What gets lost in a translation? What can we learn from unsaid things?
And how is that silenced shaped? What do forgotten words, books, libraries and archives still tell us? Can we liberate ourselves from assumptions and pose questions instead?
Inez Piso is a curator and translator who graduated with a bachelor's degree in Art History from the University of Amsterdam and a Master’s degree from the Universidad Autónoma Madrid. After working four years in the CA2M, Madrid, she moved to Istanbul where she participated in the IKSV Research Programme with the HüzünProject in 2018. She worked for After the Archive? an initiative that gains attention to silenced archives and questions the role of archives in the creation of public memory in Turkey. She likes to curate exhibitions in unexpected spaces, like an archival box that once belonged to Ulises Carrión: No Todo ~ Niet Alles or the public ferry that crosses the waters of Amsterdam for the Amsterdam Ferry Festival. At the end of 2021 she became the artistic director of HMK: an exhibition space an artist-in-residence programme located in a 17th century chapel.
She is teaches for the MA programme F for Fact at the Sandberg Institute and the Language and Image Department at the Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam. She is also a teacher at the Fine Arts Bachelor programme at Minerva Art Academy in Groningen. Although her practice is about things that cannot be said with words, she sometimes writes for art magazines like Mister Motley. She is continuously bridging cultural and geographical spaces with her interests in language and translation.
Burak Delier
Gymnastics of Economy and Faith:
Six Compulsory Six Artistic Routines, 2014
The work consists of different posters that each have a visual element and a short sentence written over it. The visuals are taken from sports and economical magazines and cropped in a certain, sometimes uncanny way. By leaving out small parts of contextual information it is left unsaid in what void a swimmer is going to fall or on what scale we are looking at people in a pool.
The short sentences are taken (and sometimes adapted) from philosophical texts, folk tales or urban legends and only consists of a few words written in capital letters, without any reading marks like dots or exclamation marks. The way these words come together evokes the idea of a universal truth or a puzzly metaphor referring to roughly three domains defined by the artist: 1. economics, money and finance, 2. the domain of metaphysics, believes and placebo effects and 3. the domain of extreme sports, gymnastics and work.
Even apparent contradictions in the words are rhymed with each other pushing the reader to obliterate the semantic value of the individual words. This dictates a rhythm that reminds one of a slogan, or a motivational sentence as many more are present in the Tuna Ofis. The posters are not only visible inside of the headquarters of the Tuna Ofis, but also spread in the surroundings of the building in the streets of Altunizade, where many office employed people pass by every day in order to come and go to work in this growing business district in Istanbul.
Burak Delier
Ekonomi ve İnanç Jimnastikleri:
Altı Zorunlu Altı Artistik Hareket, 2014
Çalışma, görsel ögeler üzerine yazılmış kısa cümlelerin yer aldığı farklı posterlerden meydana gelmektedir. Spor ve ekonomi dergilerinden alınmış görseller belirli, bazen de olağanüstü biçimlerde kesilmiş ve metinlerden ufak kısımlar dışarıda bırakılarak, bir yüzücünün hangi boşluktan aşağı düşeceği ya da hangi ölçekten havuzdaki insanlara baktığımız söylenmemiş olarak bırakılmış.
Kısa cümleler felsefi metinlerden, halk masallarından ya da şehir efsanelerinden alınmış (ya da bazen adapte edilmiş); nokta ve soru işareti gibi hiçbir okuma imi içermeksizin yalnızca büyük harflerle yazılmış birkaç kelimeden oluşuyor. Bu kelimelerin bir araya geliş biçimi sanatçı tarafından tanımlanan üç alana referans veren evrensel bir gerçek veya muammalı bir metafor düşüncesini uyandırıyor: 1. ekonomi, para, finans 2. metafizik, inançlar ve placebo etkileri alanı 3. ekstrem sporlar, jimnastik ve iş. Birbirleriyle kafiye içerisindeki kelimelerin arasındaki belirgin çelişkiler, izleyiciyi tekil kelimelerin anlam değerini bozmaya sürüklüyor ve bu da Tuna Ofis katlarında çok sayıda kullanılan slogan ya da motive edici cümleleri andıran bir ritim dikte ediyor.
Posterler yalnızca Tuna Ofis’in ana binasının içerisinde görünür değil, aynı zamanda çoğu çalışan insanın her gün işe gitmek için gelip geçtiği, gelişmekte olan bir ticaret bölgesi olan Altunizade İstanbul sokaklarına taşıyor.