Shutdown Program #17

In the online performance Living the Unknown. Realitites of Lockdown, Murat Deha Boduroglu, Laressa Dickey, Magdalena Freudenschuss, Ali Gharavi, Fatih Pinar and peter steudtner negotiate their extreme experiences of state violence and political imprisonment with visual and acoustic contributions and conversations. They seek parallels to the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic in dealing with the unknown and navigating isolation.

Crisis as resource: reframing care as an act of resistance and a reclaiming of one's political agency;
Living the unknown: readings on the politics of care and embodiment;
Looking inside: a reflection on how the unknown and isolation effects oneself but also brings one closer to others' plights; and
Co-opting crisis: how state repression uses crises as tools for its own purposes.

Following the online performance, the short film #IceridenDisariya Sehrin Hayaletleri / Ghosts of the City by Turkish filmmaker Fatih Pinar will be shown.

In 2017 Laressa Dickey and Magdalena Freudenschuss were thrust into crisis management roles, and collaborated with Murat Deha Boduroglu for the care and release of a cohort of Human Rights defenders which included their partners Ali Gharavi and peter steudtner, who were incarcerated as political prisoners in Turkey for four months in a case known as the #Istanbul10.

Murat Deha Boduroglu
Murat Deha Boduroglu is an independent lawyer dealing with various fields of law. He is part of the defence team of several ongoing 'criminal' cases in Turkey where artists, cultural actors and others who question political developments in Turkey are imprisoned. He also volunteers as one of the lawyers of the One Hope Association Support Group.

Laressa Dickey
Laressa Dickey is an artist, writer, and bodyworker living in Sweden. Through text, movement and daily life, her research focuses on presence, empathetic imagination, and embodied performance. She's the author of four books of poetry, including the latest, Syncopations (Shearsman Books).

Magdalena Freudenschuss
Magdalena Freudenschuss is a sociologist, political educator, and trainer for transformative Global Citizenship Education. In 2017, she involuntarily took a crash course in crisis management and coping with state repression.

Ali Gharavi
Born and raised in Tehran, Ali Gharavi is an electrical and computer engineer, focusing his technical expertise in service of sustainability and strategic success of progressive causes.

Fatih Pinar
Fatih Pinar is a Turkish documentarian and filmmaker.

peter steudtner
peter steudtner is a freelance Holistic Security trainer for Human Rights Activists and Organisations as well as a documentary filmmaker and photographer. His current artistic and training work focuses on productive and sustainable coping with experiences of state sponsored repression and violence.