ARTUN ALASKA ARASLI

Photo by Marjolein Vogels

During his residency Artun aimed to build an exhibition through a series of immaterial utterings and propositions. He created an ekphrastic revival of ideas that are fading away and string them together to constitute a coherent whole—in a monologue performed by the artist for the very first time. 

Talk 

On September 14, Artun Alaska Arasli had an open, generative discussion with curator Anik Fournier (If I Can’t Dance, I Don’t Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution) and artist Billy Mullaney on verbal descriptions of artworks and the concept of the gimmick. 

Presentation

On September 23, Artun Alaska Arasli closed his residency with a frantic spoken performance,  somewhere between a poem and an ekphrastic search for an exhibit of multiple objects and moments that were not there.

Using the tricks of theatre, tropes and late-night entertainment and addressing both the audience and himself, Arasli weaved different thoughts and sentiments together to create forced relations that seemed to be going nowhere and everywhere at once.


Watch AFTER MOVIE BAU AIR 2022

'The context of a performing arts residency was completely unique for me. This short but extremely fruitful residency BAU opened my eyes to different modes of thinking within my work. It is very difficult to compare to anything else I've done previously, but I benefited immensely from the concentrated time, the funding, and the support of the BAU team. The residency was essential for experimentation, and it allowed me to try, for the very first time ever, something I've been wanting to do in my artistic practice: to write, rehearse and present a performative monologue. The space allowed by the residency gave me a lot of agency and courage to reach out to people whose work I like (and whom I wanted to work with), that otherwise I wouldn't have the time or the means to reach out to.'
(Artun Alaska Arasli)

Artun Alaska Arasli (Turkey/Netherlands)  is an artist, writer, curator and researcher. He graduated from the Image & Language department of the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2011 with honours and received the annual Rietveld Prize. He later attended the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main between 2012–2014, and the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht in 2018–2019. Artun was a resident at Deltaworkers in New Orleans, Rupert in Vilnius and Kunstverein in Amsterdam.  

Artun has had solo exhibitions at Kantine in Brussels, Rozenstraat in Amsterdam, and The Tip in Frankfurt am Main. In 2016 he has written and directed a theater play, The Beauty Commission, that premiered at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. This introduced him to the playwright Joachim Robbrecht, with whom—between 2017 to present—he co-authored a number of plays for i.a. NTGent, Het Zuidelijke Toneel, Toneelgroep Oostpool, De Toneelmakerij, Silbersee, and DOX. 

Recent group shows include, Open Time at Ulay Foundation in Ljubljana, Not Quite Nearly Fine at the Fondazione Baruchello in Rome and Harm & Charm at Damien & the Love Guru in Brussels.