Talk by Slavs and Tatars

SALT Beyoğlu, Walk-in Cinema

“Reverse Joy looks at the role of mysticism in the perpetual protest movement at the heart of the Shi’a faith for its radical reconsideration of history and thus justice. Inserting oneself, flesh and faith, into the events that transpired 13 centuries ago; the collapse of traditional understandings of time; the reversal of roles of men and women; and joy through mourning all demand an equally elastic and muscular understanding of the sacred and the profane that is the down payment towards any meaningful social change.

Equal parts research and original work, Reverse Joy serves as the first installment in our new cycle of work The Faculty of Substitution. Replacing one thing for another, telling one tale through another, The Faculty of Substitution looks at substitution in the widest sense, from al-badaliya to mystical substitution to the antimodern. In the case of Reverse Joy, what does it mean to adopt the inner-most thoughts, experiences, beliefs, and sensations of others as one’s own in a search for self-discovery? How does this circumlocution–looking at a something else as a prism on the chosen subject of study, going somewhere else which initially might not seem relevant instead of directly heading towards one’s destination–challenge the very notion of distance, as the shortest length between two points?

So we turn to the Shi’a ritual of Muharram not necessarily to better understand Islam or the Middle East per se; but rather to better grasp our own understandings of modernity, history, and time. Reverse Joy looks at the complex constellation of Muharram, which over the course of thirteen centuries has taken on a near cosmic significance, beyond regional rivalries, and possibly beyond the faith itself to impact notions of identity, mysticism, protest, and resistance in the world at large.”

Slavs and Tatars


The talk, presented in the context of the exhibition I decided not to save the world, will be held in English.