Cevdet Erek's modular sound installation »Ortalık« will be seen in constant transfiguration over the course of the Triennale. It ties together several discourses universal to diverse Turkic communities worldwide, from the nomadic style of house-building and always being in a state of flux, to how natural materials can transfer memory and history, especially in situations of migration. The installation will be activated by Cevdet through a special opening performance on 8 May, after which it will provide resonant »islands« for other performances and discussions during the Trienniale.
On 9 May, the work-in-progress performance of »The Dream Has Still Not Whispered« is a new commission by experimental gamelan composer and performer Bilawa Ade Respati, extreme vocalist Karina Utomo, and guitarist and producer Şüräle. With a title that refers to a Javanese tradition in which spiritual knowledge is often transmitted through whispering, the work explores the concept of arwah/äruax, an ancestral spirit that appears in both Turkic and Indonesian cultures. This work continues an impulse from the CTM Resynthesising the Traditional artistic lab which took place at the Tselinny Center for Contemporary Culture in October 2025, and will travel to Berlin for a special showing in September still tba.
Towards the end of the Triennale on 20 June, the curator and poet Anuar Duisenbinov will host a discussion on Resynthesising the Traditional with Aisha Orazbayeva, Rustem Myrzakhmetov, and Şüräle on how cultural memory and lived environment have gradually emerged to shape their practices, even when they did not set out to explicitly engage with tradition.
»The Dream Has Still Not Whispered« is commissioned by the Korkut II Triennale and CTM Festival. Bilawa Ade Respati's participation is kindly supported by Goethe-Institut Kazakhstan. »Ortalık« is commissioned by the Korkut II Triennale, while Cevdet Erek’s opening performance is commissioned by CTM Festival.