Garp Sessions 2025

22-31 August, 2025

Spiraling, Turning, Dizziness

The verb dönmek has many meanings: to spiral, to (re-)turn, to give up something, it can signal to abandon a belief, a principle, or a struggle; to resettle; or to relive an old situation. It can also refer to failing in general or to fail a test. 

In the  Garp Sessions 2025 program, we’re interested in turning (around), circling, spiraling as political metaphors. Much that was supposed to be overcome, returns and reaches us continuously, forcing resistance to go in circles too.

If you (re-)turn continuously, you might become dizzy. Dizziness is a symptom of vertigo: It is “unreal” and “too real” simultaneously. It’s an illusion of motion that sparks real effects. 

We want to re-evaluate the circular movements of return, repetition and spiraling to find rest and resistance in them. Despite the condemnation in politics and psychoanalysis we want to spiral together into difference.

At the end of August—the peak of the Aegean summer—we will gather under the sun, cooking, sharing space, and focusing on what we bring to the table, moving through a state of blurred consciousness, accompanied by dizziness. We’ll read, listen to online lectures and move in circles for a week -giving space to spiraling, moving in circles and the illusions of movements that follow from it. 

We will have left behind a season that demanded full alertness, a time when we must stand firm. Soon, we will enter another season, one that requires constant clarity and composure—perhaps one where we can no longer afford moments of dizziness. We see this session as an in-between time— together for the shortest fraction of time, a blink, a fleeting moment. 

Facilitators

Fisun Yalçınkaya

Fisun Yalçınkaya, born in Istanbul, is a journalist, editor, and art writer. From 2009 to 2019, they reported for various daily and weekly newspapers and worked as an editor and reporter. Since 2019, Fisun has been the editor-in-chief of an art magazine and contributes to several art publications. Also, they have organized monthly independent workshops in 2023-2024. These workshops focus on contemporary art and creative protests, fostering a vibrant community of female artists and activists. In practice, they focus on the intersections of literature and art, queer and feminist practices, and the relationship of contemporary art with the audience.

Joshua Wicke

Joshua Wicke is a curator and dramaturge working in the fields of Performance, Dance, and Theatre. 

Most recently he curated the symposium „Risking Repetition“ on the performance of „survival“ and the marks sexualised violence leave and a series of talks under the title „Poetics of Refusal“ on artistic and political strategies of withdrawal, nonperformance and negativity. Joshua has taught on collaborative dramaturgy, representational strategies in and of crisis and aesthetics of ecology. As a dramaturge, he worked with Moved by the Motion, caner teker and Carolina Mendonça and others. He co-facilitated „Dirty Debüt“, a platform for emerging performance artists in Berlin for years and held positions at Schauspielhaus and Gessnerallee Zürich, and currently works for Impulse Festival.

Participants

Aslı Seven

Asli Seven is an independent researcher, curator and writer based in Istanbul and Paris. She investigates the mutually generative relationship between fiction and reality, with a focus on infrastructure, landscape and alternative pedagogies, emphasizing methods of fieldwork and co-creation. Among her recent exhibitions are How to Hold Your Breath – 9th Asian Art Biennial, Taichung, Taiwan (2024–25); Under Two Suns at Odunpazari Modern Museum, Eskişehir, Turkey (2023–24); and Live Among and Turn Together, a group exhibition and performance series at La Box, Bourges, France (2021). Between 2021 and 2024, she guest lectured at MO.CO. Esba, Montpellier, France, on the history of contemporary art with an emphasis on the emergence of narrative, organic and systemic forms in exhibitions. She is a member of AICA and C-E-A. 

Can Küçük

Can Küçük is an artist working with sculpture, installation, and moving image. His practice investigates the ways in which industrial structures have become embedded in everyday physical experience. Staging compositions of objects, materials, and bodily imagery, he reveals the subtle and often overlooked relationships between them. By transforming standardized and anonymous forms, he creates moments that resonate with the viewer’s body, personal experiences, and emotions, opening a space where the industrial and the intimate intersect.

Jasmin İhraç

Jasmin İhraç is a Berlin-based choreographer, dancer and sociologist whose interdisciplinary approach bridges contemporary dance with sociopolitical themes. Her works have been shown at Volksbühne/Roter Salon, Palais de Tokyo, Gorki/Studio R, Ballhaus Naunynstraße, HAU Hebbel am Ufer and Ringlokschuppen Ruhr. Her solo dance project ‘Sahman-Grenze-Kuş’ and the film ‘Constant changes, silent witnesses’, which she developed in the frame of the artist-in-residence grants from Kunststiftung NRW and Kulturakademie Tarabya in Istanbul, were presented in different contexts, festivals, galleries, museums and theatres (e.g ‘On Marche’ Festival/Marrakesh, KET/Athens, ‘Moovy’ Festival/Museum Ludwig Cologne, Festival ‘Dansem’/Marseille, Salt Beyoğlu/Istanbul). In 2022/23, she attended various lectures in the frame of the study course ‘Geophysics and Oceanography’ at the University of Hamburg. She worked with deufert&plischke, Alexandra Pirici, Isabelle Schad, Taldans, Irena Haiduk and andcompany&Co a.o. and formerly as a research assistant in the DFG-project ‘Media and constitutive systems: Archiving performance-based art’ at HMT Leipzig/HZT Berlin. In 2024 she premiered her solo ‘deep eye sea’ in Berlin and was selected by Uferstudios for the program Creative Crossroads Artists/Life Long Burning with residencies at MDT Stockholm and CCN Montpellier. Her new choreographic work ‘Liquid Boder of Solid Hope’ will premiere in 2026 at Radialsystem/Berlin. www.jasminihrac.net

Yağmur Yıldırım

Yağmur Yıldırım is an Istanbul-based architect, PhD candidate, and lecturer at Kadir Has University, Department of Common Courses. Her interests include gender studies, spatial justice, critical historiography, and urban history. Since 2014, she presents the weekly radio program ‘Açık Mimarlık’ (Open Architecture) on the independent radio station Açık Radyo (Open Radio). She is also among the hosts of the weekly TV program ‘Şehir Hepimizin’ (The City is Ours) on Medyascope, presented by the initiative İstanbul Hepimizin.