Statement

For over fifteen years, I have been creating and collaborating on performative practices that unfold on stage, in films, within exhibition spaces, and in-situ. I see performance as an intersection of visual and performing arts, where the boundaries between them open up a field for experimentation.

In recent years, moving my work between the place I grew up and where I now live has heightened a dimension of my practice that engages with questions of translation, interpretation, and transmission. I have been particularly drawn to the dynamics that emerge as abstract objects (skills, stories, affects…) travel across different languages and generations. Within this framework, listening has taken a central role.

Since 2021, I have been working with the playlist as an emotional landscape to be translated into material form. I first explored this in 8936 chansons, then in a series of works that followed. While the web-based list reflects an impossible obsession with completeness, the performances explore the fragment as an intimate territory. Through these works, I examine both individual and collective experiences of time, and how listening shapes our emotions and identities.

Biography

CV and portfolio

Melis Tezkan is an artist, performance maker and educator based in Paris. Whether working individually or collaboratively, her work explores how emotional experiences can serve as a source of knowledge. In this context, she has recently been investigating the notion of the playlist, translating it into a variety of artistic forms that have been presented at spaces such as Boom'Structur, Pickle Bar, Centrale Fies, and Laboratoire d’Aubervilliers.
A driving force in her work is long-standing collaboration. Under the name biriken, in duo with Okan Urun, she creates performances, installations, videos, and parties, often focusing on the relationship between the intimate and the social, and the politics of togetherness. Their works have been presented at Under the Radar Festival, Wiener Festwochen, De Keuze International, Sharjah Biennial, Jerk Off, Les Subs, SALT, Pera Museum, Istanbul Theatre Festival, among others.

She has also collaborated closely with Nil Yalter on films, exhibitions, and performances – including 8938th song: with Nil Yalter, a performance based on recordings addressing feminist struggles, sisterhood, art, citizenship, and the concept of home, from a transgenerational perspective. Their works have been shown in contexts such as Temps d’Images – Namus Oyunları, Live Works Festival, and the exhibition Unspeakable Home, Enchanting Companions at the Badischer Kunstverein.

In 2022, Tezkan completed her practice-based PhD in fine arts at École Supérieure d'Art de Clermont Métropole, having previously obtained a PhD in aesthetics from Sorbonne Nouvelle University in 2012. From 2018 to 2022, she was an artist-in-residence at the Coopérative de Recherche.

Tezkan currently teaches performance, sound, and audio-visual art at the Grenoble-Valence School of Fine Arts.