Maps For A War Tourist, Part 2 (2018)
Performance; live tortoise, webcams, printed silk, paper, plexi-glass, LEDs, leather falcon mask.
Duration: 1hr.
Performed, JACK 2018.
Artists: Kathryn Hamilton, Kelsea Martin, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptise, Cyrus Moshrefi, Juan Betancurth
For Ayse Deniz Karacagil, Destan Temmuz.
Maps For A War Tourist is an live-film and live-audio essay created to follow the rhythms and pace of a tortoise. Research and document-based, it is dedicated to, and follows the story of, a young turkish woman named Ayse Deniz Karacagil, who became an icon of the resistance, political prisoner, armed militant, and finally martyr fighting in Syria. In parallel to Deniz's story, Maps considers myths, legends and movements connected to the tortoise: from the death of Aeschylus via falling tortoise, to the Czech anti-fascist underground in the Second World War, who called for a resistance based on slowing down, and used the image of the tortoise as their symbol.
Photos by Burak Arikan and Stephen Straub
Maps For A War Tourist, Part 1 (2017)
Performance; live tortoises, webcams, contact mics, printed silk, paper, miniature stage constructed from plywood and plexi-glass, model trees, LEDs.
Duration: 1.20hr.
Performed, Mount Tremper Arts, May 2017; Dixon Place, New York, June 2017.
Artists: Kathryn Hamilton, Kelsea Martin, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptise, Cyrus Moshrefi, Bruce Steinberg and Jeremy M. Barker.
For Ayse Deniz Karacagil, Destan Temmuz.
Photographs from the Dixon Place performance, 2017 by Jill Steinberg
Reviews: "fascinating, simultaneously visceral and avant-garde" Jon Sobel, Blogcritics
"Here, the tensions between the show that might have been and the work actually on display are compelling, the botches inevitable and poignant. (In this way, the piece stands as a more somber companion to lighthearted experiments by the likes of Forced Entertainment and Gob Squad.)" Alexis Soloski, New York Times
"Maps for a War Tourist, like all of Sister Sylvester’s work, is a complex, deeply reflective work that weaves together strands of the personal, political and mythological with deft subtlety." Katy Einerson, Culturebot
"The piece traces the literal lines and the ephemeral trajectories of these artists lives. From pen on paper, to digital mapping apps, to the haunted images our minds associate with places, there are many ways we record our movement in space. Theater is certainly another. Maps makes an effort to emphasize that life is full of these complex, contradictory paths." Nicole Serratore, Exeunt
Hand drawn maps showing routes taken from Turkey to the PKK women's base in Qandil, Iraq
Three slide shows / tortoise stories from the performance:
An interview with the mother and grandmother of Ayse Deniz Karacagil, screened as a part of the performance:
Maps for a War Tourist was co-produced by Mount Tremper Arts and Dixon Place.