OBSERVATORY
May 14-20, 2021
Haverford College
Created by Bilge Nur Yilmaz ’21

OBSERVATORY is a series of in-person immersive and distant performance explorations that aim to encourage the audience to discover themes of privacy, memory, and perception. By inviting the curious witness to first explore, then intrude, OBSERVATORY has two settings to play with the concept of the gaze.

RSVP not required. Questions? Contact:byilmaz [at] haverford.edu

Sponsored by the E. Clyde Lutton 1966 Memorial Fund and the Hurford Center for the Arts and Humanities

SETTING I: “MONUMENT TO NARCISSUS”

May 14-20: Somewhere on the Haverford Nature Trail

[Somewhere between my place and your time, there is a field. This is a tour you take near the dragon’s eggs. Your eyes cut the distance as loving eyes must. Find a sanctuary, and most importantly — listen.]

“MONUMENT TO NARCISSUS” is a breathing installation with hidden messages, objects, and textures embedded in Haverford’s Nature Trail, inviting visitors to discover patches of their subconscious positioning of the world around them.

SETTING II: “VOYEURS”

Wednesday, May 19, 8:30pm-12:30am
HCA46 2C-2
(to be viewed from outside behind the building)

[How? Many? Eyes? Combine every second you peeked into someone’s kitchen as the train passed quickly by their home. Observe freely. If it’s far enough, it’ll look as if it’s floating.]

“VOYEURS” is a four-hour aleatoric performance window with whims, rituals, and music—without a set structure. At any time during these four hours, audience members may take a voyeuristic gaze into “the room” to observe someone within their habitat, through a distancing window — an alternative glass screen for an alternative stage. By investigating the oneness of our solitary experiences, OBSERVATORY makes use of mnemonic devices, symbols, metaphors, and temporal sickness all through the vitreous prism of mirrors, windows, and screens.

About the Artist

Bilge Nur Yilmaz is a Political Science and Music double major of Haverford College's 2021 class. Hailing from the Aegean shores of Turkey, Bilge is primarily a musician publishing under the moniker Tendertwin, a solo project that combines elements of chamber-folk and avant-pop with a singer-songwriter twist. Tendertwin has a recently released single, “Absolute Nobody,” which follows the debut of "Triangles." Tendertwin’s latest feature is on the soon-to-be-premiered track “Blind,” created with the Roundhouse Music Collective. Previous collaborations involve performances with London-based vocal ensemble Shards, and Japanese artist Hatis Noit alongside London Contemporary Orchestra; and the pandemic-inspired piece “Inside I’ll Sing," as a member of the newly formed Isolation Choir. 

With a hands-on background in multimedia production through experiences at La Blogothèque and Philadelphia Area Creative Collaboratives, Bilge constantly hopes to explore performance in altered settings blended with interlinked métiers such as dance, theater, and film. Her artistic interests lie in aleatoric performances, spatiotemporal configurations of liveness, and the concept of nostalgia. Recent works include Correspondences (2019), a multimedia exhibition created with Jixin Jia, exploring the depths of distance over various collected instances of transatlantic conversation; and Deep Latency (2020), an aleatoric composition with Zoom instructions aiming to create an echo chamber of our spatial sonic palette by manipulating the insufficiencies of wirelessly transmitted sound.