Issue: Blockage

What we're aiming for with this series is to question all these mechanisms: what's behind the difficulties we go through in producing? Because there are periods of restlessness, abstraction, and undefined pauses that most of us experience from time to time. Perhaps they can be more easily resolved if we hear more concrete things and listen to each other more. Perhaps the situation is not as dark as we think.

She continued to eat potatoes. She had a smile on her face. She couldn't understand why she was smiling. It was a tragic situation. She had worked for three whole years to complete this work. She supposed that when it was over, life would change in a completely different way, apart from the usual changes it went through. All the knots she had not been able to untie in her life would be loosened; everything she wished for and aspired to would appear before her eyes; the sun would come out from behind the clouds... The things she wishes for but cannot confess to anyone will happen, she thought. It did not take long for her to realize that this was a groundless even childish expectation, but consciousness did not always turn into absolute awareness.

We do not talk about how collectives, organizations, independent venues can survive. We do not talk about how many venues and events funded by capital will lose their support after the expected economic recession. Nor are we thinking about the situation of publishers or art critics. Let's ignore these parts, we don't even care about the situation of the artists who create what we call art. When I look at our new point of reference, these things stand out. I say to myself, "Obviously our art world is totally blocked." On the other hand, if I had written this article a year ago today, I'd probably write the same thing: "Our art world is blocked." When did rose-coloured glasses come into existence? So let's call this situation "blocking of block" or "the same old same old."

I have seen plenty of ways to remove the blockage so far, the first and most used is the impatient version: a nuclear attack- dousing the blockage with a horrible chemical (Drano) and burning it with boiling water on top. That's right, "things" die that way. But maybe I can try to calm down before I take the torch in one hand and the pitchfork in the other. Didn't I create this Frankenstein in the first place? Maybe I can try to figure out what it wants from me before I destroy it (Usually the monsters in such tales desire unconditional love). Maybe it is possible to establish a drainage system that doesn't require Drano.

She learned that Karabaş was a great-used plant that was enacted to fight the cholera pandemic in the Ottoman Empire era. It was also known as French lavender. A few days ago, she had made a dessert from it. Lemon, black mulberry and rosemary came together for this recipe. How had all this been possible a few centuries ago? She remembered the 18th-century paintings she had seen. She imagined a kitchen where there was no refrigerator or water. How much dynamics had to be processed to make all those ingredients come together... Milk had to be bought from a farmer, boiled, refrigerated. Was it even possible to get that tiny amount of milk in that amount of time? All the processes that needed to be done with that amount of milk had to be organised at the same time. Yeast had to be made or bought from the brewers for the baked goods. She imagined the plates, the porcelains, the pots, all the tools and the weight of the materials from which these tools were made. She thought of the labour force put into carrying the water that was brought to and from the kitchen to wash the dishes. She imagined all the vegetables, meats, and cheeses hanging from the ceiling so they could be dried or not spoil, and the candlelight that illuminated them.

I think of the multi-layered temporality of the photographic image it carries since its creation. The captured moment when the photograph was taken; each moment in which a surface of a projected, digital or printed photograph is viewed; the lonely waiting moments between the time it was taken and viewed, all moments that can be called a continuum in which the photograph itself resides have their own temporalities. In fact, these temporalities can be expanded and multiplied when they encounter different reflections. For instance, when eye contact with the photograph is broken, a memory image of the photograph remains in the mind of the viewer to whom the gaze belongs. And each time a photograph is remembered, its memory image is recalled, and this time the memory image burned into the mind can be transivated by interacting with the other forms in the memory. When it interacts with the temporalities of different moments in memory, the time in which the photograph reflects the viewer expands.

Is this the best thing you can do? · Are you happy? · Are you enough? · What does it mean to be enough? · Why are you obsessed with being enough? · Are you fine with being enough?

When the pandemic hit, we were just getting started. When we noticed that we could not come together on the platforms wanted, we were discouraged. At that point, we felt despair. If we could not being able to come together for a long time, we could not produce work together. Before we could experience our bond, the platform would disappear. We were very afraid that this collaboration would remain as a romantic idea, since there were currently no systems created together, and there was a risk of returning to individual cycles of our practice. The rest of the story, however, is about how we resolved this blockage.

After listening to Ece's block, I began to think of my own blocks and hesitations. This affectivity that she expresses often leads me to a terrible lack of coherence that comes from distraction and ends up devaluing myself. A journey of 50 tabs accumulating in the Internet browser, from the lack of rights and lawlessness of the earth to the feeling of "I am nothing." The pause, the distraction, and the inability to sort through more important priorities is what I want you to experience as you read this article.

When I woke up, everything was fine. I was making a to-do list of all my unfinished projects due to my busy schedule. My mind was incubating. Now that I had settled into the period of the abundance of time, I would have no excuse. Papers and pens came and went. Headings were written and erased again and again. Photographs were compiled and composed. New ideas were jotted down. Excitement was refreshed. Now I can begin my project with the first line of the list. Then. And then. And then. And then.

In 1995, there was a big flood of water in the district where I lived in İzmir. My father and a few of his friends put on their swimsuits and jumped into the deluge to open the main manhole cover, while I watched in amazement and my mother in horror as our car slowly went down from the bottom to the top of the rear windows. The floodwaters quickly receded from the front steps of our house and the blockage was stopped. Those that could be rescued were so saved. This heroic story, which I realize now was a dangerous and unnecessary reaction, caused me to have dreams in which our entire district was under a huge body of water and I could only swim to school in my swimsuit. I'm still not sure how much of that was real and how much of it was my imagination.