Thesis chapter one draft
Thesis
Abstract/Intro
This thesis will investigate how humanity can look to the wars, how we are mediated by news and images they use, why we like to see violent images, how these images are becoming hyperreal, what is politics of virtual image, when an image become pornography and how possible to change common images of war by not showing? I believe that it is possible to talk about war without looking at violent images. We can trace the wars from its components if necessary. In my project, I am using empty houses and objects to talk about war in general and refugee crisis.
The thesis examines two key texts Regarding Pain of Others by Susan Sontag and The Quadruple Object by Graham Harman.
Regarding Pain of Others, analyze Looking at violent images is an ontological problem we get pleasure when we look at them. How we become senseless at certain point? A violent image is about how war looks like when it is seen from afar, as an image. Violent images are also big part of propaganda using by states to manipulate public. Sontag's book isn't only about the meaning and uses of images, however about the nature of war, the limits of sympathy, responsibilities of conscience.
In The Quadruple Object, Harman investigates what is real object, what it does, and what kind of relation it has? We do not have direct access to real objects they are hidden from us. We partly access to their qualities. According to Harman, real objects exist in a permanent autonomous zone where real objects are simply themselves.
When the Arab Spring started, everybody was excited about the events that happening in Arab countries. For some countries it worked out, public protests managed to make the revolution to the dictators in their counties but for some countries such as Syria it didn't happen, the civil war started. I felt responsible during this civil war and refugee crisis, and wanted to make something in response. The first project was a photography project about people who refused to leave Syria in 2011. I visited different cities to witness their situation. In the project I produced a space on Polaroid sheets where they can express themselves. I asked them to write and draw something.
This is the second project I made in Syria in 2013. This time I wanted to focus on the refugee crisis from starting point, from, what they left behind them such as demolished houses, houses, and objects. But I wanted to look to the situation as an artist as a human rather than news reporter or documentary filmmaker. I didn't focus on the violent images and news type footages. I wanted to criticize mainstream media coverage and how we become senseless. My grad project consists of footages and objects, which I collected from Syria in different cities. In the project viewers can see how it is possible to show war without violent images.
The gates of World are being met by more refugees than ever. The image that is being portrayed in the media of the migration crisis is creating great worries worldwide, tapping into contradictory collective emotions of pity and fear. This project will reflect a new light on a society in which migration is a determinant factor and is inextricably linked to contemporary social, political and economic reality.
Within a framework of visual dominance, mass media has become a powerful tool and is of the main determinants of public opinion. The image of the migrant and war are mainly based on the images that are being circulated in (social) media. Even though these images form an important component of the migration flux, they are certainly not direct representations of reality.
News coverage about migrants systematically portrays the migrant as ‘the other’. Furthermore, the images that make it to the newspapers or on our social media accounts timelines. These are the perspectives that the mainstream media commonly emphasize in their sensationalist accounts of war and immigration, even when they report on current influx of migrants or on the reactionary responses to immigrants. The result is a poor representation of the main protagonist of these images, who is being reduced to either victim or criminal.
So, do we feel the same, when we look at same images(poor representation) or social media account? What kind of feeling we have towards to this type of images? Mostly pity and angry? We do have same responses ‘despite of different education and traditions behind us'. These may effect our feelings but it is same feelings. We call them horror and disgust. " War you say, is an abomination, barbarity, war must be stopped at whether cost. And we echo your words. War is an abomination, a barbarity, war must be stopped,” says Sontag at the beginning of her book. That this is the common idea about war. When we look at images of war we say, this is what it's like. This is what war does. And that, that is what is does, too. War tears. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.
It is also essential that how violent images use as a part of propaganda. All images of war were taken during wars wait to be explained or falsified by their captions. For example during the Bosnian war, the same photograph of the children killed in the shelling of a village were passed around Serb and Croat propaganda by changing its caption. The children's death could be used and reused. Because war photography or violence brings this propaganda. It scares people. Of course it is an image and shows how war looks when it is seen from far. We see the violent images in the morning in the newspaper at breakfast but dismiss its recollection with the coffee.
War aesthete Ernst Junger observed, in 1930, the identification of the camera and the gun, ' shooting' a subject and says these are congruent activities: It is the same intelligence, whose weapons of annihilation can locate the enemy to exact second and meter.
In fact, there many uses of the innumerable opportunities a modern life supplies for regarding at a distance, through medium of photography other people's pain. Photography of an atrocity may give rise to opposing responses. A call for peace. A cry for revenge. Or simply bemused awareness, continually restocked by photographic information that terrible things happen. Who can forget a photograph of man standing in front of a tank in Tiananmen Square in China.
During this part I want to talk about my previous project to elaborate my graduation project. I believe, they will draw a shape that you can follow my practice. I mostly work with photography, video and mixed media installations. In my recent works I focus on immigration, cultural identity, authenticity, counterfeits and production of the space. In my practice I want to creates a visual by forging the borders of photography and video for a personal interpretation of how humanity can view its or changing world amid its ever-evolving environment. My works invite viewers to share in my past experience by the reproduction of natural and found objects. These objects hold a powerful force of attraction: a moment of uncertainty between what is forged by the artist’s hands and by what exists naturally. Last year I worked with light and sound in an attempt to alter the viewer’s perception and experience of a given space.
The “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.
Circle is a four channel, 49 minutes sound installation. It is the last result of my research on Production of Space idea from Lefebvre and Bachelard’s 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 hoarse sound that visitor needs to step on the stairs and get closer to hear it. In the sound installation, you listen a text from Bruno Latour. And the following sounds produced by objects and human that we cannot distinct from each other.
During Syria Civil war 200.000 people died. Three million people took refuge in other countries such as Turkey, Jordan, Beirut and European Countires. Some cities are entirely destroyed. The remaining people are trying to survive in more and more bad conditions.
This series is not about the explosions, neither about the conflicts, nor dead people, but about the effects of war. It shows the relationship of the remaining people with the remaining places and their environments.
I did this project at the end of 2012. I used a large format camera with a Polaroid back. I wanted to produce a space for Syrians where they can express themselves contrary to photojournalist. This project was about people who refuse to country. However, my graduation project will be about refugee who took place in outside of Syria ,