Hello Aslı.

Hi.

I'd like to ask you about your exhibition here in Gallery NON. You made the Patagonia part of your work based on Bruce Chatwin's book. You traveled around Patagonia just like Chatwin did. You went to places he had gone to and wrote about your trip. How did you come up with that idea?

When I first read Chatwin's book when I was young and I was really impressed. He is not a typical writer whose literature is solely based on his trips. He mixes fiction with reality that makes you read the book as if it's a fiction novel and I really liked it. First I had this sentimental connection with it and realised that there's a place called Patagonia. The concept of writing about trips matches up with imperialism and we know that most of the authors writing about their trips are from United Kingdom, the queen of imperialism. Why does one write about his trips, what does he think before and while writing, does he go there because he knows what he'll see there? When you take a photo, you think that moment is worth recording and that's why you take a photo of it. So, writing about trips is similar, you go some place and think that it's worth writing about. Besides, I've always wanted to see Patagonia because of this and some other books. I went to Argentina in 2008 August. I got a scholarship from Ministry of Foreign Affairs and I got admitted to a programme there. Then I made this trip just like Chatwin did and wrote about in his book. Since the book is half fiction, I didn't know which places and things were real. Besides, it's been 30 years since his trip, so lots of things have changed. But the main point is finding something else while looking for some other thing. Since my Spanish is very little, I may not have found everything he wrote about.

But there are things that you found the same, right? On the cover of your book, there's a photo of a place and you took it. On Chatwin's book cover, there's the same place.

Yes, I could take the same photo as he did 30 years ago. You see the dogs? Even they haven't moved from the same spot. I wondered about people's relationship with Chatwin in Patagonia. If he hitchiked, then I hitchiked too or if he talked to someone about a subject, I tried to talk to people about the same topic. Then I realised that there's his book on shelves in every house in Patagonia and the pages that Chatwin writes about their grandparents are marked. But they all hate him. They think that he distorted the reality about them.But all of them have the book, it's a strange love - hate relationship.

Apart from this, there's a music piece that you've made together with Fuat about the words TRT had banned for long time ago. Besides, there's a video that you made out of your aunt's shootage that she made with her husband. Could you tell us your work about the banned words of TRT?

The list of the words was very hard to reach since it was a top secret file in the police department.

When were these words banned exactly?

In 1985. Since some words did not match up with the functionality of Turkish language and intellectuality, they were banned. There was an interview with the former director of TRT and it was shocking. He wanted the Turkish language to stop at a certain point and not move backwards or forwards. It's a strange motivation. If you look up the list, there are lots of words we are using right now. For instance, you can't say utter, you should say entire instead. Because left wing uses utter and the right wing uses entire. It's incredible how they were occupied with such details.

As you said, the former director of TRT uses an expression such as ''to stop the seperation''. But, what they did looks like such a great seperation: dividing the language.

Yes and we have this traumatic fear of seperation as a nation. Since World War I, we have been afraid of seperation and it still goes on, just like censorship. These words have never been published and making a rap song out of these words sounded like a great idea. In this way, everyone know these words and they can sing them.

Such an interesting idea. And how did you get together with Fuat?

I've always had him in my mind since the get go. Once we met and we had a good energy between us. Then we worked really hard and fast. It was a difficult task to make a song out of a list of words. You just don't put them side by side, you compose an actual song. It had to be someone who gets the idea and works hard on it which was exactly what Fuat did. It was a great cooperation. 

Can you tell us about your video? You put it in this exhibition because it's about trips or do you have another specific reason?

When people hear the title of the exhibition, they think they will see photographs from all over the world. They may see it as a way to show off. What does it mean to be at some place? If you go somewhere and do not leave your hotel room, would you still say that you saw that place? What are the criterias for being somewhere? Now the definitions are popular: tourist is a person who just visits the sights for a few days, traveller does not plan, he just goes and explores etc. But who made these definitions? Who has the right to tag people? My aunt and her husband go abroad 3-4 times a year for the past 12 years as a retired couple. They have video tapes on their shelves and nobody watches them since they find it boring. They have a shootage about 50 hours and they still keep recording. So I thought about watching them out of curiosity. I saw that they just pan or zoom one specific location in every city. Pan and a tower or zoom and a pool etc. It's like the TV shows or more like a diary. I discovered that they just turn into tourist guides in fornt of the camera while they are tourists. They learn about some place and tell it into the camera 5 minutes later. I also found the language very interesting. The language of defining things around that we already see through the camera. They film a church and say ''this is a church''. That was interesting.

And what about the world map with pins?

You know, we put pins on world maps to point out the places that we have been. So it's like a parody of it. Besides, it's a violent action. With violent, I mean the act of pushing the pin into the map makes us feel like we conquer that spot.

Yes, the common point of these works is that feeling of conquering a place.

Exactly. If you have been in some place then you can tell about it or pontify.

What about your previous works?

Well, I mostly make artist books and video which are related to text. They are text based works just like the song and the video in this exhibition.

I really liked your previous video called ''If something bad happens, it happens to me'' in the opening exhibition of Gallery NON. Can you tell us about it?

It's an 18 episode video of funny accidents. The main idea was to reproduce these amateur videos with me playing the leading role. We didn't change the setting or use any after effects. We animated the same accident we saw in the video. We find these kinds of videos funny because we think that these things happen to clumsy or dumb people. A wooden board falls down on a man's head and we laugh out loud which is weird. Reproducing these videos can make us have the empathy and the work could be seen as a portrait of the artist's suffering. But it's more about the feeling of an accident and reproducing it.

How many videos did you shoot?

It was 18 episodes but we picked the best ones and edited. Then we had a 3 and a half minute video.

Would you like to add any other thing about the exhibition?

I can explain the thesis.

Right, the thesis. I forgot about it.

It's about the thesis writing offices that are secret. They don't have any names or signboards. They are illegal because in return for money, they write master or PH d thesis. Fon example, an office has 20 secret thesis writers on every field of study such as: psychology, physics, chemistry etc. And you can never see these people, know their names or call them. You call the office and they send a message to them. Since most of these people are academicians, they want to remain anonymous. I thought about working with one of these people and make him write a thesis for me just because I wondered about the outcome.

What is it about?

It is about finding something completely different that you are looking for as I did in my Patagonia trip. So, you give these people your subject and a bibliography then wait for your thesis. I considered giving them my favourite 70 books and tell them the subject.

How was the outcome?

It was surprising. I like the projects without a definite end. I didn't know what was going to happen. I feel excited about these kind of projects. I was really amazed by the outcome. It's a high quality text and sometimes it feels like science fiction. He makes lots of word plays in the text and there's a world he created. There's a machine and you insert a question then it gives you the answer for the previous question. So you need to wait for the next person to insert a question in the machine. The whole text is based on this machine. He uses lots of word plays through that machine and every time I read it, I am truly amazed. I wouldn't like a text revealing the project and it was nothing like that which is great. There are also our correspondences with him in it but they are all well placed.

How many pages is it?

144.

Do you plan to publish it and use it later?

I do, it's too complicated to be a novel. But a publishing house making artist books may publish it. We have only 5 editions of the thesis right now.

Do you have projects for the future?

I'll be taking part in an exhibition in Corsica. There will be Can Altay, Leyla Gediz and me. Apart from that, I want to make films now but I need to make lots of research about it. Maybe I can rest a little bit.

Thank you very much. It was a great exhibition.

Thank you so much.