Abu Hajar, Halil Altındere, Nguzunguzu

Homeland is the third record in Anthem, the vinyl series of the 9th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. The 2016 Biennale was curated by the New York collective DIS, and the series was produced with The Vinyl Factory under the direction of Total Freedom (Ashland Mines). The record carries the song from Homeland, a ten-minute video by the Turkish artist Halil Altındere, commissioned for the Biennale. Shot in Turkey and Germany, the film mixes realism with fiction and follows the experience of forced migration. Its scenes, partly based on real footage, move from a border crossing through the hidden waterways of Istanbul to Tempelhof, Berlin's former airport, then in use as a refugee camp. A Syrian rapper now living in Berlin voices the contradictions of refugee status throughout. The Biennale presented the work as bringing the migration crisis home to the city where Europe's response to it is decided.

That rapper is Mohammad Abu Hajar, from the coastal city of Tartus. As he told The Guardian in 2015, he helped found the cross-sect opposition group Ahrar Tartus, was imprisoned in 2012 and left Syria to avoid a second arrest. In Germany he kept writing and performing, and spoke of the new freedom to speak and to fuse Eastern and Western musical ideas. On Homeland he wrote and performs the lyrics. The beat is by Nguzunguzu, the duo from the Fade to Mind label. Altındere was born in Mardin in 1971 and lives in Istanbul. Since the mid 1990s he has worked as an artist, curator and publisher of art-ist magazine. His work has been shown at Documenta, Manifesta and the biennials of Istanbul, Gwangju, Sharjah and São Paulo, and he made the cover of this record, which credits Total Freedom as producer. The single track runs almost five minutes on side A. The Vinyl Factory presented it as Los Angeles club production meeting Middle Eastern hip hop. Vice called it "the uproarious 'Homeland'" (2016).

This is the original Vinyl Factory 12" (VF240), pressed on 180g heavyweight black vinyl in an edition of 300 copies, with artwork by Halil Altındere and design by Meiré und Meiré.