Ismyrna

Joana met the artist and poet Etel Adnan at the end of the 1990s. They quickly grew close, bound by links to a city they had never been to: Smyrna formerly, Izmir today. Joana’s paternal Greek family were forced into exile from Smyrna by the Turkish armies with the end of the Ottoman Empire. Etel’s Greek mother was born in Smyrna, married to a Syrian officer of the Ottoman Army and exiled to Lebanon with the fall of the empire. Etel and Joana lived in an imaginary Smyrna, today Izmir, without ever setting foot there. At present, both find themselves engaged in questions around the transmission of history, and interrogate their attachment to objects, places, the constructions of imaginaries and mythologies without images. Their personal experiences, their stories, serve as a background to the region’s changes and evolution of borders after the fall of the Ottoman Empire, questioning the notion of identity and belonging.

Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige’s Ismyrna is presented within Postcards from Afar, the first of five chapters in Memories for Forgetfulness Elsewhere, an online film program curated by Irmgard Emmelhainz for e-flux Video & Film. The program streams in five thematic group screenings each two weeks long, and will be accompanied by two live discussions.

For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.