Photo via Studio Matejka Palimpsests of Space: Reconstruction Tandem Turkey participant Şafak Ersözlü (Budalasultan, Izmir) has worked with Agnieszka Cwielag (Studio Matejka Foundation, Wroclaw) on Palimpsests of Space: Reconstruction, a story in the form of a site-specific performance, inspired by Josef Štefan Kubín’s fairytale Vela. Its narrative explores cultural stereotypes and archetypes, femininity and masculinity, identity, taboo, transgression, and a need for freedom. From the first meeting to the performance in Gorzanow Castle, Şafak recounts his Tandem journey in this very personal story. Photo by Studio Matejka It started in Theatre Medresa in Turkey. I saw Agnieszka in the crew. We had an e-mail conversation before we met there. I reminded her of that. We started to talk. She was the one whom I wanted to collaborate with from the very start, and we did. Photo by Studio Matejka We created a context which you can see under our collaboration title. First, we were on the waiting list. I think it was because of the size of our project – according to the budget. Then we were invited. We started. We collaborated with Ewa Zurakowska from Gorzanow Castle. It was our performance venue. Matej Matejka, Ewa and Mertcan Semerci came to Izmir. They stayed in my house. We had a great time. We worked. We collected material, we made rehearsals with Metehan Kayan, Serenay Oğuz and Sarp Keskiner at Acik Studyo. We went to the top of the skyscrapers, we went to the Culture Park. We went to Basmane. We went to the seaside for swimming. We made rehearsals there too. We drunk raki. We drunk vodka. We went to Brzezinka, the forest base of Grotowski Institute. We ran. We met with great people. We ran workshops. We rehearsed. We created. Photo by Studio Matejka Umut Sevgul joined us as a dancer. Alexandra Kugacz and Gabriel Rodriguez Almagro joined us as actors. We put “Palimpsests of Space: Reconstruction” as a title for our performance. gorzanow0 We went to the Gorzanow Castle. We were almost thirty-five people there. Artists from different places and backgrounds… We had an ancient Polish fairy tale “Vela” and a contemporary Turkish poem from Bahar Nihal Ersözlü. It was starting with the sentence: I am a ghost which is projected to its own body. Photo by Studio Matejka We had Polish, Turkish and Spanish performers, musicians, opera singers, painters, conceptual artists, stage designers, costume designers… After one week of hard work, we created a miracle there. We made two beautiful site-specific performances with a huge amount of audience. Because of that, some scenes have been performed twice for different groups of audience. There was great music. It was alive. Everything was alive. There were performative installations. There were moving bodies. There was poetry, fairy tale, voices… Photo by Studio Matejka It was a big project which has been realised with a small budget. It was from our hearts and still existing in the deep memory of my body-mind-soul.