Portrait Begum Erciyas Bea Borgers 200515 074816

Begüm Erciyas

Begüm Erciyas was born 1982 in Ankara / Turkey.

While stu­dying mole­cu­lar bio­lo­gy and gene­tics in Ankara, Begüm Erciyas got invol­ved in various dan­ce pro­jects in Turkey and beca­me part of [labo­ra­tu­ar], a per­for­ming arts research and pro­ject group. Later, she stu­died at the Salzburg Experimental Academy of Dance in Austria. She was artist-in-resi­den­ce at Akademie Schloss Solitude in 200708, at K3- Zentrum für Choreographie Hamburg in 2009 and at the Villa Kamogawa / Goethe Institute Kyoto in 2014.

Between 2014 – 2016, Begüm was com­mit­ted to a lon­ger research peri­od around one’s own voi­ce. She wan­ted to make a per­for­man­ce that is expe­rien­ced in com­ple­te soli­tu­de, a per­for­man­ce that hap­pens bet­ween one­self and one’s own voi­ce. The resul­ting per­for­man­ce Voicing Pieces(2016) has kept her busy until now.

From 2018 until 2020, she has been researching the topic of arti­fi­ci­al inti­ma­cies, whi­le con­ti­nuing the search for new the­a­tri­cal for­mats that would allow audien­ce to have a soli­ta­ry expe­rien­ce. In Pillow Talk (2019), the audien­ce is invi­ted to enga­ge in a con­ver­sa­ti­on with an arti­fi­ci­al voi­ce coming from a pil­low, whi­le being immer­sed in a lar­ge-sca­le col­lec­ti­ve scenography.

In 2020, during the lock­down, she got inte­rested in the ten­si­on bet­ween iso­la­ti­on and poli­ti­cal col­lec­ti­vi­ty in Sam Melville’s let­ters writ­ten in pri­son. In Letters from Attica, the frag­men­ted text is pas­sed on from mouth to mouth, from audien­ce to audien­ce, in public space.

At the moment, Begüm is con­ti­nuing to work out­doors on Forest Silent Gathering, which will pre­mie­re in Spring 2022 in a forest in Antwerp and have fur­ther pre­sen­ta­ti­ons in dif­fe­rent forests throug­hout Europe.