Welcome to a degenerated utopia, a ticket to time travel; a sci-fi smile of a TV host. Orientalism, Westernization and confusion around—wait, is it Westernization or Westoxification?—and Prime Ministers of an imaginary land, in which the US decides on the political changes are some of the stops along the way. What to drink against hemorrhoids? What is the currency of today? The statue of The New Man—athletic and young—is falling down and all the other statues are being replaced by a shape wear yummy thong.

 AN(A)KARA is a solo text-based performance, a sci-fi TV variety-show on stage hosted by Gucci Chunk, focusing on the late modernism of Turkey in relation to the city of Ankara. Inspired 

by the nationalist mockery the monuments brought to our lives—whether it is modernist statues or neoliberal morning TV shows—AN(A)KARA delves in the shift of notion of time from ‘kısmet’ to the modernist clock, and the friction in between. AN(A)KARA pontificates the constructions of the society and losses that they bring: memories and confusions of a Muslim-kid enter into the show as voices/voice-objects speaking from a past, from 1980s and 1990s. While giving an overview of this idiosyncratic era of Turkey, the clichés and clashes around the East and West, as well as (auto)censorship is tackled.

Text by Göksu Kunak