works

for other writings and works (2000-2013) refer to xurban_collective site at xurban.net

TRAVELS IN FORMER REALITY

People I (don’t) Know

a thousand streets

Hypersaline

THE PETRIFIED

WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS

Faraway, So Close

How Green Was My Valley

GAZ!

ENTANGLED IN NUMBERS / RAKAMLARA DOLANIK

like father, like son

a family ordeal in one scene…

sanki dün gibi…

FEAR EATS THE SOUL

fikrimin ince gülü…

THE CIVILIZATION AND RUINS OF TURKEY

YENİ TÜRKİYE’Yİ GEZERKEN…

AYASOFYA

Around 1999 I have taken some photographs in Ayasofya. By then it was the most visited site in İstanbul. I clearly remember hearing top architects of the world coming to the city and declaring that the building was still the prime inspiration for creating a very large enclosed space. Now that we are immersed in a deluge of ephemeral things and buildings, Ayasofya still exerts its glory coming from late antiquity, after 1500 years. Very few other human achievements show a similar force, as far as the history of physical world is concerned.

The endless additions, renovations, installations and other human interventions had left their mark in and around the building. For architects and archaeologists the changes that Ayasofya had been through is a matter of careful study and documentation. For historians, like late Stefanos Yerasimos, the building was the object of mythology since the time it was built, the site of and a silent witness to: political power, upheavals, wars, crusades, clashes of faith, intrigue, earthquakes, seasons and the warming climate. Comparable in age, the ancient olive tree of the middle east carries on with life away from what makes history, except for the burning of the bush, nativity, etc., etc. . Still, our admiration for the tree is never diminished. But from Ayasofya, the faithful expect to tell them the whole story of genesis and redeem their souls.

For images, I was looking into other things: should we say contemporary interventions? Among details of the past in close-up, what I saw were mostly temporary solutions to certain modern problems of plumbing, electrification, office space, refreshments, signage, etc. In short, common needs, materials and equipment that you get to see by the millions in a city like Istanbul, applied in a similarly haphazard way, built to function around 5-10 years, that is around zero point five percent of Ayasofya’s age. Indeed, they are not structural: the building can survive with or without them. They are more like tiny wounds, sting marks on a huge elephant. Do they point to a lesser civilization that the building has seen? Perhaps yes, but then today a bigger sign of a lesser civilization is probably the culture of touristic consumption worldwide.

So, what attracted me to focus on those installations? Now that I think of it, it was the immense violence of separation in deep time. The impossibility of comprehending millennia outside the holy book and outside the objects of material culture is the curse of the humankind, save for a few wise men and women. Things change, people change, history gives us a partial glimpse of a specific past severed from the continuum. That is why peoples commit the same mistakes time and again. Today, for the crowds waiting for the day to pray inside Ayasofya once more after all these years, one should suggest to look behind the ablution fountain in the garden. There they will see the white plastic pipes freshly installed to accommodate the faithful. If they think that these are the unimportant earthly things that they will leave behind, then they should look up to the most earthly of things: Ayasofya itself…

July 2020

past, simple

2018-work in progress, an artist book, PDF

exhibited: “CHOOSE ONLY ONE MASTER- NATURE” Evliyagil Dolapdere. İstanbul, September 9 – November 17, 2019

sergi: “TEK BİR USTA SEÇ-DOĞA” Evliyagil Dolapdere. İstanbul, 9 Eylül – 17 Kasım 2019

TERRITORIES OF TRANSITIONS: unfolding boundaries in izmir, 2019

At the end of June 2019, together with Stefano Pugliese and Ali Matay, both lecturers and designers from izmir university of economics, we were invited as artists and speakers for the Urban Thinkers Campus within the first World Cities Biennial held at Farm Cultural Park, in Favara, southern Sicily-Italy. The exhibition stays open between 29 June and 27 October 2019 in Favara. The work we produced (details below) is an investigation/description of a certain neighborhood in İzmir’s Basmane district where African, Syrian and other middle-eastern refugees stay temporarily while seeking various means to reach Europe.

