A single man stood motionless in the middle of Taksim Square in Istanbul for 8 hours on June 17, 2013 in protest against state and police violence during the Gezi Park demonstrations. This new form of protest, which had a great impact on those in Istanbul and throughout Turkey who had been following or taking part in the previous nineteen days’ events made this man a Twitter phenomenon, under the hashtag #duranadam, that is to say “standing man”. This act of nonviolent resistance, in which he did not speak or move, was followed in Turkey and around the world, making him an idol of nonviolent resistance against the Turkish government.

The Gezi Park movement, part of a worldwide wave of new social movements since 2010, has come to symbolize resistance against the Turkish state’s ongoing repressive policies, and particularly those of the AKP government whose decisions profoundly affect how citizens live1. Additionally, neoliberal urbanization policies have been destroying the green areas in big cities, a cause of significant concern for citizens, especially the ecologically minded. Gezi Park is one such space earmarked for destruction as part of the government’s urbanization projects. The plan to build a shopping center on the site of the park triggered the occupation of Gezi Park, first by environmentalists and then by other citizens, as soon as work started. They set up tents and held peaceful rallies to protect it. This occupation spawned a broader movement in which citizens claimed their right to freedom and dignity. 

The occupation of the park began on May 28, 2013. Initially there was a festival atmosphere, including a set of concerts, but over the following days things took a different turn when the occupants’ tents were burned down by employees of the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. As of 31 May 2013, the demonstration to protect the trees in the park morphed into a public-square human rights movement, with the participation of 3.5 million (the official government number) or 7.5 million (the unofficial number) people throughout Turkey, going under the name “Occupy Gezi”.

The presence of people claiming their fundamental rights together with a right to the space where they were gave this protest a dynamic physicality. Via this gathering, the space was transformed into a sphere of interaction, experimentation, and experience, that is to say a public sphere. Their “acting together” in democratic manner generated a collective energy by creating multiple ties between heterogeneous identities. The creation of these ties within a public square through action, experimentation, and the interaction of individuals consequently produced horizontality, a dominant feature of post-2010 social movements. Within such horizontality, art may be vigorously performed as part of the resistance, as in the case of “Standing Man”. By enhancing individualities and laying claim to the experience of “living together”, art can bring about new forms of expression.

Artistic expression, by creating a new experimental social existence, can generate new social ties through which further spaces of encounter may form. During the Gezi Park occupation, there were multiple artistic performances and expressions characterized by their immediacy. These revealed the creativity of those present, and occurred all over the park, often unexpectedly, and may accordingly be viewed as “performance” or as continuing performativity. Each expression of artistic creativity related both to its own subjective action and to a collective energy that was part of everyday life. Such everydayness makes the public sphere a “theatrical stage2” where we may encounter the performative social creativity of resistance art.

The unexpected act of Erdem Gündüz, named duran adam or standing man, displayed the traits of performance art, contemporary dance, and nonviolent resistance. Through his protest, he revealed the repressive violence of state power, experienced particularly acutely by protesters during the movement. He thus diverted the predictable image of the ideal type of protest. This “stand-in” appropriating the movement’s spirit of creativity became one of the cleverest acts of the Gezi movement, making “Standing Man” one of its icons.

Since 2010 an unexpected phenomenon has sprung up around the world, from Cairo to Madrid, Kiev to New York, Rio de Janeiro to Istanbul, and Tunis to London, in which public squares in big cities are occupied or taken over by rallies. Artist Erdem Gündüz explains that he felt he was “conquering the place3” while standing alone in Taksim Square, a sensation he describes in terms of “occupying”. “Occupy” designates the unexpected phenomenon of post-2010 social movements whereby citizens practice a form of collective nonviolent civil disobedience by setting up alternative spaces and counterpublic spheres in public squares.

The Gezi movement, like others, calls for people to “live together” and “act together” by reclaiming the public sphere. These people thus overturn the idea of the homogeneous identity of the nation-state, alter the nature of social and political movements, and engender a new way of doing politics. These movements represent, first, a productive existence encompassed by the foundations of democracy. Second, they are a form of reorganization taking place outside political parties and trade unions, whose purpose is not that of conquering power, and have no leader or established strategy. Third, they maintain the unanimity of their demands, acting on the idea of occupation by preserving the equality of all those involved. And finally, they mainly opt for nonviolent means4.  

