26 June 2021, Darağaç, 14:00-21:30

After the Archive?, Darağaç and the Afro-Türk Association presents! 

A day-long event where Afro-Turks of İzmir will meet with local artists. In a midsummer’s day, a series of talks, presentations, concerts, and exhibitions presented around Darağaç neighborhood will highlight the black public memory of Western Anatolia. All activities will take place outdoors. 

One of Turkey’s little known social groups, the Afro-Turks are descendents of Africans most of whom were taken to Anatolia through routes of slavery, while some arrived for reasons of trade or on military assignments. Following the abolition of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, Afro-Turks have been given lands to cultivate, settling mostly in the Western Anatolian regions of Aydın, Muğla and İzmir. Afro-Turks’ slavery past have recently been subject of several academic research and publications. However, their more contemporary social issues or their cultural output remains largely ignored. AFRO – TÜRK – İZMİR will bring together the artistic outputs of Afro-Turks and local artists of Izmir, offering a different perspective to this little known social group. 

Program:

14:00 

Conversation: Osman Sadi Temizel, Beyhan Türkkollu, Şakir Doğuluer and Orhan Çetinbilek

15:00 

Talk: Nikki Brown 

“History and the Afro Turks: The Stories that Emerge When the Afro-Turks Are at The Center of European, African and Turkish History”

17:00 

Concert: Afro-Türk Ritm Grubu

18:00 

Talk: Fatmagül Kırcı

“The Perception of Blacks in Western Anatolia” 

19:00 

Exhibition opening

20:00 

Concert: Apeiron Soundsystem & Musa Tümay Onayberi

This event is part of “Vulnerable Archives: On Silenced Archives and Dissenting Views”, a joint project of After the Archive?, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin), r22 Tout-monde (Paris) and Archive (Milan), funded by Allianz Stiftung. The project aims to carry on activities with fragile, vulnerable, silenced, non-governmental archives and organizations who operate and have experience in strategies of alternative history writing, dissent, mobilisation and self-organisation. Our objective is to create a new space of discussion and a new layer of archive activation via structures of mutual support, exchange of know-how and practical solidarity. Following a series of events by each partner in their own cities, the project will culminate in September in Berlin with an exhibition and series of public programmes.