16 July 2007

glass road



glass road, has been designed by taking the fruit pomegranate that means accession, birth and fertility.

candy –bear gummy candy- that is the symbol of the childhood and innocence is cut into pieces and transformed into pomegranate seeds by an adult. in the first part of the video , “produced” seeds of pomegranate are gradually access and accumulate, just as the plenitude of the seeds of the fruit that symbolize the fertility thereof.

in ancient greek, anatolia and north africa; breaking pomegranate in the thresholds of the houses increases fertility. Therefore, in the second part, the seeds are left in the thresholds of the houses by hoping with a childish optimism to bring fertility and well being to the lives of other people that we witness indirectly, of the sources of the voices from behind the doors. it symbolizes the belief in a common future idea is possible by touching the others’ lives from outside –here, door is the border- within the city.

fear and gender in public space



Fear and Gender in Public Space / Research and Curatorial Project by Veronica Wiman

gülbahar or Svitlena












going public 06_formigine / italy

When embarking upon field survey in İstanbul, the city of constant flows, the first thing that come to my mind was “what is the thing that doesn’t flow?” and the things or persons that this flow made invisible. Then, these thoughts led me to women…

I am making little trips in the city by carrying the issue in my mind, and I find myself in a vicinity called Küçükbakkalköy, far away from the downtown, that reminds me of a huge open building site. I am approaching a pink house at the end of an empty land. A friend of mine had told me that I would meet an Ukrainian woman there. I am thinking how to explain her the reason of my being there, since the only thing I have is the question in my mind. Once we introduce ourselves, my nervousness fades away. She is quite comfortable, beginning to tell her story. Telling me her name; Gülbahar. Then I am seeing the picture; she was told that as from then, her name was Gülbahar. And we are briefly and sincerely explaining our lives that made us sitting there together. She is more like summarizing the difficulties and coincidences in chronological order.

As we spend time together, we are learning the details of each other’s lives. She is telling me how Svitlana gradually became Gülbahar: She had come to İstanbul 7 years ago to earn money with her shuttle trader uncle... The first separation from her son Sasha who she left to her mother in Ukraine. Things had gone bad, and she had broken with her uncle. She had not been able to return to Ukraine, as she had worked illicitly and had had no money. After a while, she is with her future partner. The waiter in the diner in Laleli where she had been lunching. “In the beginning I didn’t like him” she says. They had joined in religious marriage and Svitlana is becoming a Muslim woman named Gülbahar. Now they have two children, and she is carrying the third. Two children have no birth records, since Svitlana is an illicit immigrant in Turkey and they are not able to go to Ukraine. Therefore, the children cannot attend to school, as they aren’t “real persons”…

Through the photographs I shot and the songs I recorded, I attempted to pursue Svetlana in Gülbahar’s home. Traces of the nomadic woman abandoning her very self, her language even in private space and remembering all these as a sweet memories.

Photographs as a whole neither have a beginning nor an end as the story I listened. Consist of moments, the unflowings; fragments.

http://www.amaze.it/en/inside.html

time_kargaşa 06


video installaion

‘Now’ and ‘The Past’. to tell it in other words; ‘The Past’ the individual maintains in her/himself and in the meaning of the point breaks forming her/his story, and ‘Now’ that becomes ‘Past’ quickly and is a melting, gliding ground. the individual can only throw her/himself as ‘a project’ to the future, through these two channels, continuously flowing.
‘Now’ acquires the feature of estrangement in Brechtian manner in “Time” sustaining the duration of the ‘melting’ plan in the right frame for an extended period of time. the individual has time to settle with ‘The Past’ comprised of the point breaks experienced by a woman, reflected in the left frame.
when the audience attempts to position their own experience in place of the images in the left frame, the sound heard lead them to confront the following problem: are these unrelenting sound and noises from ‘Now’ or from ‘The Past’?
‘being a woman’ means always being on restless ground.
‘passing over’ is the child of ‘Becoming’, but ‘Becoming-Woman’ means living with the wounds that do not heal easily.As the objects of womanhood fall over each other, thy leave marks of pain on the white snow.
http://www.kargart.org/

any noon


“facisim takes source from the relationship between two individuals”
ingeborg Bachmann

unlike the darkness that conceals objects and/or incidents, the light makes everything visible. this is the underlying reason for choosing noon, in which the light reaches its brightest point.
therefore, the violence is made so visible that no one could say ‘i did not see’.
to take violence as a fact that is created by the unemployed and problematic masses, is only taking the easy way out.
slippers, the impossibility of running and escaping from the violence.
how possible is it to turn back to life?

http://www.filmmor.com/

paper on paper

a woman in a girl's soul

a boy in man's soul

alis