Project proposal final draft before the deadline

Story of objects that surround us

Introduction

Last year my self directed research at Piet Zwart revolved around the varied issues of production of spaces, identity and ecology. Following the thematic seminar with Florian Cramer, (An Encyclopedia of Media Objects), my emphasis turned to the tension between objects and the production of space. I would, therefore, like to focus on our relations with objects and how they do produce space.

During my research for the graduation show, I would like to investigate the following issues: what is an object, what kind of relations there are between different objects, what kind of relations exist between human and non-human (objects, nature, etc.) and our approach to objects. Sum total, I would like to focus on non-human agents. The word “anthropocentric” means that human privilege in the world, the human oriented world where the human is regarded as supreme species. But we are not the only ones who live in this world where everything is connected. We shape our environment (habitat, objects around us, nature) and at the same time our environment shapes us.

Recently, I have been reading a number of post-humanist philosophers –such as Bruno Latour, Tristan Garcia, Heidegger, Lefebvre, Bachelard, Imam Ghazali, Graham Harman ¬ – all of whom counter the humanist tradition from Kant. I want to investigate about what is an object, what it does, what kind of relation it has with other objects, what is a space?

This approach is in opposition to Idealism, which emphasizes presence and is human-mind centered. German philosopher Kant founded the [modern] idealist philosophical movement. His idea is basically, if I perceive a thing it is exist but if I don't it is not exist. I want to focus on the opposite side of this movement because I believe there is a world beyond human consciousness. My research, therefore, is more about investigating absence. The things that we do not have a direct access. I also would like to explorer these questions in a great more detail for my thesis and would like to build it around these issues.

To balance our accounts of society, we simply have to turn our exclusive attention away from humans and look also at non-humans (objects, nature in my case) says Bruno Latour. And I believe we need to find a place for non-human masses in order to develop a social theory in our time. Previous years, I was making work about my origin and telling my story through objects (stones, minerals, soil, mirrors). I believe everything is relational that’s why I have picked these type of objects in order to talk about myself. I want to proceed this research by trying to find answers and turning my answers to art projects.

Light, sound, text and space based installation are the mediums that I want this research to be visualized through. Light because I am interested in making visibility or invisibility of objects and it helps us to perceive objects. Light has the possibility of making things visible and invisible. Sound because, perceiving things is more about seeing but listening is interesting for me how it can effect your senses through rhythm. Sound’s frequency is also has different effect on different age and species( Mosquito defender, dog whistle)Text, because of naming objects and making taxonomy is also way of perceiving objects, it is the medium where objects are becoming physical on the paper or getting picture of the object in the mind. Space based installation because I would like to produce some kind of realm where people can experience the subject that I am focusing through the space.

Background

Root project. The environment is one of the parameter that shapes our life. I started to travel to my village to know people and the environment. I believe we shape the environment and at the same time the environment shapes us. I collected minerals and stones and used photography and video at the beginning of the Root project to document the relationship between my roots and me. The relationship that I want to build up was not working at the beginning through my lens. Photographs and videos were not enough to tell my experiences, stories. Then I decided to build up a space for the viewer to experience my relation with my roots. The idea of building up a space or production of space comes from Lefebvre’s book “The Production of the Space”. By using the concept of “representations of space”, I created a dark room full of soil and a photograph in a light box. The installation turned into a representation of my village where visitors could experience, a disconnected relation to my roots. In the installation the earth is colder than the ambient temperature and the light box gave off ‘heat’.

The other part of my Root project is a reproduction of my origin. At the end of this project I realized that my village is no longer my roots. My father and me were born in Istanbul not in this village. As a result of this project this village is just a beginning of my origin. To define my roots, and myself in this project, I chose natural objects (Different kind of stones, minerals), which have more story about my roots and me. I took the stones and minerals that I collected from my village as a starting point and started to reproduce them in different ways such as Resin, 3d mapping and reflections in a three sided mirror. In appearance reproduced stones are the same but they are totally different from each other internally. And during this project working with stones helped me to establish a starting point to understand non-human language to build up non-hierarchical relationship in this anthropocentric contemporary world.

If you live in a city you forget the relationship with the natural environment. Cities are consuming nature to make new spaces for new buildings. We have less communication with the nature in this century. We forgot how we could live together. In this video work I wanted to investigate the relationship between nature and human in cities in order to deny that there are existential divisions between human and non-human nature. There is a tree in my garden and it has direct impact to my life as physical, psychological. I started to records its movements as a diary. I project this video vertically in order to point my window and there is a mirror on this video and reflect part of video to opposite site which is symbolize me.

Circle is a four channel, 49 minutes sound installation. It is last result of my research on Production of Space idea from Lefebvre and Bachelard' The Poetics of Space. It makes a circle around you in order to effect you in the dark room. It opens you a abstract space where you can have a direct relationship with an artwork. The abstract space created with sound, tries to breakdown that powerful effect across the gallery space. It affects your sense of hearing and seeing. The produced space starts to suggest new emotions. The sound I produced refers to “designed space”, the sound refers to “lived space” and suggested emotions refer to “space that we make sense ” using the triad of Lefebvre. The dialectical relationship between these three spaces makes a product of space like a circle.

