Seçil Yaylalı

Let’S

2008-2010, Istanbul (Turkey), Alexandria (Egypt), Berlin (Germany), and Barcelona (Spain)

supported by Arttransponder, Roberto Cimetta Travel Grants

In collaboration with Sulukule Platformu, Istanbul,  Gudran, Alexandria, Loyal e.V, Berlin, Convent de Sant Agustí, Barcelona.

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Let’s was a series of workshops aimed at empowering youth to express themselves through clay animation. Participants talked about their environment and lives, sharing the process within a group.

Let’s consisted of a series of workshops in which youngsters from four large metropolitan cities—Istanbul, Alexandria, Berlin, and Barcelona—created stop-motion movies. The participants were taught to build their own model characters and props from clay, take digital photos, and make their own scenography. The project developed on the idea of relationships as participation in collective action, and it was based on collective production, solidarity building, and self-awareness.

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In this process, storytelling was used as a game to express the kid’s ideas and opinions about their lives and surroundings; their perceptions were investigated through the stories that they developed, which also highlighted how cultural differences change their point of view.

Clay was employed as a sensorial, natural, easily workable material with therapeutic properties to make evident the invisible verbal story of the young minds in their own circumstances, starting from the idea that often, their words are not enough to express their realities.

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Let’s was realized in the neighbourhoods of Sulukule, El-Max, Kreuzberg, and El Borne, all of which are characterized as difficult, disadvantaged, and problematic areas. In these areas, the local population finds itself coping with violence in different forms daily.

 

Sulukule, Istanbul, was a gypsy district built inside Istanbul’s old city walls more than 1000 years ago. When the workshops took place in 2008, the municipality had already started to demolish the area and rebuild the settlements. Half of the inhabitants lived in tents, and the other half waited for the bulldozers to come. Nowadays, Sulukule no longer exists.

 

El-Max, Alexandria, is an old village of fishermen by the canal Mahmoudiyah, which is heavily polluted by chemicals. Its environment is threatened, and the locals live in poor conditions, with their incomes depending on fishing. In 2008, as the real estate of the area had increased in value, the municipality wanted to gentrify the village, using disturbances in the community as grounds for demolishing it.

 

Kreuzberg, Berlin, is one of the city’s central districts with a large immigrant population. For years, its inhabitants lived below the poverty line, having to face drugs, violence, and discrimination issues. In 2009, the area underwent gentrification.

 

In 2009, El Borne, Barcelona, was a gentrified area close to the city centre with a very diverse immigrant population from all over the world.

Let’s has realized thanks to Elif Bursali and Ezgi Güner (Sulukule Platform, Istanbul), Mohamed Ragap and Gözde Öngören (Gudran, Alexandria), David Lubensky and Özgür Demirci (Loyal e.V, Berlin), and Judith Agulla and Nihal Mumcu (Convent de Sant Agustí).