The Walking Ones

Servet
Turan

 Next Year in Jerusalem

“In this house, you will learn that it is difficult to be a stranger. You will also learn that it is not easy to get rid of being a stranger. If you miss your own country, you will find more reasons to miss it here every day; but if you manage to forget it and love your place, we will send you to your home country and you will start a new exile, as you will once again be unwarranted. ”

(Maurice Blanchot, Apres Coup1)

We go somewhere every day. We take a step forward and make the push to take us there. I think the action ‘‘to go’’ corresponds to the same expression in every language. For example, we leave home every morning to go to work or go to school, and when the time comes, we return to our home again. Although this is mostly done of our own volition, there may also be times that this is made necessary. Today, we are witnessing millions of Syrian migrants roaming around us like ghosts who were forced to leave their homeland behind and have scattered all over the world. Before they even know why they are leaving, they have already gone, perhaps tearfully, only to find a space to live. Children, who are still too young to realize the reality of the situation, have left to find new shelter. In fact, they may even liken themselves to a plant in the place they go as they take root in their new homeland.

We do not use the verb “to go” only for changing positions. “You know, children never become adolescents, but the moment comes when we want to leave child- hood to go elsewhere, to be something else.” 2 As Jean-Luc Nancy points out, if we accept a place, we all leave childhood and set out to become adolescents and adults. But why is it that while “going” is something we do every day, can we not leave behind the anxiety that we caught from that strange homeland? We take a step forward and think for a moment. Don’t all the “Walking Ones”

take a step forward? We give our backs to where we leave and we “go”. Our face is never turned back towards the side we leave. Why is it that this strange and incomprehensible feeling is what anchors us to the place we have left? As we go, we also leave a part of ourselves behind. This also brings a split.3 When we go on a trip, we leave behind a friend, a lover, or an animal companion that we love. Although this split happens between the place we leave and the place we go, we are actually dividing ourselves. We have to leave parts of ourselves behind, but at the same time, we take a part of ourselves to the place we go. We have to take it or it will not be a departure.

This ambiguous anxiety is not only due to splitting. We always “go to Neverland.” It is the country that does not exist. While we may not have much of a clue about this place, we are left in a limbo of what we may come across here. It is much like falling into a dark well. The uneasiness of the “Walking Ones” is, in part, due to always being human. When it comes to animals, we cannot speak of a departure for certain. In order for us to talk about “going” there always should be a place to leave, but it is not possible to say that animals have such a stable position. They have habitats rather than a place where they sustain their lives. They always go somewhere they know.

“To Go means to leave [a] part of what is always familiar for a part, a place, a part of life that is unfamiliar, and which we have never known before.”4 While going to a new place may make us nervous, in the end, we finally arrive there. As soon as we arrive, we activate our most primitive impulses and start sniffing around; if this is a new home, we try to touch things, but the fear of the unknown does not allow us to go any further. We like to give some time. It is true that we have arrived somewhere, but is it really possible to arrive “somewhere”? But to reach a state that no longer divides itself or changes itself; is it possible to be someone who doesn’t go anywhere else? Perhaps we may think that this is death. In many beliefs, we say that the depiction of death is as the last trip where one goes somewhere, they cannot return from. Although the destination reached is the land of the dead, we still continue to reach out to our loved ones. The memories of the deceased are still with us. That is, they have stayed where they left us.

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, who survives a thousand obstacles but continuously delays his return. It is the story of not arriving. After the Trojan War, which took nearly a decade, many of his soldiers were able to return home. But it takes another ten years for the cunning Odysseus who angered Poseidon to return to his homeland of Ithaca he misses. “Odysseus is finally there, but actually not at all; everything is in another way, in another claim.”5 He had changed so much that only his dog Argos recognizes him, but it is not only him that has changed. His homeland has become unrecognizable to him. He does not even realize that he has reached Ithaca. Neither his wife, nor his father recognize him. He begs the gods by saying, “Don’t they believe in transformation anymore?”6 The cunning Odysseus is recognized at last, but he will have to set off again. Even though the gods delayed the dawn and extended the night so that he could spend time with his wife, he could only stay one night in his homeland. He goes into a new exile that Homer did not write, but we are able to guess, just as Maurice Blanchot mentioned.