TERRITORIES OF TRANSITIONS – text, PDF booklet

images

installation

ATLAS OF SMYRNA/IZMIR – İZMİR/SMYRNA ATLASI, Unpublished book, 2012-2017

A comprehensive photographic study of the city of Izmir, in English and Turkish. 280pp. Printed in six demo copies, exhibited in Living and Producing in İzmir: Authors of the City, STUDIO X İSTANBUL, 2018 and HAYY Open Space, İzmir 2019

Her Taraf No Man’s Land, International Çanakkale Biennial, 2014

Apricots from Damascus / Şam’da Kayısı, Salt Galata, 2015

Printed Zine and Photographic Installation: a publication and exhibition project about art in a state of mobility and exile

istanbul, mayıs 2005

istanbul, 21 temmuz 2002

GKY VOLTAIRE

Realized for the exhibition ‘İstanbul Crescendo’ at Goethe Institut İstanbul, February 2000. The other participants, Onur Eroğlu and Werner Cee contributed with a video installation and a soundscape/sound installation respectively. Onur Eroğlu ve Werner Cee ile birlikte İstanbul Goethe Enstitüsü’nde 2000 yılında gerçekleşen ‘İstanbul Creescendo’ isimli sergi için üretildi.

CFRONT

A panel from the CFRONT exhibition in Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 2000. While in İstanbul, I have spent three days in front of the Bulgarian Consulate for a visa and they have denied it. I sent all the material and the exhibition opened in absentia… 2000 yılında Bulgaristan’ın Filibe kentinde yapılan CFRONT sergisine yolladığım panellerden bir tanesi. İstanbul’daki Bulgaristan konsolosluğunun önünde üç gün geçirdikten sonra vizeyi vermediler…

BORUSAN GALLERY 1998-1999

From two group exhibitions at İstanbul’s Borusan Gallery, titled Multiples and Landscape. Photographs, lith film, perspex, mixed media… Borusan Sanat Galerisinden iki sergi: Çoğaltmalar ve Manzara…

FRANKO FUSION/CONFUSION

Produced for an exhibition at Galatea Gallery in İstanbul, 1997. İstanbul Galatea Galeri’de sergilenmek üzere 1997de üretildi.

AYASOFYA’DAN BATIYA (Onur Eroğlu ile)

İçe Bakış, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, İstanbul 1997. Fotoğraf, fotogram, video.

REMARKS ON COLOR / RENK ÜZERİNE NOTLAR

An installation realized at a hotel’s construction site in Ankara, 1995. Çankaya Oteli inşaatında gerçekleştirilmiş bir enstalasyon, Ankara 1995. İşle ilgili Geniş Açı dergisine yazdığım yazıya buradan ulaşmak mümkün…

pergamon: the karl marx altar

In 1995, via an architect friend, Hans Joachim-Engstfeld, I was invited to submit a proposal for an exhibition in Architektenkammer Berlin’s gallery on Karl Marx Allee. The installation I proposed was based on the purely fictitious idea of erecting an altar of Marx on the empty site of the Pergamon’s Zeus Altar. Below are excerpts from a rather long statement that I wrote and some sketches. I have never received an official reply to this proposal…

1995te mimar arkadaşım Hans Joachim-Engstfeld aracılığı ile Berlin Mimarlar Odası’nın galerisi için bir sergi önerisi vermek üzere davet edildim. Önerdiğim enstalasyon, Bergama’da Zeus Sunağı’ndan boşalan yere bir Karl Marx Sunağı yerleştirmek fikri üzerinde duruyordu. Aşağıda o dönem yaptığım skeçler ve yazdığım uzun bir öneri metninden bölümler var. Bu teklife hiçbir zaman resmi bir yanıt alamadım…

ANK.T.C.

Three works from 1993 titled ‘Helter-Skelter’, ‘Zeybek’ and ‘Liberal’, from exhibition ‘Anı-Bellek II: Akaretler 50 Numara’ in İstanbul.

ANKARA T.C.

Three more works from 1993, photographs, photograms…

BOSNIA 1995

A panel from the work exhibited in the show ‘Europe Re-discovered: Art, Resistance and the English Garden’ at Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt, Paris and Galerija Gabriel, Sarajevo, in 1995 and 96.

IMAGINARY BEINGS, 1994

Based on J.L. Borges (Book of Imaginary Beings) a work produced by photographs, photograms and other photo-mechanical techniques. Exhibition at Ars Gallery, Ankara.