Q – Ceylan Öztrük

Installation views, Helmhaus Zürich 2017

Q, is a speculative fiction story that is constituted of a feminist linguistic manifesto. The story takes place in Zürich in a different possibility, telling a story of migration and the interaction between the character, Quibilah, and administrative buildings. It is narrated in magic realism genre. The book consists 3 languages of the story: German, English and Turkish.

The interaction between these three languages in the book is, the third singular gender in German (er/sie/es) and English (he/she/it) are eliminated and genderless third singular (o) is imitated from Turkish. To be able to integrate this genderless linguistic, various pronouns were invented such as, om, os, oself.

Written by Ceylan Öztrük

Übersetzung ins Deutsche/Translation from Turkish to German/Türkçeden Almancaya çeviri
Tevfik Turan

Übersetzung ins Englische/Translation From Turkish to English/Türkçeden Ingilizceye çeviri
Özden Arikan

Copyediting/Lektorat, Transcreation/Transkreation, Proofreading/Korrektorat
Nadine Kube, Kevin Lossner

Grafik/Graphic design/Tasarim
Vela Arbutina

Produktion/Production
Druckerei Odermatt AG

Herausgegeben anlässlich von/
Published in the context of
Eine Ausstellung für Dich/An Exhibition for You

Kurator/Curator: Daniel Morgenthaler

The story, Q, is attached to Helmhaus as a place of ‘showing’ and the showings of the church (Wasserkirsche) and art space (Helmhaus) are compared. The installation in Helmhaus was built for the show, “An Exhibition for You” and is attached to the story. It takes several anecdotes and facts from the story also by copying the Wasserkirsche Church’s windows with a different story against heteronormative on Helmhaus’ windows.