»Our grief – our feelings, as words or actions, images or practices – can open up cracks in the wall of the system. It can also pry open spaces of contestation and reconstruction, intervulnerability and strength, empathy and solidarity. It can discomfort the stories told from above that would have us believe we aren’t human or deserving of life-affirming lives – or that matter, life-affirming deaths.«
– Cindy Milstein in ›Rebellious Mourning‹

»After ›KIRKPINAR‹ & ›karadeniz‹, my new research on queer androgynous belly dancers called ›köçek‹ will conclude in a trilogy about the trans-individualist self beyond identity politics. Death, mourning and its affects continue my motivation in inviting witnesses to a shared experience of a temporary community in the black box. Within this residency, together with sofie luckhardt and Nora Aaron Scherer, we went into the question of how to design a space within a blackbox resembling mourning, as well as generating movement material through eyes closed work. The gaida, a cross-cultural bagpipe, provided me another body on stage: that of a baby sheep turned into a wind instrument. Blood, on the other hand, mirrors liquids as part of working through a grieving process. In Judith Butler's words: What counts as livable live and grievable death?«

caner teker graduated as a master student from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and then studied at SNDO – School for New Dance Development, Amsterdam. caner teker’s practice deals with the intersectional entanglements of identity, work and post-migration in the context of their personal experience as a German-Turk as well as the life story of their own family. In 2020, caner teker received the Förderpreis für Bildende Künste of the city of Düsseldorf and was a Guest Fellow at PACT Zollverein. caner has shown performances in various national and international venues. Their work ›karadeniz‹ premiered in 2021 and was shown at tanzhaus nrw and HAU- Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin. In 2022 caner was a danceWEB scholarship holder and performed at the Neue Nationalgalerie Berlin, the Haus der Kunst Munich and the Tanzquartier Wien.