Biography
Ülkü Çağlayan is one of the pioneering practitioners of intimacy coordination in Turkey and an artist working in the field of social choreography. Her practice is shaped through performance, participatory processes, facilitation and embodied research.
Her work focuses on the choreographic, psychological, and social dimensions of desire, care, touch and the intimate ways people enter each other's worlds.
Through performances and workshops, she explores how trust-building creates the conditions for connection and intimacy, and how boundaries and censorship shift across different contexts.
Bringing this background into intimacy coordination, Çağlayan aims to create processes that support performers' freedom of choice, bodily autonomy and nuanced storytelling.
Areas of Focus
I am particularly interested in stories that explore the conditions under which intimacy and desire become possible, are constrained, or remain unrealised and how these conditions shape who we become.
- Intimacy beyond sexuality; including vulnerability, touch, nudity, birth, death, care, and other forms of embodied intimacy
- Desire and forms of intimacy that are suppressed, forbidden or unrealised
- Non-normative forms of intimacy, communication and relating
- Power, vulnerability, consent and relational boundaries
- Identity, liminal states and processes of becoming
Selected Roles & Contexts
Embodied Learning Facilitator, European School of Politics, 2025–Present
Designing and facilitating embodied learning classes within civic and political education contexts, integrating somatic practices and experiential methods to support dialogue, relational awareness and mutual understanding across difference.
Social Dreaming Matrix Facilitator, 2021-Present
Through dream sharing and free association, the practice works with unconscious emotional currents and emerging social themes using dreams as a collective material. Maintained one of the longest-running Turkish-language Social Dreaming archives and contributed to the visibility and development of the practice within Turkey.
Co-founder, Circuit, 2012-2018
An interdisciplinary organisation bringing together citizens interested in art, activism and movement through socially engaged art practices.
Trainings & Certifications
SAG-AFTRA Accredited Certified Intimacy Coordinator, 2025–Present
Intimacy Directors and Coordinators (IDC)
Trauma-Informed Movement & Yoga Teacher Training, 2025–Present
Yoga Alliance Accredited
Death Doula Training, 2025
Site Specific Performance Research Program, 2020
Performance Art Studies
Introduction to Cognitive Science Course, 2017
Koç University, Istanbul
Physical Theatre Course, 2018
Koç University, Istanbul
Social Dreaming Matrix Facilitation, 2020
Duke University, Laboratory of Social Choreography
Education
MA Contemporary Art Practice, Performance, 2023
Royal College of Art, London
BA Business Administration, 2005-2010
Koç University, Istanbul
Practice Beyond Studio
The Delicate Lodge Teachings, 2023-2026
A body of knowledge and mindfulness practice rooted in diverse Indigenous oral traditions that have evolved over generations, centred on earth wisdom and the interconnected nature of life.
Independent Movement and Breathwork , 2012-Present
Designing and facilitating individual and group processes integrating movement, breath, embodiment and interpersonal awareness.
For artistic projects, performances and research-based work, www.ulkucaglayan.org.