Nezaket Ekici, From Now to Back, Journey/Walk,120 km

Nezaket Ekici, From Now to Back,
from Assos/Aristoteles to Troy/Homer Illiad
Journey/Walk,120 km
15 – 21 October 2019, Çanakkale

In the framework of Daire Artist in Residency Project
in Cooperation with Troya Kültür Derneği (Çanakkale)

Participant artists: Eda Sütunç, Gülçin Karaca, İlke Şahin
Participant artist from Çanakkale: Deniz Toka
Photo and video documentation: Saygın Mavinil, Burak Topçakıl
Guide: Egemen Çakır
Special Thanks: Prof. Rüstem Aslan, Dr. Andreas Dammertz and the farmers, gardeners and çobanlar along the way

The 120 km long trip from Assos to Troy follows the trail of Troy Culture Route. The journey started on the 15th of October and lasted for 7 days. Every day the performance group walked approximately 17 km and the journey is documented with photos and film.

Assos offers with the only Doric temple of Asia Minor dedicated to Athena a unique monument of antiquity and is also known to be the site of the first philosophical academy of Aristotle.
Troy is the place where the war described in Homers epic Illiad took place and which is discovered by archaeologist Schliemann on the 19th century.
The 120 km long road that connects these two places is an important witness of philosophy and cultural history of Orient and Occident.

The artist Nezaket Ekici aimed at showing the rich diversity of cultural and historical events, places and stories with her journey performance. The region of Çanakkale with Assos and Troy is explored in order to bring its rich history to artistic representation.
In the journey, the trail was the goal. It was a journey in which one not only talked about performance or about Aristotle and Homer but also about the landscape and the people in the villages.

Above all, it is the people who are the “expression” of the history that the land has experienced and one could almost say that the people carry everything that the land has experienced within themselves: the people are living history and are interactively integrated in this performative walk.
The Performance Journey was a source of inspiration for performance ideas and their implementation on the way and upon arrival in Troy.
Participants took part in various performance concentration exercises. It was central to understand the basic craft of performance art and to develop an awareness of one’s own actions and effects in space: Performance is always a room taking action.

The participants draw, read, think, eat, think and with the villagers, spend time alone with nature and get into dialogue with Aristotle, Homer, Illiad, art, mythology and philosophy.

On the last day, the participants crystallised their 7 days long experience on the collective performance of app 3 hours that took place on the ancient harbour of Troy, on the shores of the Achilleus tumulus.