A Space to Meet and Share: A Corner in the World Fest 3 from Istanbul By Eylem Ejder Arab Stages, Volume 8 (Spring, 2018) ©2018 by Martin E. Segal Theatre Center Publications
Istanbul has a fascinating, brand-new performing arts festival, “A Corner in the World Fest,” which was presented for the third time on May 2 to 13, 2018. What makes this festival different from other international experiments held in Istanbul or in other cities such as Bursa, Ankara, Adana in Turkey, is it not only devotes to performance arts but also contains contributions from the Arab world which regular Turkish audiences are not accustomed to attending at a festival. Taking its name from the idea that the world is round and the center of it can be any corner depending on one’s point of view, lead the organizers to their concept of looking at the world from different perspectives. This year the events were inspired by feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, who said: “Women have been taught that, for us, the earth is flat, and that if we venture out we will fall off the edge. Some of us ventured out nevertheless, and so far we have not fallen off. It is my faith, my feminist faith, that we will not.” Thus, the festival started with a particular question: “The Earth is Flat?” and focused on the works of female and queer artists from Turkey, Iran, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, and Kosovo.
Again, this year’s curating team (Burcu Yılmaz, Claire Zerhouri andFatih Gençkal) collaborates with Bomontiada ALT which has an important historical space that is a recently developed cultural district surrounding a historic beer factory right in the city center. The festival events were spread through this district and enlisted the collaboration of Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts Department of Contemporary Dance and another cultural center in the city, SALT Galata.
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