“Improvisation — responding to one anothers’ bodies and to the music without a predetermined choreography — is, I believe, a political act. It invites us into a space of radical openness. We listen with our bodies. We adjust. We echo. We resist imposed rhythms and instead move with one another towards a collective sensibility, a shared pulse.”

'At night, on faultlines, in Istanbul' by Pekün in Assemblies, edited by Taous Dahmani

"Also, I can’t help but think of Paul Ricœur with this film. He has a lecture called “Who is the Subject of Rights?” in which he writes of the four basic factors for the human agent to designate herself as a self-respecting and self-esteeming individual, thus as what he calls a capable subject. These four things are her capacities for designating herself as a speaking subject; being the author of her actions; being able to be the author of a narrative, a history (for instance uninterrupted by a forced migration); and finally, we esteem and respect ourselves when we can own our words, our actions, be the narrators of the stories that we tell about ourselves and evaluate them as either good or obligatory (to someone, to a group)—our ethical capacity. But here is where it gets interesting: the conditions where the subject can exercise those rights. And I think it is here that the political potential of subjectivity lies, and where your film is so urgent, because, where are those people, and what is that space or institution where we can be in relation to others? Because only when we exercise those modes do we become capable subjects, do “we become real powers to which correspond real rights.”

never liked goodbyes anyway: Naeem Mohaiemen & Didem Pekün in conversation