MEZOPART PERFORMANCE SHOW AS A SIDE EVENT WITHIN THE MARDIN BIENNIAL

May 20, 2018 Mardin Museum Archaeopark Area

mezopArt / SEKMELER

"Rise up in the hidden current,
Set out on the road to return home,
Towards your true nature.
And greet  
The other forms of yourself waiting there.  

There, in your heart,  
All the wise ones sit around the fire,  
Conversing."  

Hafiz-i Shirazi  

I look up at the vastness of the Higher Self above me. I look down at the earth flowing beneath my feet, my home. I look inside myself, the tranquility of being here for a moment, then setting out to reach another moment, never quite arriving, the longing for a place I once knew, knew and forgot. With every leap, I draw closer and then recede. I am both on the ground and in the air. I am both here and beyond. A strange riddle: I am in the game.

Each game is a vast ocean that produces hundreds of meanings as we enter it, meanings that require a sense beyond words to grasp. As mezopArt, we started with Hopscotch, one of the most ancient of these games, and this time we set out to uncover its secret in a different way.

First of all, the game of Sek Sek, whose origin and inventor are unknown, has been played in the East and West of the world, even in the most ancient civilizations. The remains of some Sek Sek drawings, symbolizing the stages of human life and the steps of evolution, are of a kind that would make the Tree of Life in Kabbalah jealous.

The Steps approach Sek Sek as a cycle of life. Could it be a coincidence that the meeting place is the city of Mardin, as we intend to combine the endlessness of the Sek Sek game, which returns to where it began and constantly restarts for the next stage, with the cyclical nature of Eastern philosophy? Could the sky gate and heaven gate found in Mardin's four-iwan structures, which are believed to represent the universe, and the sky and heaven houses found in some hopscotch drawings be different expressions of a similar quest?

Participants:

Artists: Berna Efeoğlu, Faysal Macit, İlkay Bilgiç, Kamyar Houbakht, Mahasti Kia, Seda Seyrek, Şirin Öten