Text Book For Knowledge of Life

Text Book for Knowledge of Life

Color Video, 6 min, 2011

Abuse Exibition, Sanatorium, İstanbul, 2011

If Istanbul, Shorts from Turkey, Istanbul, 2012

Berlin Film Festival, Shorts from Turkey selection, Berlin, 2012

Cannes Film Festival, Turkish Short Movies selection, Cannes, 2012
Swab, Barcelona, 2012

The video “The Text Book for Knowledge of Life” is a work focusing on the official history thought in the primary schools. The footage of the video is from a primary school in Izmir, taken through out the day. The voice over of the video is a collage text formed by the sentences taken from the 7th, 8th, 9th grade school books of Turkish Ministry of Education. Taken out from their context, the audience can observe the weirdness and uncleanness of these sentences while watching the displaced movements of the kids shot in a “peeping Tom” manner.

Extracts from the text book sentences: Oh people! Listen to me, I cannot address you from this position again. Young brains should be developed with the national education and protected from being filled with stupefying and imaginary excessiveness… In our opinion, every view should be respected. However, people who oppose should be reasonable. Otherwise, the truth will be expressed in a convenient way. But, perhaps, some heads will be chopped off. Our time is nothing but an economical period.

He got sick after this journey. One night, a heavenly light landed from the sky on a tree over there. Then the trunk of the tree got swollen, the heavenly light was on that swell for nine months and ten days. The Chinese light a fire around the stone to take it away; when it heated up, they poured vinegar on it. All the birds and animals in the homeland cried for the stone in their own language. Few hundred dogs were impatiently waiting on the meadow.

Hairy Tale

Hairy Tail
Photograpy and Photo Albums, 2011
As part of the Re-Locate Project organized by Apartment Project http://re-locate.blogspot.com
Re-Locate Exibition, Rumeli Han, Istanbul, 2011
Who Left/What Behind, Center for Contemporary Art, Ankara, 2012 http://www.wholeftwhatbehind.org

The theoretical framework of the Re- Locate project is based on the population exchange between Anatolia and the Balkans and it focuses on the flexibility of the borders, cultural similarities, controversies, the lack of communication between cultures, as well as various methods of developing new communication models. In addition, the project aims at establishing a new network between artists, curators, writers and institutions by making the shared history in the selected places its most important guide. This network also intends to form a dialogue between peripheral places, small-scale cultural centers, and artists.

Re- Locate Project proposes an experimental workshop practice that is based on mobility and translocation. The suggested mobility tries to encompass the physical transitivity of the cities and borders, as well as the flexibility of historical, identitarian, and ideological borders.

The “Hairy Tale” project is based on two different but intertwining investigations. The first pillar of the project is a visual investigation about the beauty conception of women, the diverse approaches about the familiar commitment and the creation of false memories. The other pillar is a verbal documentation about the common history of Turkey and Balkan nations and the reflection of this history on the cultural perceptions of people today.

Almost in all cultures and socio-economic classes in the European geography, the preparation of the bride for the wedding, includes a visit to the hairdresser’s for a special bridal hair and a bridal make-up. This ceremony continues with a visit to a professional photography studio to take a picture of the bride and the groom whom are supposedly in their best “look”. With the over made hair and make up and with the help of re-touched photos this “precious moment” freezes forever.

The first objective of the project is to experiment this beauty process and to examine the “re-touched” results of the wedding pictures in different countries or cultures, to investigate the common points or differences and to make a visual collection of false memories.
The second objective of the project consists of documentation of the conversations in the Hairdresser’s. These conversations focuses on the common culture or differences of Turkey and Balkan countries, marrigage, beauty, commitment etc.

The project realized according to a script to facilitate the conversations. The artist herself acts as the Turkish bride getting married to a local. This script helps to keep the talk focused on the countries, nation’s stereotypes, national histories, being a foreigner, the marriage of the different cultures etc.
On the other hand the bride gives full permission to the hairdresser’s to make her beautiful and to fit in the countries bride aesthetics. She does not make any desicions about the hair or the make up. After the session in the Hairdresser’s, the bride goes to the photography studio to pose for series of bridal photos. Also in this part all the aesthetic decisions will be left to the photographer’s taste.