Not Every Day is Spring

Nicht jeder Tag ist Frühling

Forum Expanded 2017

Oud master Udi Hrant Kenkulian (1901-1978) lived most of his life performing and selling instruments in Istanbul. He traveled repeatedly to try to cure his blindness, and though he would never regain his eyesight, he would transmit his music to followers in places like Athens, Beirut, and New York. This success abroad would eventually land him on an Istanbul Radio segment dedicated to Turkish Art Music – a salon style music derived from Ottoman classics, but standardized to modern republican values.
As part of the state run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, Istanbul Radio was established in 1927 as a tool to shape a cultured Turkish citizenry around a collective act of listening. In the process of building the radio station, the vast Pangaltı Armenian cemetery was destroyed, its marble tombstones dispersed and integrated into the city’s architecture. The destruction also made room for the Hilton Hotel, Taksim Square and Gezi Park, turning the area into the iconic centre of the new metropolis. In 2013, when bulldozers began to demolish Gezi Park to build a shopping complex in its place, they exposed remnants of the Pangaltı tombstones, before being blocked by mass protests.

by Haig Aivazian
with Cengiz Sarikus, Sedat Oytun, Khaled Alseka, Jamal Shaber, Khaled Halabi, Firas Jawish, Erol Can, Nisan Calgiciyan, Murat Iclinalca, Jerry Hirimyan Lebanon 2016 Turkish, Arabic, Armenian 46’ Colour

With

Cengiz Sarikus
Sedat Oytun
Khaled Alseka
Jamal Shaber
Khaled Halabi
Firas Jawish
Erol Can
Nisan Calgiciyan
Murat Iclinalca
Jerry Hirimyan

Crew

Written and Directed by	Haig Aivazian
Cinematography	Aytek Erdem
Editing	Katrin Ebersohn
Sound Design	Victor Bresse
Sound	Mert Aksuna
Casting	Haig Aivazian
Production Manager	Elif Temizkan

Produced by

Arab Fund for Arts and Culture

Montreal Biennial 2016

Additional information

Download additional information

Photos

Haig Aivazian

Haig Aivazian is an artist living in Beirut. Working across a range of media and modes of address, he delves into the ways in which power embeds, affects, and moves people, objects, animals, landscape, and architecture. Aivazian has explored apparatuses of control and sovereignty at work in sports, museums, the office, and music. He is currently Artistic Co-Director of the Beirut Art Center. His film Not Every Day Is Spring was shown in Forum Expanded in 2017.

Filmography

2011 Into Thin Air into the Ground; 31 min. 2013 How Great You Are O Son of the Desert!; 26 min. 2015 This Lightness I Have Lost it Forever; 35 min. 2016 Not Every Day Is Spring; 46 min., Forum Expanded 2017 2019 Prometheus; 23 min. 2021 All of Your Stars Are but Dust on My Shoes

Bio- & filmography as of Berlinale 2022