Akış Ka said, “Being fluid is a fundamental aspect of who I am.”
NFTIFY’s Aykut Mercan and Esin Hamamcı spoke to Akış Ka, a performance artist who works in different fields and is a candidate for the CIRCA Award.
In 2017, Akış Ka started to perform under their drag queen persona. Over time, they evolved their style from traditional drag queen performances, performance art and contemporary dance. Additionally, Akış Ka is involved in various other creative fields, including music, poetry, and acting.
We may be more familiar with them from a famous YouTube interview. Ka, who lives between Istanbul and London, was nominated for the CIRCA Award for their performance “Welcome”. “Welcome” was the last performance of Salt’s “90s on Stage” exhibition, which included four trans performance artists. They talk about their journey of becoming an artist, challenges, and struggles here.
Apart from the CIRCA Award, the artist, who plans to continue the “Welcome” series, also winks at projects in the NFT world with their performances. Please join our interview;
Your CIRCA Award-nominated work “Welcome” was shown on giant screens in London, Berlin and Milan. Could you tell us a little bit about “Welcome”?
“Hoş Geldin” was the last performance of the program called Her Şey Her Şey Her Şey, which included four trans performance artists as part of Salt’s 90s on Stage exhibition. While it draws attention as the first institutional performance in my journey of becoming an artist, it also tells the story of our struggle to be accepted by art institutions and celebrates being an institutional artist. Trans-performance artists struggle to produce art and survive despite shrinking spaces. “Welcome” deals with this struggle and tries to make it visible. My body, covered with body makeup, focuses on removing the traces of trans bodies on the white walls of the art institution, trying to make our struggle visible both in the art institution and in art history. The nomination for the CIRCA Award and the broadcasting of “Welcome” on screens in the squares of London, Berlin and Milan have made our struggle internationally visible. Welcome has left an even deeper mark on art history, which makes me very happy. In addition to the jury prize, the CIRCA Prize also has a public voting prize.” I am very excited about the chance for “Hoş Geldin” to go down in art history with an award. I am waiting for your support for the public voting award.
So, if we go back a little bit, what was Akış Ka doing before we watched them in the most important squares of the world?
My Akış Ka persona, which I started as a drag queen in 2017, took over me over time and became my identity rather than a persona. In this process, my works moved away from the classical drag perception and became longer continuous artworks. I am an artist who creates in different fields; performance, contemporary dance, music, poetry, and acting are among my primary areas. I have many positions in my drag work, from YouTube videos to talk show hosting. My last job was to stage my international performance, which I wrote and directed after being invited to the Transpose performance at the Barbican Centre.
CIRCA 2023’s manifesto is ‘Hope: The Art of Reading What Has Not Yet Been Written’. Will it give hope to other young artists who started in Zonguldak and then travelled to Istanbul and London?
Hope is a special feeling; it is our only world that we should never lose and hold tightly, and that keeps us alive, at least in my story. Nobody told me to be an artist; my family and people close to me for a long time put various obstacles in front of me. So, I changed the people in my life; I removed the barriers in front of me. I still have blocks, and I know they will never end; there will be an obstacle somewhere, but I also have hope. Has hope always existed for me? Of course not; there were days when I suffered a lot in the dark days without hope. I don’t know if I will always have hope from now on, but I know I have nothing else but hope. If I, born and raised in the village, am here after years, it is all because I hope, strive, and never give up. Nobody taught me how to be an artist, but I tried and became one. You can do it, too; my keys were wanting, seeking and dreaming. Start producing somewhere, let yourself go with the flow, and be sure the road will take you somewhere.
Your name comes from “fluidity”. So, how would you describe this fluidity to us?
Fluidity is a part of my identity, perspective on life, and how I live. I define myself in the Fluid Gender spectrum and perform many gender identities; I am neither a woman nor a man. I am all of them, but my fluidity is not limited to gender; I live fluidly. Instead of shaping my life, I live an experience where life shapes me. We can also think of it like this: water flows.
During my time in London, I worked with different art institutions, Barbıcan, ICA, and Ugly Duck, and I learned from these experiences that they have figured out what it means to work with trans artists. They value and care about us and your worlds. On the other hand, the situation is a little different in Istanbul. In the working processes, we encounter an attitude of superiority rather than value, like ‘we are giving you this space, what we say will be what we say, know your limits, don’t overdo it’. I will give just one example related to daily life. I lived in London for 4.5 months and was subjected to hate crimes twice during this period; both were men from Turkey. I couldn’t even count the hate crimes I experienced in Istanbul.
As a multidisciplinary artist, you have produced in many fields and in the coming days, you plan to convert your videos into NFT and offer them for sale. What do you think about the NFT world?
The NFT world is a world I have been following for a long time; I want to produce works in the NFT world very soon and make trans existences visible in the world of digital art. In a changing and developing world order, digital art brings our productions to a much wider audience, which excites me. It is very stimulating to be accessible from all over the world and to be able to tell the narratives in my productions worldwide. The NFT world offers a new order that eliminates borders; it gives inspiration and hope.
So, what are you planning to do in the coming periods?
I am currently in an intense production process. I have different performance projects I am working on. “With ‘Internals’ and ‘Birthday Celebration’, which are the continuation of ‘Hoş Geldin’, I want to realise performances that focus on the struggle of trans existences and the obstacles in our lives. In addition to these projects, I want to perform ‘Who is going to host me? ‘ and ‘Trans, streets and geographies’ performances in different geographies; I am trying to create a multi-layered and inclusive space by researching the daily practices, struggles and acquired rights of trans beings in the landscapes where the performances are realised while providing visibility to the problems of trans beings from Turkey.
Aykut Mercan and Esin Hamamcıoğlu
NFTIFY
Editor’s note: NFTIFY acknowledges and respects all gender identities and may use ‘they’, ‘them’, and ‘theirs’ as personal pronouns for individuals identifying as gender non-conforming.
This interview was first published in nftify.com.tr in Turkish. The interview was later translated from original to English, and minor changes were made during the translation.
Original Article:
https://nftify.com.tr/akis-ka-akiskanlik-benim-kimligimin-bir-parcasi/
