We Stick Together ~ by Tuba Kılıç
Tuba Kılıç's "We Stick Together" was presented before live audience at Centrale Fies, Dro, Italy on August 8, 2025 as one of 24 acts, (curated by Elisa Giuliani) at the occasion of the AEROPONIC ACTS 2025: CHOREIA (convened by Gabriëlle Schleijpen).
Here you will find an introduction by the presenter, video-documentation filmed by Baha Görkem Yalım and a written report by Grant Watson.The report includes a summary of the spoken, improvised comments by esteemed guest respondents Barby Asante, Sandi Hilal, and Zairong Xiang.
We Stick Together
Tuba's question: Would you chant with me?
Tuba's intro:
“…what the long middle of revolution requires, what Palestine requires, is an approach to writing whose primary purpose is to gather others up with us, to generate within them an energy which their bodies cannot translate into anything but revolutionary movement.” (1)
This is not a performance,
This is not a presentation.
Welcome to my tribune.
This is how I want to end my study after two years, while going through the genocide in Gaza.
I want to study with my classmates, my loved ones, my comrades— Please join!
Would you chant with me?
It will be loud, bright, hot and smoky.
“Like a net, we tie ourselves to one another to stop the dailiness from getting through; we tie ourselves tight enough so none of us get lost along the way. Maximal commitment, minimal loneliness, to paraphrase a comrade.”(2)
(1) Fargo Tbakhi, Notes on Craft: Writing in the Hour of Genocide • Protean Magazine.
(2) Ibid.
Grant's report:
The artist stands at the front of the stage and makes a short speech. They say: I started my political practice in a football stadium learning how to make banners, how to chant, I learned how to work together. This not a performance. This is how I want to end my study at the DAI while we are going through the genocide in Gaza - would you chant with me? The audience respond with a chorus of: Yes! People have come with pots and pans and waving flags. The artist says: it will be loud, it will be hot, while ear plugs are offered to the audience. People bang their instruments, they chant: Viva, Viva, Viva Palestina. People wearing keffiyeh wave banners and hold placards, they chant in a call and response – One: We are the people, Two: We won’t be silenced, Three: End the occupation now, now, now; and Free, Free ,Palestine! There is a round of applause as the chant subsides and then others take up the role of calling the chant, while people run up onto the stage wielding flags. There are more chants of: Free, Free Palestine, to the sound of the clatter of tins filled with shells. People assemble in the middle of the bleachers to from a mass, then the artist leads the group out of the auditorium, through the building, and onto the drive, where they stand in front of the arts centre, continuing to drum and chant: The people united will never be defeated; and: One, Two, Three, Four Occupation No More! Red, Black, White and Green flares are let off, spreading clouds of coloured smoke. Finally the group return to the auditorium flag waving and banging their pots and pans.
Barby Asante says that we have to think about the role of art in these times? What is the urgency? What are we are doing with our making? She notes how there are huge protests in London, that London becomes a stage for protest, that the previous day three hundred people were arrested for supporting Palestine Action. She asks: what are we doing when we create these moments of disruption? She mentions how her friend who won the Turner Prize risked her career by speaking out. She asks: what is really happening not just around Palestine, but more generally in the art world? It’s an abolition project. Her body knows the chants. She want to urge everyone present to consider what the urgency is right now in all the structures that we are party to, that are unjust, that are violent. That Palestine is showing us a lot. Barby mentions the occupations at Central Saint Martins and Goldsmiths, that there were protests at the degree shows, questions for senior management, and the larger question of what consciousness raising means. She notes that not everyone was participating in the protest performance. Is this a point where practice as didacticism becomes important? Because its total system change, as well as ceasefire, as well as Palestine having its own state, but how does that get represented?
Sandi Hilal says she would like to begin by thanking the artist and the people who put an effort into making the protest, that this is extremely important. But that she would like to understand what just happened. She says that she took some photos during the performance and wondered what her parents would make of it. She explains how she gets emotional during protests, but that she didn’t get emotional during this performance. In protests she gets emotional because the people there are strangers, for example when a taxi driver winds down the window and says free Palestine. She has been discussing with her friends what this means. She thinks it would be nice if the artist could elaborate on how many artistic gestures there are in protests that contemporary art can learn from. For example the invitation to throw bottles of rice into the sea. She says that whoever thought of that is a brilliant artist. She asks who is this performance intended for? What is it that we just did? She is happy on a selfish level that the artist made this particular work because it helps her to reflect. She doesn't want to undermine it. Protest by students is something she highly respects. But what does it mean to stage a protest as a performance? She noticed that people looked unsure about what they were doing. Are they protesters or are they performers? But she is happy about the staging of the piece. Sandi says that one thing she reflects on whenever she is down, is that somehow what the genocide has done in the last few years, is oblige many people to bring activism into their own work; doctors, lawyers, architects, artists, academics, who say, I’m no longer satisfied with being a protestor, we need to change the system. People want to change the system in which they work. That gives her confidence to take things further. She wishes that curators would take all the amazing artworks they see in these protests, that they would step out of the box of the market and the galleries who decide what makes a good or a bad artist. She asks - is it the protest that you bring inside, or is the protest manifested in other ways, in your daily work? She says that if we do that, then we can change our world, if we don't it just becomes something playful. She invites the artist in two years to show her how protest has been brought into their work
Zairong Xiang thanks the artist for giving their space in the Aeroponic Act to the protest. That this is a courageous and generous thing and it is a lovely collective that the students have formed. He shares all of the questions that Sandi and Barby have raised. That it is important to reflect the efficacy we are trying to address. He was hoping there would be something different from the protests we see on the street. But he didn’t notice anything. This question of what art can do - he thinks it can do a lot for the efficacy of protest. He wonders if the artist had in mind that the audience would be on social media. Otherwise what is this for, and for whom? Is it an opportunity to occupy social media space? So all these questions have been opened up by the work. The efficacy question is maybe linked to the question – will you chant with me? Everyone here will say yes. So this is a friendly interaction. In a situation in which it is no longer friends and you don't even know where people come from, how are you going to invite them to chant? It’s an important question to think about.
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