OBSERVATORY
May 14-20, 2021
Haverford College
Created by Bilge Nur Yilmaz ’21
OBSERVATORY is a series of in-person immersive and distant performance explorations that aim to encourage the audience to discover themes of privacy, memory, and perception. By inviting the curious witness to first explore, then intrude, OBSERVATORY has two settings to play with the concept of the gaze.
SETTING I: “MONUMENT TO NARCISSUS”
May 14-20: Somewhere on the Haverford Nature Trail
“MONUMENT TO NARCISSUS” is a breathing installation with hidden messages, objects, and textures embedded in Haverford’s Nature Trail, inviting visitors to discover patches of their subconscious positioning of the world around them.
SETTING II: “VOYEURS”
Wednesday, May 19, 8:30pm-12:30am
HCA46 2C-2
(to be viewed from outside behind the building)
“VOYEURS” is a four-hour aleatoric performance window with whims, rituals, and music—without a set structure. At any time during these four hours, audience members may take a voyeuristic gaze into “the room” to observe someone within their habitat, through a distancing window — an alternative glass screen for an alternative stage. By investigating the oneness of our solitary experiences, OBSERVATORY makes use of mnemonic devices, symbols, metaphors, and temporal sickness all through the vitreous prism of mirrors, windows, and screens.
Bilge Nur Yilmaz ’21 is a Political Science and Music double major. Hailing from the Aegean shores of Turkey, she is primarily a musician publishing under the moniker Tendertwin, a solo project that combines elements of chamber-folk and avant-pop with a singer-songwriter twist. Recent creative works include Correspondences (2019), a multimedia exhibition created with Jixin Jia, exploring the depths of distance over various collected instances of transatlantic conversation; and Deep Latency (2020), an aleatoric composition with Zoom instructions aiming to create an echo chamber of our spatial sonic palette by manipulating the insufficiencies of wirelessly transmitted sound.
RSVP not required. More information: hav.to/observatory
Contact: byilmaz@haverford.edu
Sponsored by the E. Clyde Lutton 1966 Memorial Fund and the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities