Utku Asoruglu (Turkey): yES, i dOESN'T

World Premiere

Live performance from the 2016 MATA Festival at National Sawdust

April 13, 2016

Ensemble Linea, Jean-Phillippe Wurtz, conductor

Utku Asuroglu: yES, I dOESN’T (2016)

The social contract suggests that individuals willingly give up a certain measure of their Hobbesian freedom through laws, guidelines, and other rules that bind one to the state in exchange for the protection of their natural rights. Absent such regulations, humans would exist in a world guided by personal power and conscience. Asuroglu bristles at such limits: he writes: “I remember having an antipathy toward rules ever since I was a child... Incredulity and skepticism toward ‘rules’ has remained with me throughout my life…. What would happen if one decided not to follow these pathways? What if one were to change them.” In yES, I dOESN’T, Asuroglu posits a world in which the fires of curiosity, diminished through standardization, are free to rage, and the spirits of individuals are unafraid of failing.