildenbruch Neükölln Berlin, 2022
tARTtu pood Gallery, Tartu, Estonia, 2022
Ostavinska Gallery, Belgrade, Serbia, 2021
“Speak to the Water ” aims to be a source for psychoanalytic research. Project is published as a scientific book, this is also a personal “dream archive”. This book stood in the center of each presentation of the performance, audience were allowed to participate and read the book. And it has published only as a one copy. Publishing includes Diren’s dreams recorded by them since 2012 non-stop, dream interpretations, different approaches and analyzes from psychoanalysts. This copy was exhibited in Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach.
Diren Demir 