Story of an Envelope, 2023
Participatory Sound Installation
Diren Demir
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One of the similar steps towards rendering the democracy system dysfunctional in many geographies where dictatorship mechanisms are seen is to manipulate individual votes and election statistics. Dictatorship regimes are on the way to gather power, and Democracy is used as a cover to hide the toxic nature of power in all geographies where it is dysfunctional. The “democratic duty” that each voter performs by placing their vote in the ballot boxes is always kept in an envelope. In the “Story of an Envelope” project, the envelope is full of life stories and fragmants from daily life that tell the difficulties faced by minorities in geographies where democracy is degenerating. These contents were gathered by activists living in Turkey, Iran, Honk-Kong etc.
Cross-sections of the daily lives of displaced individuals who face discrimination due to gender and orientation minorities, ethnic origin, belief and language are conveyed from a transnational perspective, and addressed to the audience through their own voices.
The repair of the broken reality takes place through the individual and collective empathy that this confrontation area develops. Because the first thing to do on the way to repair the broken system is to re-disclose and re-define what the reality is. In this way, the project resorts to making the individual memories of minorities visible through their daily life stories, against the fact that individual or collective memory destruction is carried on systematically on them.
Diren Demir 