biriken is formed by Okan Urun and Melis Tezkan in 2006 in Istanbul with the aim of conceiving stage performances, installations and videos. Amongst the venues and the festivals where biriken performed: De Keuze İnternational -  Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Under The Radar Festival - La MAMA Theater, Stückemarket’11 -  Theater und Orchester Heidelberg, iDANS Festival, French Institute of Istanbul, Ankara International Film Festival, garajistanbul, Galata Perform.

The Turkish word “biriken” meaning “piled up” says a lot about of our functioning: a shared creative process in which we use both our mutual and individual accumulations. Exploiting our diverse backgrounds — theater-acting, visual communication and aesthetics —, we collaborate in a symbiotic way to produce works where the codes are incessantly blurred.
 
biriken’s work deals with today’s reality, whether it’s daily, social or conceptual. Throughout our performances, the political is in the critical attitude of the body moving back and forth between the character and the performer, the intimate and the social. Degeneration, discordance, physical waste and low-tech appearance technology are some of the layers employed to highlight the ambiguous constitution of the present. From our originals texts (Now There is a hole where once stood our house; Re: Fwd: die in good company) to Özen Yula’s plays that we staged (Treachery in the Near East; Lick But Don’t Swallow!) there are some recurring patterns such as: identity games, local-global and self-space relationship and fragile subjects which are challenged by incessant change.