We encounter a similar story in Vergilius’ Aeneas. As Troy collapses, Aeneas travels to Italy, the land promised by the gods, carrying his homeland on his shoulders. He will arrive in Italy, but it costs him to abandon his native lan- guage and be sentenced to Latin. “Troy is dead, let its name die as well.”7 says the Goddess Juno, who has a grudge against the devout Aeneas. This is neither the fate of Odysseus nor of Aeneas. Going means already heading to the ‘prom- ised land’s anyway. The most important thing is the impossibility of arriving there. As Jews promised to each other on each Passover Feast, “Next year in Jerusalem”.

1 Maurice Blanchot, Sonradan Sonsuz Yineleme (Apres Coup), Kabalcı Publishing House, Istanbul, 1999, s.37 

2 Jean-Luc Nancy, Gitmek/Yola Çıkış (Partir-Le Depart), Monokl Publishing House, Istanbul, 2012, s.17

3 Ibid p.18

4 Ibid p.22

5 Barbara Cassin, Nostalgia, Kolektif Kitap, Istanbul, 2018, sf.31

6 Ibid p.100 

7 Ibid p.61

The Flying Ones

Eda

Öztürk

“Man’s difficulty with a high sky beyond this world, a sky that is highly desired and impossible to access...We are alienated, this is true, but not only because of our society. We were born alienated.” (From the presentation of Tom Bishop and Raymond Federman, Samuel Beckett, Accompaniment-Le

Dépeupler)

Doğu Özgün’s “Night Rehearsal” series focuses on strategies to reject and escape the identities constructed by micro and macro structures around race, gender, species and class-based categories. The struggle to escape from the “houses” referred by these power centers can be expressed as a state of alertness by developing animal instincts against the human centric world. These strategies are reconstructed in Özgün’s paintings based on the way they are seen as acts specific to the “nature” of animals.

“The Flying Ones” series is based on dependent relationships and the desire to fly. It comes from the idea of the person -who believes he could fly but has not yet experienced it- assumes that it will cost him his dependencies. From the perspective of Lacanian psychoanalysis approach, the subject’s escape from these micro and macro power structures can be perceived as the resistance of the fragmented subject to enter into the symbolic order as the subject internalizes the cultural system and language through the transition to the symbolic order and thus its construction as a social subject begins. In this context, the struggle of the subject to resist the ‘Law of the Father’ and to enter into the linguistic and cultural system raises the question of whether one can open an “undefined”, ‘’limbo’’ space between the imaginary and symbolic order.1 This situation basically conveys the desire to return to the so-called ‘undifferentiated union’, where the fragmented/missing subject assumes endless peace and tranquility in the womb and assumes that it is a whole. The return of the subject to the state before they are detached from this integrity is portrayed in front of our eyes with images depicting a vague, ambiguous borders between the categories of human and animals.

The artist’s desire to ‘break down’ the hierarchies, which are generally highlighted in the work of the race, gender, class and genre, is combined with a practice that can be seen as an attempt to upset the “hierarchy of the senses”, which is one of the grounds on which Western art history rises. It can be argued that in the history of Western art, a sense of ‘seeing’ is attributed to a privileged position as it is approached as a rational source of information about the representation of the outside world and its reflections on the sensation and perception of works of art. It can be said that the sense of smell is usually located at the bottom of this hierarchy of constructed senses. This is because the sense of smell can be seen as a threat to ocularcentric (eye-centric) discourse and practices due to its potential to trigger memory and emotions and its ability to refer to the unconscious. We witness an attempt to demolish the hierarchy of these senses, both by emphasizing the sense of “fragrance” in the fiction of the exhibition, and by positioning the “fragrance” as a medium. The scent of “white soap” diffused into the entire exhibition area and introduced into the circulation; the body of human and animal refers to the processes of decomposition and marginalization of the fragrance in the social system, which allows redrawing the boundaries between the primitive, untamed and the civilized.

1 Bruce Fink (2016), A Clinical Introduction to Lacanian Psychoanalysis: Theory and Technique, trans: Özgür Öğütcen, İstanbul, Encore

The Crowling Ones 

Selçuk

Bedük

G.P. 08

Spouses are as genetically similar as their second cousins. Friends are as genetically similar as their fourth cousins. Rich tends to select rich, educated tends to select educated. Tops stay at the top, bottoms stay at the bottom. Advantages and disadvantages are inherited across generations. In short, authority is not established in one day with one individual. People select each other. Society stratifies and gets linked by superior-subordinate relationships. Hierarchy trickles down.

