KUBER is HEKA's experimental sound studio, which for the past year has been enabling artists and all interested people to use our equipment and tools. It is a place where innovative ideas about surround sound can come to life. In June 2023, we hosted Görkem Özdemir, a Ljubljana-based transdisciplinary artist, researcher and composer from İstanbul.

His musical approach combines traditional, experimental, ambient and drone aesthetics and deals with themes inspired by urban everyday conditions and unprecedented emotions of post-2000s.

Currently pursuing his doctoral studies in Sonic Arts programme at Istanbul Technical University / Center for Advanced Studies in Music | MIAM. Also, he is affiliated with the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts | ZRC-SAZU of Ljubljana-Slovenia as a visiting researcher since January 2022. His works are being exhibited and performed in various international and underground platforms.

He joined us in KUBER to research cura, the smallest instrument of bağlama (saz) family, a long-necked lute from Anatolia (Asia Minor). It has its roots from Central Asia and evolved to its current form within hundreds of years. It is both used in secular and religious musical settings. Bağlama also has a very loaded cultural baggage, for the centuries it has used by aşıks (minstrel poets) and also a symbol of protest and love.

The instrument had been resonated for hundreds of years in different spaces: from mountains, steppes, shores, to streets, agoras, palaces, gardens and houses.

Görkem Özdemir joined us to explore cura in the context of a multi-dimensional musical composition with his main goal, to introduce a folkloric instrument into the electronic music tradition.

We will reveal more in the upcoming video.