MaMA 

After she was asked by MAMA to dig through the digital archives and publish past exhibitions online, team member and editor Dicle Gülşahin began reflecting on the past 21-something years of her own. This led her to record an episode for MAMA Radio back in 2021, the recording of which you can watch here.

Two years ago, right after I joined Team MAMA, I was asked to publish all the missing shows of MAMA on our digital realm. I was provided with the digital archive, where everything was stored in ancient digital formats ⁠— illegible texts due to software-related upgrades, unfinished drafts of show descriptions, photos with extremely low resolution, videos that are not supported to be played anymore. Digging into all of these in less than two months, I managed to publish twenty five years of MAMA eliminating all the time disrupts in between.

These consecutive weeks of work have, interestingly, led me into another bubble that has no relation to what I did: I got caught up in the past twenty-some years of my own! I did not grow up in Rotterdam, I was just a child when all those cool shows were taking place at MAMA and I had nothing to do with arts or culture back then, except as a spectator, or rather, being exposed to it. However, every time I left the MAMA office, it felt like I was exiting, let’s say, the year 2003. Thinking of what I was doing or what was happening back then when a certain show was taking place at MAMA, I ended up with specific feelings and events that often addressed a meaningful contrast. 

Since I immigrated to the Netherlands three years ago, settling has been an ongoing process of figuring out how to adapt my identity and ways of living learned through past experiences to my new environment. In this journey, MAMA has become a platform and a community where I have put down some roots. I believe that my subconscious decision to merge my past with MAMA arises from the comfort I feel in both spaces (and yes, your past can be your safe space, too.)

From what I extracted from what was narrated and displayed during MAMA’s past programs, I realized once again that being a teen in Turkey had clashing connotations with enjoying and celebrating culture in Rotterdam; the two societies internalized democracy, commonality, and other societal values in almost a contrasting way. Therefore, I wanted to share this personal experience supported by social and cultural evidence, maybe to express and celebrate what I brought to this city in my suitcase. As I am the living example of this contrast that I was amazed by, I aimed to be the bridge between a teenager in the past and present of a cultural platform to acknowledge that I exist with different layers of time and space. 

After a somewhat long process of structuring this idea, Radio MAMA seemed like the best place to tell my story. For those who don’t know, this is MAMA’s own radio show that takes place once a month within Operator Radio, an independent broadcaster in Rotterdam. After airing in June 2021, I decided to add visual evidence from the above-mentioned archive to all the stories I tried to tell as a proper invitation into my own bubble of dreaming and remembering. Now it is a ‘video podcast’ (or ‘vodcast’), as casual as it sounds.

Now I wonder if this creates a chain in which you are also triggered to be caught in your own past. Do any of these ring a bell? Do you miss the past as if nothing bad ever happened when you were younger, regardless where you were or what you were doing? Wouldn’t it be super cool if you and I ran into each other wearing our cargo pants at the Hard Pop Book Launch during the summer when Modjo’s ‘Lady’ became a huge hit? It definitely would, so take this ticket to a retro journey, and don’t worry about the cargo pants.

Do you fancy hearing more Turkish pop? Then check out the Spotify playlist Dicle made for you with cool hits for each year that MaMA existed!