Non Hierarchichy is a 2,40 minutes, one channel sound installation consist of a speaker and stairs. There is a weak sound that visitor need to step on the stairs and get closer to hear it. We are all(human and non-human) part of a network says Bruno Latour. In the sound installation, you listen a text from Bruno Latour " To balance our accounts of society, we simply have to turn our exclusive attention away from humans and look also at nonhumans. Here they are, the hidden and despised social masses who make up our morality. They knock at the door of sociology, requesting a place in the accounts of society as stubbornly as the human masses did in the nineteenth century. What our ancestors, the founders of sociology, did a century ago to house the human masses in the fabric of social theory, we should do now to find a place in a new social theory for the nonhuman masses that beg us for understanding." And the following sounds produced by objects and human that we cannot distinct from each other.

Relation the larger context

Object

In the book of Graham Harman, “The Third Table” that he wrote for Documenta 13. He talks about finding the third table. Sir Arthur Eddington says there are two type of tables in this room. One is physical that we can touch and see which has four legs and wood. The other one is scientific which consisted by atoms and electrons. But Harman says there is third one which is real table, that cannot reducible and not accessible. Object oriented ontology is looking for the third table. You cannot paraphrase objects. For example poem cannot be paraphrase like this and this, all these descriptions are not going to fully express what is express what is expressed in poem. It is more than it description. There is not possible knowledge of objects, directly and we can never translate it perfectly to another language. There are two kinds of objects, Real objects, Real qualities and Sensual objects, Sensual qualities. Real objects cannot be reducible and accessible, real qualities are also hidden from us and never paraphrase. Sensual objects, sensual qualities can accessible and reducible by other objects. When fire burns cotton it does not make contact to whole properties of cotton. When we hold the cotton we are reaching whole cotton. Fire may not be alive and consciousness, fire just touching certain features of the cotton just to its qualities. And in art there is an attempt to establish objects deeper than the features they are announced.

Ecology/Environment/Nature

We live together in this network and we are all connected to each other. We are in the anthropocene now in which many geologically significant conditions and processes are profoundly altered by human activities. We are destroying our environment and it is one of the results of considering human is on the first stage on other species. If we destroy the whole ecology we are also going to destroy ourselves. We need to protect ecology for its sake at the same time for us.

Space

The Production of Space is a book from Gaston Bachelard. In his book he says, there are three type of spaces Spatial Practice, Representation of Space and Representational Space. I am interested in with the representation of space and it is “conceptualized space, the space of scientists, planners, urbanists, technocratic subdivides and social engineers” whom “identify what is lived and what is perceived with what is conceived” and is the “dominant space in any society (or mode ofproduction).”Representational space on the other hand is “space as directly lived through its associated images and symbols, and hence the space of ‘inhabitants’ and ‘users'.

Practical Steps

I think I need to keep continue to building up a better knowledge of theory and of philosophical ideas to help explore and frame my thinking of objects, space and how we relate to each other. I will continue to my readings. I need to make some prototypes on basic level just to experience it. Because, sometimes, results don’t reflect my dream about the project. As a starting point, I am going to make a white LED light, that I can change the excising color of objects through color filters and will appear in different color. I am going to collect from my daily life and environment.

I am planning to produce sounds out of everyday object around me. It can be an installation when visitors touched the object can produce sound out of stand still rock.

I am planning to work with a mirror on the wall and a sentence or a word which has been written reverse. In order to read to you need to look at the mirror that will be place under this reverse writing.

References;

Books.

Lefebvre, Henri. Production of the space

Bachelard, Gaston. The poetic of space

Caryle, Angus. Lane, Cathy. (2013). On listening. Uniform books

Harman, Graham. (2010) The quadruple object. Zero Books

Harman, Graham. (2010). Towards to speculative realism. Zero Books

Harman, Graham. (2011). The third table. Hatje Cantz

Articles

Maridet, Cedric. (2006). Pierre Schaeffer and theory of sound objects.

McCluhan, Marshall. (1964). The Medium is the message

Guattari, Felix. Towards a post-media era

Foucault, Michel. The order of things

Latour, Bruno. (1998) To modernize or to ecologize? That’s the question

Latour, Bruno. Where Are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane Artifacts’’

Harman, Graham. (2010) Time, space, essence and Eidos: A new theory of Causation

Serres, Michel. Natural Contract

Latour, Bruno. (2015). Fifty shades of green

Macit, Muhittin. (1997). Metaphysics of possibility: Critique of Ghazali’s determinism

The real thing: Art and Speculative Realism. (2010)

Hayles, Katherine. (2014). Speculative Aesthetic and object-oriented inquiry (ooi)

Mirror metaphors in Mantikut Tayr. (2012)

Sterne, Johanatan. Sound Studies

Nuur, Navid. (2015). Mining Memory

Internet Lectures

What is an object by Graham Harman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eiv-rQw1lc

On Metaphysics and Art by Graham Harman, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-fRgNUOAs

The Anthropocene and the Destruction of the image of the globe by Bruno Latour, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-l6FQN4P1c

Ecological crises, Digital humanities and new political assemblies by Bruno Latour, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylY1GRDNOB8