The transformation of politics and economics, together with the fragmentation of social categories in a globalized world in the wake of economic crisis and the expansion of the neoliberal system, has brought a new collective capacity for action into play. With the emergence of post-2010 social movements around the world, a heterogeneous collectivity is formed, generating an alternative solidarity against institutionalized forms. A new reinvigorated citizenship is thereby staged by the subversive capacity of each individual. Accordingly, reorganizing and reclaiming spaces brings about a break in everyday conformity, deemed to be particularly important.

Nowadays it is no longer a matter of class struggle, but rather a quest for respect and human dignity, not just in the legal sense, but particularly in the sense of real everyday social ties. The emergence of a new civil society of resistance proceeds via a politicization taking place outside political parties. It is radically different from the great revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, which sought to bring about total change to the system. Nowadays, we may encounter gatherings rooted in everyday life, during which the repressions and experiences of everyday life prompt micro-actions and micro-revolutions in the form of individual initiatives. Furthermore, these modes of action circulate on social media and are reproduced, acting as keys of non-apathy and giving rise to intra-generational counterpublic spheres in public squares worldwide.

In this respect, the political consciousness of this new civil society leads towards a form of solidarity based on recognizing everyone’s right to freedom, respect, and dignity within these new gatherings in public places. According to Alain Touraine, these new social movements “are designed to change life, to defend human rights” and are “related to the defense of identity and dignity5”. The post-2010 social movements, as the core of the process to transform society, operate within the new public sphere that becomes the essence of democracy, directly involved in citizens’ everyday life.

Within these new collectivities and counterpublic spheres, artistic creation is a means of resistance experimenting with alternative methods through music, performance, theater, dance, cinema, graffiti, slogans, humor, and barricades. Standing Man is one such artistic expression, as well as a political act intervening in the transformation of the public sphere. This act of civil disobedience against police and state violence not only exposed the spatial reorganization arising from neoliberal policies, it was also a creative act of resistance in the public sphere. This protest and/or performance was an experiment during which Gündüz’s still and silent body became a space of liberation and resistance, and then a space of intervention in everyday life via a form of active citizenship6. By creating an unexpected performativity eluding predefinitions and escaping cultural massification, it deployed a democratic form of action through the negation of the political order and the engendering of a new space for creative encounter. Moreover, it is noteworthy that "the political significance and effectiveness" of Standing Man and other creative actions or interventions stem from their “public performativity”7. 

Gündüz explains that when he arrived in Taksim Square on June 17, there was a DISK8 and KESK9 trade union march that he had not initially intended to join as he no longer believed in their ideals. But because of violent repression by the police force and by AKP supporters, he decided to attend the march. Despite the police blockade, he managed to reach the square around 3:00 p.m by taking a passage through which tourists enter. On arriving in the square, he had nothing to do; that is why he preferred to stop and stand still. “There were many policemen in Taksim Square10”,  he explains, and from the outset he sincerely thought that people taking part in the union march would join him and participate in his act of standing still. Nevertheless, this did not happen as no demonstrators arrived. However, after 5 hours, other people came to join him, because they had heard on social networks like Twitter and Facebook that there was a single man standing still and silent in Taksim Square11. 

Standing Man appeared in Taksim Square in the wake of continual violence by the Turkish government. Citizens experience such violence visibly and invisibly, physically and psychologically, objectively and subjectively, and were deeply affected during the Gezi protests. While citizens claimed the right to freedom of expression for all, together with a right to the city and to the acceptance of the lifestyle of every individual, the nature of the authoritarian state was revealed in its vicious use of violent means. This fact is recorded in an Amnesty International report:

The nationwide protests were fanned by the authorities’ aggressive dismissal of the integrity of those originally protesting in Gezi Park and the crude attempts to deny them the right to peaceful protest altogether. The widespread police use of tear gas, water cannon, plastic bullets and beatings of protestors during what were overwhelmingly peaceful protests added to the anger12.  

During the Gezi movement, the Turkish state lost its legitimacy largely due to excessive use of physical violence. But the authorities also committed psychological violence through their discourse. The way their statements altered and deformed truth immediately sparked anger, despair, and distrust towards the government. Using violent means to punish and crush citizens seen as opponents and to prevent peaceful expression inevitably generates repression. When this fact is compounded by “psychological and social pressures that cause emotional and psychological injuries13”, the situation becomes even more unbearable for those claiming their constitutional and fundamental rights.

