grounds for refusal

Performance, approx. 30 min, loopable 

Switzerland, 2022 

grounds for refusal is a solo performance by caner teker created in 2022. The 30-minute piece is loopable. Taking its starting point from Judith Butler's question—"What counts as a livable life and as a grievable death?"—the work places mourning at the center of the stage, both as intimate experience and as political act. Through movement and presence, teker constructs a space where private grief becomes public, and where being witnessed transforms the act of mourning itself. grounds for refusal asks what happens at the collision point between personal loss and social expectation and what it means to insist on grieving what the world does not recognize as grievable.

The work has previously been presented at Bone Performance Art Festival, Trauma Bar and Kino, Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Borealis Festival, Mudam Luxembourg, and Kulturakademie Tarabya.