32/ mum #4 (suyun gözünü bulana dek)  / candle #4 (until finding the source of the water)

2017-2019

By Zeynep Kayan and Özgür Atlagan
Duration: 4:27 min.
Recommended by Naz Cuguoğlu

How does this work investigate “hope?”
Hope is in coming together and holding the candle for each other in the dark—it is collaboration and camaraderie. It is about knowing that one will be there for the other, even when one's candle dies out. Hope is difficult to find, easy to lose, hard to rebuild. But once there is one to light it back with a candle, then it will go on and on—an endless loop between learned helplessness and joy of life. Hope is in showing our vulnerabilities as we expose the bare skins of our arms, sometimes at all costs.

About the work:
“‘Any activity, if done in a concentrated fashion, makes one more awake […]’ wrote Fromm. Mum #4 is maybe an exercise of staying awake, staying awake to each other, or to listening to each other. An act of patience; breathing in and blowing out. Breath in blow out light the candle up, breath in blow out light it up, breath in and blow the candle out and light the candle up, and breathinblowoutlightitup, and then brthnblwtlght it up.

The video is one of the several that the act of lighting-it-up-and-blowing-it-out executed in different choreographies. This act later shifted into a performance for which we stood in a simple structure covered with black cloth, making our hands visible to the audience through a window cut in the cloth. In front of the structure there laid a piece of cloth, which read ‘until finding the source of the water.’ breathinblowoutlightitupuntilfindingthesourceofthewater….” —Zeynep Kayan and Özgür Atlagan