In this context, most citizens adopt nonviolence as a means of moral and strategic resistance. In other words, they choose to resist using relatively peaceful means such as marches, humor, artistic expression, and civil disobedience. The issue is thus the confrontation between violence and nonviolence during the Gezi Park occupation and demonstrations nationwide. The act of standing man suggests, in this context, a questioning of nonviolent movements for individual or collective resistance. Collective nonviolent resistance such as the Indian Independence Movement, the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, and individual acts of resistance such as Tank Man during the Tiananmen Square movement in China indicate a path for methods of resistance and civil disobedience.

The development of nonviolent movements and actions is rooted in Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (force of truth, adherence to truth), referring to nonviolent resistance even in the face of coercive and judicial repression by a given state. Marches, sit-ins, boycotts, non-cooperation, disobedience, and occupations are intended to achieve social and political change through nonviolent action. Nonviolent action (also inspired by ahimsa14) denotes resistance grounded in a moral stance and political strategy vis-à-vis institutional oppression and unjust conditions. The Civil Rights Movement in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s likewise drew on the values embodied by Gandhi’s passive resistance. This movement, guided by Martin Luther King Jr., used sit-ins, boycotts, and marches for freedom, named “freedom rides”, as means of resistance.

A nonviolent action such as “Standing Man” may disrupt the foundations of political power since the latter depend on the obedience and cooperation of individuals15. According to David Hardman, when the obedience of individuals is withdrawn, “a state cannot survive in a viable way16”. Gene Sharp17, for his part, argues that the power of masses weakens oppression, suggesting that nonviolent resistance brings about change through means such as disobedience, as opposed to violent methods seeking to achieve results through force. As Hardman observes, nonviolence therefore “refuse[s] to challenge the state on its own terms, that is with violence18”. By opting for nonviolent action, people withdraw their consent from the given state’s power and hence refuse to submit.

The “stand-in”, that is to say “the act of persistently standing and waiting at a certain place to gain an objective” in Sharp’s definition, is one method of nonviolent direct action, chosen on strategic or moral grounds, and intended to expose the injustices in a given situation. This kind of direct action breaks the silence – even in the case of Standing Man who remained silent throughout his action. Erdem Gündüz’s individual nonviolent act of resistance presents notable similarities with “Tank Man”, who marked the history of China and the world with his 1989 “stand-in” during the Tiananmen Square movement. This resemblance is something Erdem Gündüz recognizes:

I'm not the first person to oppose power or injustice, and I will not be the last. Like the demonstrations by African Americans, like the man in Tiananmen Square and many others who oppose the government. I am neither the first nor the last19. 

In this respect, the artist states that “individual acts are more powerful than collective acts20” because the system is well-prepared for the latter. Additionally, he defines the three following characteristics of his protest/performative act: first, it is not illegal; second, it is easy to copy; and third, one must have a reason to express oneself. In addition, he describes those eight hours as “standing man” using three words: “obstinacy”, “simplicity”, and “hope21”. His act could be reproduced by many people that night and the following days by putting these three words into practice.

In the light of these observations by the artist about the simplicity of performing his act and its inherent obstinacy, embracing both a theoretical and practical vision to attain social change, we may understand how this act paved the way for a feeling of general “relief22”.

Indeed, given the normalized and legitimized oppression by law enforcement during the protests, the impression of “checkmate23” – of having found a way to win recognition – evacuated the sense of social “malaise24” .

The occupation of Taksim Square by a single man on June 17 took place through a very simple gesture, that of standing still in silence. Such a gesture ties in with the concept of “the politics of small gestures” discussed by Mika Hannula: “a small gesture is a political act that is either visible or embedded in works of art25”. Hannula examines gestures belonging to everyday experience which nevertheless become a “partner in crime26” by making a difference and bringing about change. According to Hannula, those small gestures “claim something, deny something else, and stand still, leaving room for something worthwhile to emerge27”. Once introduced into the public sphere, they may reconfigure these spaces, as in “Standing Man”. Gündüz’s realization that “one single man can occupy the square28” gave rise to a displacement of politics creating a sense of truth, justice, and belonging, brought about by a performative and artistic intervention in a public square by his small gesture of immobility and silence.

