Text on method first draft

During my BA I was working on my identity, my environment and. Because I believed, in order to work on other subjects you need to know yourself better. To know myself better I started to work on my identity based on my origin. Last year of my study shift from environment and my identity to space and identity of object happened. And it continues during my Master study at Piet Zwart Institute. I stated to read and think about space and object in social context. Because space is surrounds us. It is everywhere. Space consists of natural space, social space, representations or theories of space, according to Lefebvre (Lefebvre, 1991). And object, “In order to develop social theory in this century we need to consider objects (non-human) on the same level as human” (Latour, 1994). Beside Bruno Latour I used my cultural background. In eastern mystical philosophy, we believe every object has a soul. We need consider this idea that while we are using objects.

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

image from Root, 2014

The other part of my root project is reproduction of my origin. At the end of this project I realized that my village is not my root anymore. 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. The stones and minerals that I collected from my village, I took them as a starting point like my grandfather and started to reproduce them in different ways such as resin, 3d mapping and reflection. Reproduced stones looks like each other same as me and my grandfather. As an appearance reproduced stones are same but they are totally different from each other internally.

image from Root, 2015

If you live in a city you forget the relationship with nature. Cities are consuming nature to make new spaces for new buildings. We have less communication with nature in this century. We forgot how can we live together. In this video work I wanted to investigate the relationship between nature and human in cities. 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 vertical 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.

In between, shift from my identity and environment to production of space and non-human subjects. This work is about identity of Turkish people and our environment, which is made by state. Fictionalized Illusion is based on protest in Istanbul. I was collecting a lot of archive photographs, family albums from flea markets in Istanbul. I used this archive photographs in order to work on Turkish political history. In Turkey’s ninety years history, there are four military coups. Every time these coups made for intervention to different people. Because, there is no room for differences among people who lives in Turkey. I made digital collages and divided them into three section in this work. It starts with colorful photographs shows how they are different from each other, it ends with a photograph of a commander’s face. Second section shows after military coup and people has blank inner. State removes their identity. Third parts consist of grey people. State imposed itself with a grey to its people. This grey color is coming from colorful stairs in Istanbul. After Gezi park protests, people painted stairs in to color then municipality painted these stairs in to grey. And I took same grey as they used in order to show color of state. I am going to exhibit this work in a room with small entrance. In Turkish culture, we used to have small entrances. You needed to crouch down to get inside in order to show your respect to people who are inside. I am going to use same entrance. The wall of installation will be grey. Because, this room is going to turn into representation of Turkish state.

image from, Fictionalized Illusion, 2014

Production of space and non-human concepts became my main topic for a period. Counting object is one of the results of this research. Using quote from Bruno Latour during my performance I count every objects and human together on the same level in the space that I am in. In order to give to non-human a space. If we want to give an equal level for non-human we need to call them with their names not just as an object.

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