Despite all this selection and homophily, the existence of the unlike is a probabilistic certainty. In societies where differences are not accepted or even dismissed, different skills are seen as deficiencies rather than potentials. So, regardless of its strata, the unalike one always stays secluded. To protect the strata, authority must eat the unlike.

From Dogu’s exposition at G.P. 08, authority is the parental home. The child feels the ascendancy of authority with its whole body, in every corner of the house. In the bathroom, at the breakfast table or behind the curtain. She has mom’s nose, dad’s hair; elderly has also shown him how to play over and over again; but, she cannot ever do well. The unlike always wants to hide as it is both his genetic disposition and what society has chosen for him. Despite all the privileges of wealth, unlikeness can sock the poor and the rich.

G.P. 09

On August 9, London was burning, the interim PM David Cameron was shouting “disgusting, utterly unacceptable”, while Darcus Howe in his

live interview with the BBC was mentioning police’s unnecessary and copious checks on his grandson, and an insurrection of the masses of people. Meanwhile, in one part of the world, the Arab Spring stimulated by a street vendor Mohammed Bouazizi who set himself on fire in response to the confiscation of his wares and the harassment and humiliation inflicted on him, on the other part, a movement started by a group who called themselves the 99% and surrounded Wall Street stock exchange were taking place. In 2013, Brazil and Turkey; in 2017 Mexico, Venezuela and Iran; in 2019, Ecuador,France, Colombia, Lebanon, Chile and Hong Kong experienced similar protests.

In all these events, the causes and actors, the historical and political context have shown some differences.

But one common thread ran through them: astonishment.

The astonishment of the protestor, the police, the banker, the presenter, the principal and the PM. The most unexpected surprise for some, while a rare feeling of consternation for others.

The astonishment of the chaos emerged in the window that opened against all the ordinary days flowing in the background. The astonishment of the upheaval of the ground, even for a few days, razing what’s above to the ground.

The astonishment of the days when the protestor can look straight into the eyes of the policeman; chronic exclusion and suppressed shame can overcome the systematic mind; the pressure invisible from the top bursting open the wounds hierarchies inflict upon; when the invisible becomes visible, the crawling erects; black and white, old and young, butterfly and snake, frog and mouse intertwine and destroy the authority.

Those few days that emotion won, in its unfair competition, against reason.

G.P.07

Humans are rational. Using their mind, they behave in a way to benefit themselves. Animals are impulsive. They have no mind, act by their senses. Humans are superior to animals because mind is superior to instinct.

Studies of the last 40 years in the field of psychology and behavioural economics have shown that such hierarchical logic cannot be readily evidenced. According to some of these studies, people make their decisions often using fast-thinking and according to their first thoughts. Because the first thing that comes to mind is often stereotypes, strong memories, or extreme events that trigger impulses, people often behave impulsively and make systematic biases that deviate from the mind.

Such can be defined as bias or error within a certain conceptual framework, can be defined as bias or error. But who wants to live in such an unbiased, tasteless, certain and monotonous, hence rational exogenous reality? Does following our intuition, albeit lengthens the path, not bring us to the reality we want?

At G.P. 07, Doğu depicts the radical opposition states and places. The places where detachment from exogenous reality is possible with parallel dreams; the creatures that dance without moving their arms, do not move their ass, take extraordinary steps without rhythm, hug but do not kiss; the moments independent of what and why that does not require acquisition; the scenes of main actors where the muscles sit in their place, and generally feelings are raised and nurtured. Unidentified, unholistic, formless. Where every creature feels different and equivalent.

Free, but neither consistent nor real.

The Swimming Ones 

Mine

Kaplangı

The Abyss - the great hole that sucks in all of life

“Thinking can be critical if by critical we mean the active, affirmative invention of new images of thought. Thinking is life lived at the highest possible power, both creative and critical, enfleshed, erotic, and pleasure-driven. It is essential- ly about change and transformations and is a perversion of sorts, like an unprogrammed mutation.”

