Our Values/ Our Approach To…

In our group there were women who speak Armenian, Kurdish and Turkish as their mother tongues. Since some of us did not speak English fluently and we did not know each others’ mother tongue, language was a huge BORDER for us.  

We believed that expressing ourselves freely in our mother tongues was very important and therefore we used mediators, translators in our conversations. When someone was speaking, we kept listening attentively although we did not understand the language. We tried to tune in to the poetic flow of each language. That became our way to honour our mother tongues. Having long conversations with translations each time made us sometimes exhausted and even seemed time-consuming. However, we generally prioritized the genuine expression in a natural flow rather than being time-efficient.
Further, we wanted to understand each other in more depth and therefore we went beyond LANGUAGE and used non-verbal communication techniques which has been explained in detail by Defne in this link 🙂  From the beginning we showed respect and curiosity to the other mother tongues. Hence, we exchanged words from our languages, which spontaneously led to the idea of “Beyond the Wor(l)ds”. We even played a name game in three mother tongues. You could explore more in the link about the game. 

We live in a patriarchal society where feminine ways of expression are generally neglected or underrated, where rationalism is sublimed as if we could only perceive and express ourselves via our rational mind. Being a part of this kind of society, we all are conditioned to replicate the ways of perception and expression which we have learned. 

While having a conversation, we desired that each one expresses herself freely as an honest and open way in the group without being afraid of frictions, judgements and conflicts. Since we already accepted the fact that frictions, judgements and conflicts can naturally happen in any human-to-human communication, our way of handling the situation was again with care, love and compassion. Whenever we experienced any conflict, spontaneously emergent mediators in the group helped us to transform this conflict into a lesson for all of us. On the other hand, we did not force ourselves to seek consensus in every argument. Sometimes, we stayed disagreeing and still showed respect and love to each other. 

Non-verbal body communication a way to communicate beyond language
Non-violent communication 
Caring for our needs (hasmig, şirince video)
Constructive communication
Receptivity – another way of listening perceive receive taking in
Based on trust, respect and openness we could find a base of careful and active listening
Open the other senses 
Extrasensory perception

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Short Description

Short DescriptionIn our group, most of the women were feminist activists who seeked for new ways of political expression rather than getting stuck in the conventional ways of feminist movement. There were also some women in the group who had chosen to remain distant to feminism but were engaged in daily life politics. What brought us all together was the strong belief in the spirit of art, life and sisterhood. 
 
We desired to go beyond conventional politics. We did not want to fight against patriarchy. We did not want to be limited with demonstrations or manifestations as political action. We wanted to create instead of re-act. Since our common background was performative art, we decided to come together and create a performance. Milena and Tuba told in this link how they initiated this performance idea.  

Short DescriptionWe believed that we could change the world by first transforming ourselves. We intuitively knew that art and creativity would help us on the way. Therefore, in our gatherings we chose to live and act artfully. All the moments we shared together were a part of the creative process. We tried to be flexible, spontaneous and responsive towards each other and the environment. We tried to foster creativity as much as possible. Here you may find some videos about our artful ways of living in daily practice. Aghzdkq short video 
Joy, singing, dance, music, laughing and crying
Affirming life
Daring to increase joy and pleasure instead of fear  
 
We prioritized the journey, not the final performance. As a matter of fact, most of the time performances emerged naturally from the creative process. Surely, we have gone through some successful failures which you could find out in this link. However, generally our approach worked well. 
 
While changing and evolving, at our second gathering we stepped further into a new zone beyond political identities. Defne deconstructed our process in Aghdzq in this article which shows new possibilities for co-existence and performativity as a political act. Here you may also read a feedback of an audience member in Turkish confirming Defne’s arguments from a different point of view.   

Anecdote possibilities:
Being Spontaneous (buyukada… camp armen) 
Flexibility – Being not overplanned
Being responsive to the Environment  (unpleasant discussion with the neighbors, buyukada politics in Turkey, biennale)
 
Successful failures:
Conflicts in Şirince performance
Büyükada future prospects ?

Short DescriptionAs Beyond Borders Initiative, we believed that everyone had come to the world with her/his unique artistic way of being which could be shared with the world. Hence, we desired to explore our authentic ways of expression beyond the conditioned social codes. It was a big challenge for all of us to face our own prejudgements, preconceptions, stereotypes, sometimes even our illusions. At the beginning of each conversation, we reminded ourselves that we would like to speak and to listen beyond our rational minds. We wanted to tune in our emotional state and share our feelings, emotions and intuitions in addition to our thoughts. In order to open a possibility for changing our conditioned perception and revealing the hidden uniqueness in each of us, we tried to be patient, understanding, compassionate, kind and loving towards each other. This kind of behaviour nourished our conversations and actions. It also enabled to flourish unique expressions within the group. Examples

Short DescriptionLinking our stories
Borders – personal, political ; identity, nationality, gender…
Constructive Communication
Conflict Transformation
Overcoming preconceptions, prejudgement
Collective Work, Collectivity, Collaboration
Creativity / Co-creation
Women Solidarity
Trust building
Community
Respect
Mindfulness
Empowerment
Journey – process orientedness
Living together
Co-existence, Co-resistance
Affirming life – daring to live among chaos and destruction
Justice
Inclusivity
Spontaneity
Performativity
Expression through Arts
Self-expression

Short DescriptionBorders 

Feminism – Women solidarity – Being Women Community

http://www.idocde.net/ — food for the day

https://www.facebook.com/beyondbordersinwords/  — lets find the ones that are relevant for the principles…