Dreaming Ruins IV
12 minutes, HD video-poem, 2019
‘Dreaming Ruins IV’ is an extended reading experience that explores the movement of repetition in loop. It is a form of meditation which allows the viewer into deeper narrations. Construction of identities in daily routines, reinforcement of the norm, repeating, repeating, repeating in advance, and moving away for the future.
While being in search of questions on ritual and repetition and mythology and religion, the footages become the source for lulling one to sleep. The artist asks questions such as, ‘Who has the right to put someone into sleep?’, ‘Is the sleeper a surrenderer?’, ‘Who are we giving the power to when we fall asleep?’ in relation to motherhood as a binary form of home-making and healing. The work becomes available to the viewer through her self-reflection as the image. While the work and text are on loop, the viewer catches the differing details, she might feel empowered or allow herself for a radical change.
*This work has been produced with the generous support of @sahadernegi and curator Ruth Noack for ‘Sleeping With Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life’ Exhibition at @wuerttembergischerkunstverein.
“Your mother is a lacking mother
She left drums for you she is a beating mother
Your mother is the grand mother
She stands as mountains on unsurpassed lands
She winds often
Your mother is the mother of the house
She has got to have something to offer in order to leave
Your mother is a guilty mother
She doesn’t feel alright
Your mother is a landing mother
She speaks from the tales of future
She remembers a single drop
Your mother is a child of unbalanced forces
She makes home out of corners
She is a round globe.”
Senin annen eksikliği hissedilen bir annedir Senin için davullar bıraktı
O güm güm atan bir annedir
Senin annen büyük bir annedir
Dağlar gibi durur
Geçitvermez yaylalarda
Ara sıra rüzgar olur eser
Senin annen evin annesidir
Sunacak bir şeyleri olmalıdır
Çekip gidebilmek için
Senin annen suçlu bir annedir
Kendini iyi hissetmeyen
Senin annen yere konan bir annedir
Geleceğin masallarından konuşan
Tek bir süt damlasını hatırlayan
‘Ama biz çözümü önerdiğimizde sen reddediyorsun
Budur senin aldığın
konum.’
Senin annen çocuğudur
Dengelenmemiş güçlerin
Köşelerden evler kurar
Yuvarlak bir küredir
Düşleyen Harabeler IV, 12 dakika HD Video, 2019.
Bu video, döngüdeki tekrarın hareketini araştıran genişletilmiş bir okuma deneyimidir. İzleyicinin daha derin anlatılara girmesine izin veren bir meditasyon şeklidir. Günlük rutinlerde kimliklerin inşası, normların pekiştirilmesi, tekrar edilmesi ve geleceğe taşınmasıdır. Video, ritüel ve tekrar, mitoloji ve din ile ilgili soruları araştırırken, izleyicinin uyuması için bir kaynağa dönüşür. Sanatçı, annelik, bir ev kurmak ve şifa bağlamlarına ilişkin olarak 'Kimin uykuya yatırmaya hakkı vardır?', 'Uyuyan teslim olur mu?', 'Uykuya daldığımızda gücü kime veriyoruz?' gibi sorular üzerine yoğunlaşır. Eser, izleyiciye öz yansıması yoluyla ulaşmaya çalışır. Video ve metnin döngüsünde, izleyici farklı ayrıntıları yakalarken kendinde içkin gücü hissedebilir veya radikal bir değişime izin verebilir.
Dreaming Ruins II
text on LED screen, 2018
“Ulufer Celik is interested in appropriating a LED sign that capitalism so promptly misused. Celik will sequestrate this powerful form of night communication, in a 24-7 vibrant world, in order to put it at the service of storytelling focusing in awakening and mythology. This storytelling, due to the nature of the LED sign won’t ever finish, but will keep on coming back, right where it ends, in a cyclical desire for a poetic experience. Ulufer Celik looks at dreams as powerful tools of change and is interested in exploring how dreams, that assault us at night, have the potential to prompt us to action and enable other ways of living. In Dreaming Ruins, Celik looks at vengeance in conspiracy with the action of dreaming and sleeping through the multiple bodies of Erinyes- the goddess of vengeance.”
Dreaming Ruins III
Postcards exhibited in Litost Gallery Prag, 2017.
Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life
The exhibition series Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life takes a close look at contemporary politics of sleep and asks whether we can reclaim sleep and dreaming from the clutches of late capitalism. Can sleep be configured as a radical, subversive activity? Can the act of dreaming, sleep’s correlate, be imagined a political deed? If sleep were to obstruct the cycle of capitalist production and social reproduction, would the sleeper be able to dream up a better life, a better future?
Sleeping with a Vengeance, Dreaming of a Life brings together artists from all wakes of life and artworks from diverse cultural backgrounds in order to start understanding how we might share agency in a future politics of sleep. It is conceived as a sketch, which will migrate in slightly changed constellation to lítost/Prague in August/September and Institute for Provocation/Beijing in October.
The Athens version of the exhibition is a cooperation with Yellow Brick. Hosted by Vasiliki Sifostratoudaki and facilitated by Pieternel de Winter, it is funded by the DAI, coming out of a COOP study group lead by Ruth Noack, Maria Berrios and Tina Gverović. Additional funding comes from IFA - Institut Für Auslandsbeziehungen
Participating artists: Florencia Almirón, Clara Amaral, Alaa Abu Asad, Matthijs de Bruijne, Livio Casanova, Ulufer Celik, Agata Cieślak, Anna Daučíková, Teresa Distelberger, Ines Doujak, Nikos Doulos, Gangart, Tina Gverović, Sanne Kabalt, Alejandra Riera, Annette Ruenzler, Jürgen Stollhans, Isabelle Sully, Leeron Tur-Kaspa, Simon Wachsmuth, Baha Görkem Yalim.