Seite - 99 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 4/2018

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Lora Sariaslan | The Art of Migration 99 (hi)story. Anny was born in 1970 in Istanbul and her sister Sibel in Eberbach am Neckar in 1975. As Anny and Sibel recall: “Our parents left for Germany in 1972. Their decision was made more from a desire for adventure, wanderlust. Both journalists, well off and with one child, they set off to see the world. They did not go to make money. They went to experience something new.”18 Both sisters grew up in Germany and studied at the Städelschule in Frankfurt. When Anny is asked how being born in Istanbul and spending most of her life in Germany has influenced her art, she responds: “My home is in more than one culture, this fact is a reality for a huge amount of Europeans and by no means an exception. This has a big influence on my work and on the collabora- tion with my sister Sibel. Many of our works are based on memories. Most of them refer to shared familiar memories. Therefore we have reference fields whose character differentiates in a cultural context, Germany, and Turkey. Both are inextricably linked with each other.”19 In pursuit of a better understanding of how ‘belonging’ relates to what Frederick N. Bohrer calls “the globalized, fractured, and transnational world of our time,” Bohrer suggests a “re- thinking [of] the idea of ‘belonging’ and reconnecting it with its linguistic roots.” He informs us that before the English word ‘belonging’ implied ‘possession,’ or ‘some form of ownership,’ it originally meant ‘a much looser sense of correspondence… between two things’ that may be ‘equally long, corresponding in length, running alongside of, parallel to, going along with.’ He goes on to explain that “belonging is not in any sense about necessarily in the same place but rather about two things sharing something significant, wherever they are located” and that ‘belonging’ only becomes evident through some degree of distance, that the two require each other”. Thus, we conclude that the English word originally had spatial implications.20 What the Öztürk sisters do on a personal level is to record and present their memories and subjective experiences which constitute the basis of the work, and on a general level, the work connects simultaneously with the artistic and non-artistic communities in-and-between these countries, as this is a vision commonly experienced during the summer holidays. Behind the Wheel takes the actual mobility of the Gastarbeiter, folds and presents it back to us. The cliché of the Gastarbeiter family, an image of the Turkish worker and his family going back to the ‘motherland,’ is in front of our eyes. The sisters give an artistic visibility to this journey, spatial implications and its participants although they are physically absent. But where does Turkey stand for these artists? How do they ‘fold’ Turkey into/with Germany? Anny Öztürk responds: “Our connection to Turkey is strong… in our hearts. The language I use when thinking, dreaming, and speaking is German. My Turkish is more of a foreign language. I always 18 Angelika Stepken, ‘Anny and Sibel Öztürk in conversation with Angelika Stepken’, in Sisters and brothers and birds, edited by Angelika Stepken (Karlsruhe: Europäische Kulturtage, 2004). 19 Uslar, Rafael von, ‘Anny & Sibel Öztürk’, in Her Yerde, evinde / At home, wherever, edited by Jacquelyne Bass et al. (Köln, Istanbul: W. König, Yapı Kredi Publications, 2010). 20 Kamal Boullata, ‘Sharing a Meaning: An Introduction’, in Belonging and Globalization: Critical Essays in Con- temporary Art and Culture, edited by Kamal Boullata (London: Saqi, 2008), 11.