In gatherings in squares around the world, creative subjects and anonymous artists reconfigure “a politics of gesture” which, as Yves Citton notes, “act by their ability to flood media channels, attract attention, cause admiration, fear, or horror, provoke imitation or resistance, redirect or short-circuit the flow of desires and beliefs animating our everyday existence29”. Whilst Hannula puts forward the idea of politicization rather than politics, making it possible to create and imagine alternatives, Citton suggests “unexpected gestures” as “a gap, a shocking image, an ambiguous signal” that may trigger the dynamics for an overthrow30. The first gesture to unexpectedly go off may awaken “hyper gestures31” in social movements, as in the case of “Standing Man”. The simple gesture of standing man gave rise to a collective and creative energy by letting other people act in several public spheres, the latter ultimately resembling a theatrical scene of everyday life representing the life of real spectators32. 

At first, Erdem Gündüz was the only person to stand still in the square, staging, in his view, an act “like sleeping, eating, and sitting33”. His act, therefore, disrupted the state order since the police did not know “the rules of the game”. The artist emphasizes that his act was like a game with very simple rules: “Do not talk and do not move34”. He thus considers it hard to win for someone who does not know the rules of the game. He adds that in Turkey “the government sets all the rules [...] the same for elections”35. That is why citizens cannot win. Moreover, he emphasizes that “it is like gambling, the house always wins. This time I established the rules”36. In the act of duran adam, he set his own rules, yet, according to him, “standing man hasn't got any power or influence [...] Those who come to Gezi see the truth, see the lies, but we cannot reach those who do not come, they only believe TV dramas, we cannot change their opinion37”. 

Furthermore, Taksim Square has a significant place in the collective memory of Turkey as a place where numerous rallies have been held, including political protests, marches, and May 1st demonstrations over previous years. Once again, a park adjacent to the square helped spawn a new movement. Gündüz staged this protest for Gezi, yet thinks that “the problem is more than Gezi38”, and that its probable destruction is just one of the problems of Turkish democracy.

Gündüz explains the feeling of being alone in an enormous square as “simple”, and as if he covered the entire square. Through his small gesture, he managed to create the impression of occupying the whole square. In fact, through small gestures such as “Standing Man”, a new political vocabulary emerges. Its purpose is not to overthrow the entire system, but to create multiple micro-pressures to end the feeling of powerlessness. “Standing Man” was a small gesture exerting such micro-pressure without using violent means. Additionally, this act evolved into a gesture reproduced many times by people in Turkey and around the world in order to attract attention. These gestures introduce a creative, experimental, and liberating participation by proposing a micro-political action, drawing on the methods of contemporary artistic experience.

The small gesture by standing man displaced politics in a way that was unpredictable. Artistic and performative intervention in the new public sphere by “Occupy” movements such as the Gezi Movement in Istanbul reveal a different type of space for encounter and experimentation. At this point, it should be noted that the new public sphere is reconfigured differently from the bourgeois public sphere theorized by Jürgen Habermas39. Contrary to Habermas's theory of the separation of the private and bourgeois public spheres in which the language of order remains, Oskar Negt and Alexander Kluge40 emphasize the concept of experience in the public sphere, paving the way to a non-liberalized perspective. Whereas the former involves exclusion, Negt and Kluge set out the idea of the “context of living” (Lebenszusammenhang), providing a conceptual framework to mediate the theorization of a plural public sphere in which subjects interact with different public spheres, in order to represent society as a whole. They therefore formulate a new public sphere through the horizon of experience, putting forward the notion of the “counterpublic” (Gegenöffentlichkeit) laying emphasis on the proletarian public sphere. 

Likewise, Nancy Fraser argues that “subaltern counterpublics” may operate in “parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counterdiscourses41”. By highlighting the multiplicity of public arenas outside supervision by dominant groups, Fraser brings new forms of solidarity into view. This also provides a theoretical basis in multicultural post-capitalist society for revitalizing the use of alternative practices to organize the “fragmented public sphere42”. The creation of “counterpublic spheres43” is therefore an essential element in resistance and in formulating alternatives. Moreover, they are the framework in which counterpublics interact with public deliberation and discussion to share “the real experiences of human beings44”.

In Relational Aesthetics, Nicolas Bourriaud addresses the “increasing urbanization of the artistic experience”, viewing the city as a space of encounter. Taking “being together” as his central notion, Bourriaud develops his concept of “relational art” as “an art taking as its theoretical horizon the realm of human interactions and its social context, rather than the assertion of an independent and private symbolic space45”. This concept refers to an art of social interstices which, according to Bourriaud, are loci for exchanges with the potential to create emancipated spaces of instantaneous collectivities. In social interstices, relational art “is a state of encounter46”. The artwork, inscribed in space and in time, elaborates “ways of living and models of action within the existing real47”.  

