We would like to begin with thanking İpek and Şener for their hospitality. İpek and Şener invited us to a medium they work on and which we are unfamiliar with. Well, it is dicey to trust the guest with the keys and leave, but what we call hospitality obliges exactly this. To open your doors without expecting the other party to reciprocate at the expense of being misunderstood, being exposed to impertinence, the possibility of the conversation getting to unforeseen directions and your words to be twisted, and the prospect of your cutlery and beddings to be shifted.

 

"Today, Tomorrow, and Ever"

 

In structural terms, "disenchantment" and disencantada  is the negative of a situation. Besides uttering the explicit, these words point to something that one is struck dumb as one thinks about it: it is a word that claims stars, spells and songs exist already and that they are lost.

Although we are in similar moods with the people we are living with in the period in which we live in, we, slightly different from them, as artists, have suffered a loss at some point in our lives. And it was a wicked one: all the stars, spells and songs were gone. Seamen knows how fearsome it is to be unable to see the stars. You cannot get your bearings, the sea seems unfamiliar, and you cannot find a familiar face. A walnut in the middle of the ocean.

Let's be frank: no one put us in a small boat and left us in the middle of the sea under a cloudy sky. We stand literally on land, and if we want to leave we are in a place where we can find our way. But within the society, among friends and family, we cannot figure out where we stand as individuals who claim to be artists; we are not enthusiastic about contemporary popular art practices or we cannot position ourselves within these practices; and if it is not possible to get any kind of criticism be it good or bad, a praise or a decry, or at least a criticism through which you may think your work stirs something up, then unfortunately, you are in an occupational exile.

So we brought our language to exile. After all, what you can bring with you is limited both literally and metaphorically. As KABA HAT, we spoke our own language. This language is founded upon (as in every language) friendship and hospitality. Thankfully, we have a language born out of loving and opening houses by those who share the same boat.

Disenchantment points to a precursory situation where stars are involved. This situation which we don't remember the origin of, will continue supposedly. The experience of "ever" materializes as loyalty to oneself and the other in language. When it is not "ever" we get disappointed, become suspicious about our loyalty or theirs. But we are waiting in the middle of the sea. And it is not a passive waiting; we have our binoculars, shovels, and compasses. We are searching and waiting. A star, a song from a distant place, a familiar face we will integrate with. We have the hope to call out to someone.

 

    I had enough of waiting, show your face out of the blue one morning

    Be mine today, tomorrow and ever.

 

"And the question that the Foreigner will address to them to open this great debate, which will also be a great combat, is nothing less than the question of the statesman, of man as a political being."

(Anne Dufourmantelle quotes Jacques Derrida. Of Hospitality. Page 13)

As foreigners occupying the house, we hope that we have addressed our questions and present update 23 with an anticipation of great debate and combat.