Organiser of the Conference "Fortress Europe and Its Others: Cultural
Representations in Film, Media and the Arts," 4-6 April 2005, University
of London, visit the website at
http://www.sas.ac.uk/igrs/fortress/europe.htm
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 March 2005 19:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: My Father and I
Yosefa
Thanks for sending the e-mail around about the Goethe Institute event.
Would you mind sending this too? Maybe something you might be interested
in? Good luck with the conference.
Best wishes
Kevin
Mein Vater und ich (My Father and I)
Photographic images of a guestworker, who came to Vienna from a Kurdish
village in Turkey, portraying the city as an idealised, imaginary world,
and by his son, who documents the harsh and grim reality of his father's
life. Tuesday 12 April - Thursday 12 May, Austrian Cultural Forum
London. Mon - Fri 9am - 5pm. Closed on 5 May. Admission free. Opening of
the Exhibition Tuesday 12 April, 6.30pm ACF London, 28 Rutland Gate,
London SW7 1PQ, Tel 020 7584 8653 [log in to unmask]
A Seventh Man: Migration and Photography
Panel discussion with photographers Jean Mohr and Mehmet Emir and writer
Timothy O“Grady. Moderated by Asu Aksoy. Admission free, but reservation
is essential. Tuesday 12 April, 7.00pm, Austrian Cultural Forum London
ACF London, 28 Rutland Gate, London SW7 1PQ, Tel 020 7584 8653
[log in to unmask]
(The Austrian Cultural Forum, www.austria.org.uk/culture/index.html in
cooperation with the John Berger Season, www.johnberger.org )
Father's Beautiful Viennese World
The aim of this exhibition is to show the first-generation migrant's
(imaginary) version of their quality of life, conflicting with that of
second-generation migrants. My father was one of the first so-called
"Gastarbeiter" (guest workers).
Father was employed through a recruitment agency, hiring people to work
in Austria. Originally, like a lot of other workers, he thought that he
would just work in Austria for a few years, before returning home. But
this was not to happen. Straight off the train at the Southern Railway
Station a company took him on. He started to work for a construction
firm. He could come home to visit us for two months every winter and
every second year in the summer. Father never talked about his work,
that is to say, he only told us about the lighter tasks he undertook.
He also never talked about his living situation. There was no school in
his village, so he didn't go to school, instead the army taught him to
read and write. The army also taught him photography. He sent us photo's
from time to time; from the rose garden - close to the southern railway,
in the Belvedere in front of a statue, or someone taking a picture of
him posing next to a fancy car (to this day he still does not have a
driving license). The numerous immigrants knew him as the photographer
Hildir.
His weekends were spent taking photographs. He was invited to the
weddings of gypsies, ex-Yugoslavian and Turks, to photograph these
events. He took photos in their flats and in the parks. The photographs
he took were developed within a week and sold. As he took so many
photographs, he had lots of negatives, but sadly he couldn't store them
or archive them in the barracks he was living in. So the evidence of
thirty years worth of photographs now consists of just one pile. These
are the photographs his customers did not collect. (They are now with
me).
When my father brought me to Austria, I experienced his living situation
first hand. I started out by living in a flat that was 10 square meters
shared by three people. That's when my father taught me photography.
The entire living situation was terrible. The room only fit three beds,
a table in the middle of the room, three stools, three narrow cupboards
and behind the door was an old mirror with a lotto sticker on the
bottom.
The form of the exhibition:
The photo's taken of my father, or by my father are all in colour, mine
are all in black and white. Because my father was a well-respected man
in Turkey, he didn't want to show that he was working so hard and living
in such terrible conditions.
Associated events
April 14 - May 18
John Berger: Portraits by John Mohr
Mon-Fri 9am -6pm. City University, School of Social Science, St. John
St., near Angel. For info: Tel 020 8510 9786 Photographs drawn from
over four decades of friendship.
April 27 6pm
Readers and Writer seminar: A Little Bit of Freedom/Kleine Freiheit.
Screening of Turkish/German feature film directed by Yuksel Yavuz about
African and Kurdish teenagers in Hamburg followed by discussion with
director and commentator Sukhdev Sandhu. Goethe Institute, 50 Princes
Gate, Exhibition Road SW7. Tel 020 7596 4000, www.Goethe.de/london £3
May 17 6pm
Readers and Writer seminar: A Seventh Man: Then and Now. A discussion
inspired by John Berger and Jean Mohr's book about migrant workers with
writers Gary Younge, Latife Tekin, Moris Farhi, Emine Sevgi Ozdamar,
moderated by Maureen Freely. Institute of International Visual Arts 6-8
Standard Place, Rivington St, Shorditch EC2. Tel 020 7729 9616,
www.iniva.org
These events are supported by:
Austrian Cultural Forum
City University London
Goldsmiths University of London
Arts Council England
Bloomsbury
Artevents
Lannan
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