In this respect, the transformation of the public sphere, in which the rules of the game are laid down by the hegemonic order, into a sphere of social interstices through creative intervention was brought about in Taksim Square by “Standing Man”. This small performative and political gesture created a space of encounter for bodies located in various public spheres, and all these silent motionless bodies produced a sort of creative liberation engendering “counterpublic spheres”. This liberation resided in the resistant existence of each body reproducing this gesture in those spheres. The interactions were thus realized by virtue of this relational gesture allowing everyone to express their own concern and generate their own unique experience.

“Standing Man” acted as a path to create counterpublic spheres given the prevalent state of despair. As Gündüz states, speaking, walking, and standing together no longer functioned in these circumstances: “People tried everything in Gezi, dancing, singing, talking, practicing yoga, tai chi, camping, they tried everything. They tried it all, but it didn’t work48”. However, as of June 17, 2013 people took up his act and reproduced it in various ways, in different places and at different times, so as to create their own counterpublic spheres. Hence this act, as a game with its own rules, became a space of encounter between wholly unacquainted individuals. This act spread contagiously via social media and spawned reproductions throughout the country and around the world.

In this respect, the proliferation of social media leads us to redefine a transformed concept of space, through which the notion of counterpublic spheres is reconfigured once again on a global scale. People become aware of this gesture, and then appropriate it for their own specific purposes in their given situation. When the protest was shared on social media, it immediately became a symbol in other countries or cities, such as Brazil or Miami. People worldwide have reproduced it in the light of their own purposes or intentions. As Gündüz points out, this act belongs to everyone, and so each person experiences it in their own way depending on their own dissatisfactions and personal motivations. 

While standing still in Taksim Square, Gündüz’s gaze was directed towards AKM49. AKM is a very significant cultural center in Istanbul, which shut down in 2008. The direction in which his body pointed became a major issue for Gezi movement participants and supporters, as they wondered why he had not been looking at the park. Yet Gündüz has clarified that his motivation for looking at AKM was based on his concern for a cultural center that had been closed and recently turned into a place used by the police to rest. As of the second week of the movement, “it had become a rest center for the police, TOMAs50 took water there, the police dressed there, rested, it was wholly a police station”. He therefore saw “a cultural center almost destroyed51”. In his imagination, when looking at AKM he saw “a candle” that he continued to light using his eyes. He noted that this imaginary candle represented his “hope”. In his view, other people also saw the candle once they came and stood still in the square on the evening of June 17 like him.

According to Gündüz, these types of interactions, at times invisible and imaginary, occur more and more frequently in public sphere. He explains that in the public sphere “any person who passes there becomes your spectator. You illuminate something in his head. They may ask you when they don't understand something. There is more interaction in the public sphere52” .The emphasis of art in the public sphere is the encounter between artist and spectator, in which the artist meets his/her spectator in everyday life. That is to say in an “equal, free, and more human” relationship53. Hence, this type of horizontal relationship generated by a small nonviolent gesture under extremely violent circumstances provoked by the state order offers possibilities for resistance and the creation of counterpublics.

The act of Erdem Gündüz cannot be tied down to a single definition, for it was many different things at once. It was political protest and artistic expression. We can describe it as a stand-in, civil disobedience, protest, performance, nonviolent direct action, act of contestation, nonviolent resistance, and performative act. There thus exist several degrees and types of intersecting agency regarding its reception by other people. 

Furthermore, this act became a collective act generating counterpublic spheres. It was “an act without properties54” that triggered multiple properties, since “duran adam is not one person55”, and at the same time is any person. Those multiple properties ensure that people can continue to claim their rights to freedom and dignity all over the world. Thus, his act opened up a corporal space of resistance creating a very unique perception of nonviolent counterpublic spheres.

The “acting together” of people reproducing this act occurred via an unusual form of interaction. Motionless and silent bodies came together and generated a performative collectivity, preserving both personal intentions and political concerns. They avoided verbal interaction and resisted through a gesture which went on to become a hyper gesture in several unpredictable public spheres.

“Standing Man” thus represents the unity of individuals resisting in the face of repression and inequality. Through his creative energy, Gündüz generated a new way of thinking and a new path towards freedom. He also created a new repertoire of action disrupting state know-how, deploying an intelligent and performative strategy serving to maintain the spirit of resistance56.