Meeting Point: Gülpınar /// Workshops
Photography Workshop:
The photography workshop primarily focused on creating stories regarding the village and its environs, its daily life, social structure and its representations, its architectural stance, as well as historical mythologies and its disposition concerning the geographical conditions. The participants developed a visual discourse by way of perceiving photography as the possibility of creating a "moment" within social processes. These "moments" progressed into deeper and sometimes one-on-one dialogues with the village.
Born in Rosendaal, as the child of a Dutch-Turkish family, workshop leader Ahmet Polat won the Dutch Foundation for Visual Art's Top Dutch Photography prize in 2004 and is the first Turkish recipient of ICP's (International Centre of Photography) "Young Photographer" title at the 22nd Infinity Awards (2006).
Video Workshop:
Video Workshop entropyTV
entropyTV, a video-workshop series developed by Thomas Büsch and Sabine Küper-Büsch, stands for a 'television network to reduce the hegemony of broadcast channels and film industries'. The course leaders introduce the participants to the history of moving images and to a technique for film narration that enables even non-film professionals without prior editing knowledge to create video clips. The project in Gülpınar focuses on creating short video narratives, shot in a single take. The course highlighted the difficulties of the single-take and concentrated on ways of transforming the idea from conception into a narrative. The videos are shot from the moment of turning the camera on, to the moment of turning it off, with no interruption and no editing.
German TV-correspondents Sabine Küper-Büsch and Thomas Büsch produce news and documentaries for international broadcast channels. As independent filmmakers they work on developing new forms of visual narrations. Based in Istanbul, they focus on creative programs on Turkey and its neighboring countries. In 2007, they won the "Best Short Documentary" award by the Brooklyn Arts Council for the BAC 41st International Film and Video Festival in New York City, USA, with their documentary "The Story of Water Sprite".
Local Cuisine Workshop:
The workshop coordinator Hasan Açanal, chairman to the Turkish branch of the Conservatory of Mediterranean Cuisines and an expert on Turkish cuisine culture was assisted by Mukaddes Ünal from Gülpınar. Mukaddes also organised the daily shopping tours for ingredients every morning and led the pastry with zucchini (kabak böreği) and savoury crepes (gözleme) workshops on the very first day.
A different house and a different host was chosen for every day of the workshop... and of course a different local meal, for every single day.
After a week of intensive cuisine courses, the last day however was a different one.
The participants to the local cuisine workshop prepared dishes from their country of origin, together with the hosts of the first four days.
