“Nostalgia”

I Left: print on t-shirt / İstanbul, 2010

In the first episode of “Ofsayt ama Gol/Off sight, yet goal”, Vasıf Kortun resorts to a simple description during the “space” talks when defining public space; “the word Public really doesn’t mean common space in Turkey. So let’s put the definition aside and say “outdoors” instead.

In eastern mediterranean, all tales born with reciprocal inspiration. Thus all tales tangle up with eachother. They draw a concave form with both beginnings and endings, within their circular arithmetic. In these tales which grasp spaces/places with an ambivalent compassion, there is no “interior” independent from the “exterior”. In case of necessity, Interiors can be conveyed into exteriors as they maintain their interior self. The other option is to describe exteriors as interiors… Both cases serve the same stereotype.

Outdoors or “public space” – using a problematic terminology, never belonged to any generation in these tales. The uncanny nature of this public space was nourished by its chronic bound to the government potency. It maintained its place in the set of the “unclaimable”, with a stubborn supervision that defied centuries.

By “abandoning” a public space that has never been mine or still never is, I’m not defining my evanescence, but portraying its existence. And I’m doing this by using a method which is quite familiar to the locals. I pay my compassion towards to those who left, and yet left their existence hanging in the clothesline, thus I ease my conscience. How painful. There’s no other city that suffers from this kind of dark endless recurrence. And outdoors await, remaining a dull blind décor on the background.