The lecture-performances are organized in collaboration with the Migrating University of Adam Mickiewicz project, which is on display on October 18th and 19th, 2014, at the Museum of Mickiewicz in Tarlabaşı, Istanbul. Slavs and Tatars will meet Turkish audiences in two locations:
I Utter Other
October 10, 2014, starting at 18:30, SALT Beyoğlu in Istanbul
What does it mean for one "East" to look at another? Can the romanticized romanticize? From Poles in the service of the Tsar to Persian Presbyterians, I Utter Other looks at the curious case of Slavic Orientalism in the Russian Empire and the early USSR.
Slavic Orientalism offers a crucial counterpoint, if not an antecedent, to the received wisdom of Saidian Orientalism. Despite the radical transition from Tsarism to Bolshevism, the study of the East in the East complicates notions of identity politics and knowledge in the service of power, offering a coherent post-colonial critique some 60 years avant la lettre.
The Tranny Tease
October 11, 2014, starting at 17:00, at SALT Ulus in Ankara
Slavs and Tatars presented The Tranny Tease (formerly known as The Transliterative Tease) at Istanbul Modern in April earlier this year. Through the lens of phonetic, semantic, and theological slippage, The Tranny Tease explores the potential for transliteration – the conversion of scripts – as a strategy of resistance and research into notions such as identity politics, colonialism, and faith. The latest lecture-performance in the artists' current cycle of work, The Tranny Tease focuses on the Turkic languages of the former Soviet Union, as well as the eastern and western frontiers of the Turkic sphere, namely Anatolia and Xinjiang/Uighuristan. Lenin believed that the revolution of the east begins with the Latinization of the alphabets of all of the USSR's Muslims.