Braidotti, Rosi1

 Some say water bends sound. Within water, a certain mastery is required in order to understand who or what that scream of pleasure, moaning or laughter belongs to. Not just a master ear; an artfulness that can twist time, that is fluid, that fearlessly licks what is spread to understand its nature then distinguish its taste from the ocean salt. Each detail of water and the Swimming Ones carries a beckoning for an-other unification and convergence. And it is that moment which triggers the excitement of the limbs that cannot stop their bends dreaming of leaving the other breathless, where breathing is not even necessarily needed.

Cephalopods, who have witnessed the ancient days of the world, can sometimes convey all the information they carry by just touching it (water): by adding legs to their tentacles and opening their transistors to share. Dark waters might be a reminder of hell to some, yet this deep hole under their rule, in fact, is just the door of perception of another, peculiar world. For this very reason, one must consult the unknown only to the ones who flows through the unknown.

They almost carry the colour palettes and aesthetics of the post-apocalyptic world of Rita2 . Still they only fancy the colours of the glass lantern reflected onto the water, not the panic of extinction. They can easily change their shape, colour and sound. As they go deeper for further intimacies, they also change the color of the water from blue to navy, from navy to red. All these details give us the impression of a dream, a reminiscence or a fantasy. The illusion of time has disappeared, giving usual reassurance to those wandering in the open, unstoppable water. Maybe, from/for this reason, water can be readable. By rulers of memory, or so all the oceans can be enchanted for the desire of different intimacies. Perhaps it is them, those posthuman creatures who are freely curled and reunited in boiling waters.

In summary, Abyss’ children are those who make love at the bottom while the sky is cracking.

In Night Rehearsal, the Swimming Ones are the ones who hear the sounds of the Flying, Walking and Crawling Ones, and yet go deeper into the Abyss. Pitch- dark makes it challenging to find them, so they live unamenable. Perhaps it may not even be convincing to say that they live in the same world, as it seems that the same world can accommodate thousands of others. That desire they hold on to go deeper with the insatiability of reddish-black and be satisfied with this eternity. The bottom of the water can be deeper than the point where the sky ends; it is only another arrogant chess master who misses his home, as usual, thinks that the people living, and the things happening down there are not layered and could easily be grasped.

Living in water is a spatial experience; the main reason why humans worship is due to the fact that, even though one cannot fly, one can still swim. It is a familiar matter, to be able to float in water. Therefore, deep-water creatures are admired, and thus they are feared. Fear the giant limbs that swallow ships o...! The Swimming Ones do not promise a new place to those who leave their homes behind; on the contrary, they are the living creatures that call the rest into the deep, allowing a transformation, a coexistence, and behaving modest- ly in relation to this new dialogue. They are almost like a unique example of the posthuman synthesis and togetherness. They are focused on other intima- cies, not reproduction. They recall the need for another type of communica- tion. Since they are in a continuous mutation and flow, they show a slippery, wet, elusive convergence.

They travel to the root of the human-animal distinction created by cultures throughout history, entangled with pleasure, and turn those distinctions into a unity. It remains unknown where they came from or where they will travel to next - just living in the water, fecklessly and alone. This makes them the only rulers of the deep world; they do not need to go to the surface and breath. They can only breathe effortlessly while diving into the deep. With an endless openness, they curl up into the Abyss that can suck in all of life. They do not only swim, but they also twine, stick and enjoy using their new limbs. They endeavour to remould the forgotten fundamental knowledge and teachings, pushing all those disappearing into the depths, against the surface. By keeping that information as a reminder to all those who dare to flow with them, they simply demand all intimacies, togetherness and unities be remained - again and again by just whispering to the water.

And the water can be read only by the animals and living creatures that are inside of and part of the water. When Circe3 emerges from the end of the ocean again, she curses her enemies by turning them into animals; not to punish them, but to make them understand.

1 Braidotti, Rosi. ‘Animals, Anomalies and Inorganic Others’, PMLA 124, No:2 (2009): 526-32

2Tentacle by Rita Indiana (Author), Achy Obejas (Translator), Publisher: And Other Stories (7 Nov. 2018)

3Circe, (Kírkē pronounced) is a goddess of magic or sometimes a nymph, enchantress or sorceress in Greek mythology. She is a daughter of the god Helios and either the Oceanid nymph Perse or the goddess Hecate. Circe was renowned for her vast knowledge of potions and herbs.