Queer Autonomous Zone Along The Pink Line
(2024-Present)
(2024-Present)
Transdisciplinary, long-term collective
The Queer Autonomous Zone (QAZ) Along the Pink Line is a long-term, transdisciplinary art project conceived as a conceptual and mobile space. The project builds on journalist Mark Gevisser’s notion of the “pink line”, a geopolitical divide where queerness is framed as “Western,” instrumentalized by authoritarian and nationalist regimes, and shaped by histories of colonialism, migration, and global inequality. By envisioning a queer autonomous region undivided by the pink-line, QAZ explores how queer autonomy can be imagined, practiced and cared for across —and beyond— national borders and political demarcations.
QAZ moves and changes shape through collaborations with queer artists and activists across Turkey and Europe, and multi-arts experimentation including performance, video, photography, publications, and community-based interventions. In this way, it offers a non-territorial, non-bordered space for queer autonomy while humorously critiquing statehood and centralized authority.
Since 2024, I actively take part in the conceptual development of the project, designing its important happenings and connecting various actors together with Onur Tayranoğlu. Additionally, I have produced multiple video works documenting QAZ actions, contributed to its publications and designed the visual identity of QAZ.
The actions of QAZ are archived, and auto-fictional “QAZ diaries,” slowly constructing QAZ’s story, are kept by me and Tayranoğlu. Using this archive, a docu-fiction film that culminates the QAZ process will be completed in December 2027. The film, co-directed by me and Tayranoğlu, will follow the traces of QAZ as if it were a real, de facto zone, investigating its participants, actions, and history. It will blend live-action and animation to construct the docu-fiction universe.
Bedtime Stories from QAZ (2024)
Performative gathering at Stoa Library Helsinki
Performative gathering at Stoa Library Helsinki
Manifesto(s) of QAZ (2025)
Zine publication
Features : Melagro, A.D.M.M.P, Mi’r, Nasim,
Mor vejîn.
“ We find memory in everything you thought we forgot, we remember
we get stuck in your guts, won’t go down even with laxatives, we're so annoying, so rude, such bastards.
They say, don’t wash the dead too much, or they’ll come back to life. “
(Excerpt from my text, English translation)
Link to the full zine : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZNDrcmfSgwqgDh-uFCaZL94Xhj7aj7B_/view
Zine publication
Features : Melagro, A.D.M.M.P, Mi’r, Nasim,
Mor vejîn.
This zine is the outcome of a collective effort within QAZ. It brings together manifestos written in five non-institutionalized languages spoken along the Pink Line : Karelian, Kurdish, Ladino, Romanes, and Syriac.
QAZ envisions itself as a decentralized space, connecting diverse queer communities. Rather than producing a single declaration, we embraced the multiplicity of our voices—gathering five manifestos written by five queers who carry these languages despite everything, reflecting intersecting forms of solidarity.
Each writer shares their visions of ‘autonomy’ and of QAZ, intertwining the perspective of their language and people with a queer lens. So they share the experiences and dreams that shape QAZ. Their manifestos speak from the fractures between borders. Together, they make queer autonomy and interdependence visible; they refuse erasure and assimilation, celebrate plurality, and insist on the right to exist and to speak in our own words.
In addition to the conceptual development, visual design, and production of the whole project, I contributed a text in Ladino called “The Happy-assed Prayer to the Gods of the Pimps’ Synagogue.” Like “happy-assed” (kulo alegre in Ladino), which is used to describe queer people, I constructed the text using the characteristic idioms of Ladino. By working with Ladino’s argot and playful tone, I established a rebellious queer tone. I intersected my narrative with Jewish sex workers and socialists of the Ottoman era.
QAZ envisions itself as a decentralized space, connecting diverse queer communities. Rather than producing a single declaration, we embraced the multiplicity of our voices—gathering five manifestos written by five queers who carry these languages despite everything, reflecting intersecting forms of solidarity.
Each writer shares their visions of ‘autonomy’ and of QAZ, intertwining the perspective of their language and people with a queer lens. So they share the experiences and dreams that shape QAZ. Their manifestos speak from the fractures between borders. Together, they make queer autonomy and interdependence visible; they refuse erasure and assimilation, celebrate plurality, and insist on the right to exist and to speak in our own words.
In addition to the conceptual development, visual design, and production of the whole project, I contributed a text in Ladino called “The Happy-assed Prayer to the Gods of the Pimps’ Synagogue.” Like “happy-assed” (kulo alegre in Ladino), which is used to describe queer people, I constructed the text using the characteristic idioms of Ladino. By working with Ladino’s argot and playful tone, I established a rebellious queer tone. I intersected my narrative with Jewish sex workers and socialists of the Ottoman era.
“ We find memory in everything you thought we forgot, we remember
we get stuck in your guts, won’t go down even with laxatives, we're so annoying, so rude, such bastards.
They say, don’t wash the dead too much, or they’ll come back to life. “
(Excerpt from my text, English translation)
Link to the full zine : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZNDrcmfSgwqgDh-uFCaZL94Xhj7aj7B_/view
The following works intersect QAZ and Tayranoğlu’s process-based performance Pink Bill, in which they seek exemption from mandatory military service by proving their queerness to the Turkish state and military. To do this, they must engage with a medical system that diagnoses queerness as a psychosexual disorder—the very diagnosis provides the exemption. These works are conceptually developed by Tayranoğlu and Saydı during the Pink-Bill process, and documented by Saydı to be used in the QAZ docu-fiction film, for the segment narrating how Onur joins QAZ.
Roll Call (2024)
Video, 7:32 minutes
Video, 7:32 minutes
Roll Call archives the first step of Tayranoğlu’s process of proving his queerness to the state in order to be exempted from the military: filling out the military check-up form online. The performance of queerness begins already with this form. They list “dance” as their hobby and “psychosexual disorder” as their illness.
https://youtu.be/2JE7BRy4QGY?si=AxM_uC1WGj6ORYFT
Farewell (2024)
Video-Performance, 5:28 minutes
Video-Performance, 5:28 minutes
Farewell is a performance that celebrates Onur’s successful proof of their queerness to the state and their exemption from military service. In the performance, the codes of the Turkish “military send-off” ritual —typically held before men depart for service—are used with a satirical twist. The classic moment of locking eyes with the mother turns into the act of putting on nail polish. The traditional military shawl that reads “now, he is a soldier” becomes “now, he is …. you know”. In this way, the patriarchal nation-state codes of the ritual are queered and reversed. Still, the performance presented in PerformIstanbul in 2024, remains a “farewell”. The video-documentation will be used in the film, in the section showing Onur’s departure for QAZ.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sYYtUtK5eYDKVzMmxRPjyk96yu3m3Dti/view?usp=sharing