The musicians are on stage. They do not have scores, nor have they prepared anything. Like the audience, they don't know what they're going to play. They concentrate, listen to the silence and finally let a sound impulse come. The improvisation begins. It continuously constructs and deconstructs its musical rules and tries to create a new sound experience, without sticking to any genre.
Anıl Eraslan about the movie
As an improvising musician who left Turkey 23 years ago, I remain connected to the improvised music scene in Istanbul. For more than three years I have been working on a documentary project with my improviser friends who live there. Academics or freelancers, these musicians are the pre-eminent figures of Istanbul's "free improvisation" music scene. From traditional Turkish instruments such as the tanbur and kemenche to modular synthesizers and electric guitars, the range of instruments is very wide. Each musician comes from a different musical background, such as contemporary music, Turkish-Ottoman music, rock, noise or jazz. They make music without limiting themselves to a specific musical genre, hierarchy or commercial ambition.
In this short Super 8 film I piece together various sequences of the ongoing main project, concentrating only on the city itself, using radio frequencies and improvisations with cello and objects to re-imagine the essence of the city's vibrant soundscape.