Premise

We planned this work to be an experimental narrative on our collective research on cultural policies in Turkey since early modernity (pre-republican and post-ottoman) and how they shaped the relationships of the cultural workers to Europe and the Middle East. This long term research started in 2011 in Ankara with a speculative fiction project on privatization and the economy of artworks. Then the focus shifted to how nation state narratives are created and we worked on historiography. Finally we expanded this narrative to international cultural exchange and the policies that formed the said exchange. At this stage we made a feature film, an exhibition and several interviews. We would like to engage ourselves with coming up with a speculative narrative that will be available as a video or a lecture performance depending on the context wrapping up this multifaceted research.

We now aim to present a speculative narrative, adaptable as a video or a lecture performance, that reflects the complexity of our multifaceted research.

Process

The base text in the work is written in the form of a fragmented fictionalized historical piece, blending historical facts, fictionalized interpretations and our own personal experiences. Incorporating more true-to-life elements and the added depth of personal experiences, the project shifted from speculative to historical fiction, where an account of history is told from new angles in a fragmented narrative. Adding the layer of visuals to the base text, the artists sourced their material from archives as well as their own production.

Outcomes

Incorporating findings from our expansive research, we take the conventional artist talk and turn it into a dynamic video essay, following a similar fragmented pattern as the text. We incorporate a diverse array of images, historical documents, recurring sequences, and voice-overs. These elements underscore that a video represents just one aspect of the creative process.