Yoldaş – Frauen, die einander halten
Nihan Devecioğlu
Yoldaş – Frauen, die einander halten
Concert-Performance
“What is remarkable is the unusual, extraordinarily engaging form of this poetic documentary theatre (…).”
Christoph Leibold, Deutschlandfunk, 27.10.2025
Gespräch zwischen den Generationen: Zarte und starke Melodien verbinden sich mit deutsch-türkischen Zeitzeuginnen-Stimmen und Filmmaterial zu einem wichtigen Teil weiblicher Erinnerungskultur.
“We were the ones who made BMW what it is today”, says Emine Ulusen, who worked at the BMW plant in Munich for 38 years; there she experienced times of speechlessness, mental exhaustion and hard physical labour. Alongside Evgenia Karakolidis and Anayurt Kırımli, she is one of the first generation of migrant workers in Germany. They are so-called Yoldaş – friends and companions. Nihan Devecioğlu, concert and opera singer, composer and performer, is the granddaughter of workers of Turkish origin and grew up in the vicinity of the plant. In “Yoldaş”, she creates a poetic musical space for memories – of her own childhood in Munich in the 1980s and of the women whose work has remained invisible to this day. The musician, who combines Western classical music with Turkish Sufi and folk music as well as avant-garde in her artistic work, lets her delicate, virtuoso and crystal-clear melodies resound in “Yoldaş”. Devecioğlu recorded images and audio material at the BMW factory for the show and transformed it into an atmospheric soundscape. Women's voices, combined with machine noises and documentary film footage by visual artist Cana Bilir-Meier, merge on stage to form a lively collage of contemporary history, self-empowerment and female solidarity. An evening in German and Turkish about women who sacrificed their bodies and lives, and yet whose work simultaneously enabled a granddaughter to realise her great musical talent.
Dates
Tickets
Regular price: 18 €
Reduced price: 12 €
Supporters' price: 25 €
Venue
COMEDIA Theater, Köln
Duration
75 minutes
Discussion
17/06. Aftertalk (GER)
with Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster, a volunteer active, among others, in the Cologne-based initiative Herkesin Meydanı – Platz für alle, as well as in further initiatives across Germany; collection expansion at DOMiD (Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in Deutschland), Cologne
Further accompanying events:
18/06 Introduction & Refreshments 7:30 pm
with Fatoş [Fatma] Tuna – cultural mediator, moderator, education officer; currently pursuing a PhD on masculinity/masculinities in contemporary German-language postmigrant literature (University of Cologne)
Language
German