Fatma Bucak
We possess all things is a multichannel sound installation consisting of a contemporary cantata performance in three acts, each of which is narrated from the perspective of a bird, a tree, and a flower. The production of the work entails extensive research on 1990s conflicts in the Middle East, the history of botany in the region, and a survey of cantata and operatic performances.
The work intends to open the field to the conjuncture between environmental destruction and conflict. It is an attempt to conserve and re-create collective memories and obscured narratives that resist effacement from history through stories of flowers, plants, trees, and women’s voices in a moment that endangerment and the suffocation of the past, as well as an unknown future created by conflict and climate, inform us of unacceptable conditions and curtailed desires.