“A Dinner With Friends” is a video of a participation art experience and also the first exhibition of mine. The exhibition took place at Bilsart Gallery in 2019 and curated by Aslı Seven.

 

I chose four of my friends who doesn’t know each other and ask them to gather in a house and cook together. What makes this dining event special is that after some point the dinner was about to turn into a some sort of ritual. This “imaginary ritual” became an interesting experience for me and my friends. The video consist of the recordings taken from the flow of that day.  Except some key points of the ritual (like praying over the dinner) everything has performed naturally and spontaneously by the participants.

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“A Dinner With Friends” targets to open a conversation about language, power and oral drives. Conversations in the video occurs around a word called Bekâ which means “continuity” in Turkish. This word also used as the continuity of the state to emphasize the power of it. Subjects such as Bekâ, death and immortality, words and power are all discussed by the participants. With the experience of the ritual, the language itself made by oral drives is confronted with different oral drives such as eating and taking pleasure.

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By domination of language is transformed into banquet and ecstasy, a new and creative space is tried to be established in the present symbolic order.