Hamamness

The installation, HAMAMNESS is a 140 square metre, real existing heterotopia. HAMAMNESS combines wellness concepts with post-colonial discourse and performative associations within an inflatable room architecture. From the relaxation room you reach the wash zones, where the temperature rests at around 45°C and the humidity is high. Physiotherapists, Tellaks (Hamam bathing attendants) and Nadirs (Hamam bathing maids) watch over the physical processes. Through their performances, artists turn various entrenched certainties on their heads and the discourse guests allow their knowledge to evaporate in this new cultural climate. So emerges a post-modern multiplicity, which counters, deconstructs and expands the emerging tendencies towards exclusion and segregation, as well as the return to a national context. With different cultural practices the dualisms of body/soul, man/woman, with/without are softened and scrubbed away. Scrub away your everyday clothes and free yourself from the burden of your cultural armour. HAMAMNESS imparts new body communication through the generation of collective intimacies. Open your pores, your hearts and your minds. Let yourself quietly wash your head and your feet. Rub yourself down and submerge yourself in the heterotopia of post-identity realities.

Please note: you are welcome to bring swimming trunks, swimsuits, bikinis, burkinis or whatever else you might like to wear. Individual pestemals/Hamam towels will be provided at the entrance. Allow a minimum of two hours for the whole procedure.