SEASON 1 Manipulation of Nature (geçmiş etkinlikler)

1. Başlık: Human "Drive" of Manipulating Nature Konuşmacı: Sezen Yatarkalkmaz 20.11.2021 Humanity’s constant interference with nature, along with its disregard for nature's role in all this, is a story as old as: humanity! How did this start? How did it prevail? Art and technology/science are the main two branches when we think about manipulation of nature. What is the difference? Where are we now? What did we do with the mistakes and the dead? Also, how did we tell the story of nature and humans? I want to talk about these stories’ story, with one main focal point: humans. What drove humans to interfere? Do we want it? Do we need it? Is this even an important question? Why is the focus on humans?  To have this focus on this story, we need to know: how do humans interfere? What are the properties of this interference? So, we read Bandura’s “Toward a psychology of human agency” to get a sense of how humans interfere. We also read (optional but short:)) “Nature, Man and Common Sense” by P.J. Deneen to get one version of this age-long story.
   

2. Başlık: The Third Sense of Environment Konuşmacı: Deniz Gülyurt 27.11.2021 Starting from Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, the paper gives a detailed description of the theories on human-environment relationship. It elaborates on the critical problems arose from these theories: the definition of environment and perception. Does the physical world surrounding us have a meaning? Or is it perception that is meaningful? How do we make sense of the world surrounding us and perceive it's structure in a cognitively and evolutionarily functional way? These questions are asked in the paper and will be touched upon in tomorrow's discussion. We will talk about the distinctions between the physical world, habitat, and umwelt as suggested by the authors. In order to do that, we will discuss important terminology from cognitive science: affordances and learning (as the distinction made by the authors are rooted in these terms). We will follow the argument presented in the paper and discuss its validity all together!
   

3. Başlık: Different Understandings of Nature Konuşmacı: Begüm Güven Ekstra: Mert Eryılmaz - Experimental Films Selection 04.12.2021
   

(Begüm:)

We’ve been talking about nature but we haven’t yet articulated on different versions of understanding nature that came about in our collective history. This is why I wanted to focus on how Aristotle (but also Ancient Greeks to an extent) understood nature and explained production within nature; but I also wanted to connect discussion to something that is somehow more relevant to us, something more contemporary. Hence the article from Heidegger, where he first provides us with the necessary terminology of the Greeks, and adding to that, the current relationship we have between technology and nature. We will be discussing production or in more elegant terms, poiesis, but also technê, as well as how we understand technology and what that has to do with nature.

P.S. This will also include a critique of modernity (inevitably) but I will try to make the subject revolve around topics that are not cliché; mainly because the text is richer than that, and also I’m just so bored of criticising everything and anything. This is why I added a surprise supplementary article. I will not touch on it too much but hopefully I will select some points from it to help us not get stuck. Since Greeks didn’t differentiate too much between arts and crafts as we do (both go under technê) I borrowed their perspective. The mentioned article is called: Towards an artistic Account of Nature: Morphology, Hylology, Hylomorphism (Mert): hi! as Berk Kurt⁩ stated, i will be bringing a selection of experimental films for us to hopefully broaden our discussion or to make our evening any better this saturday. here is the list of films and some further details:

melting, thom andersen, 1965, 6 min. speechless, scott stark, 2008, 13 min. envio 32, jeannette munoz, 2017, 2 min.* green ash, pablo mazzolo, 2019, 10 min.* sabulation, jacob kirkegaard, 2010, 31 min. *those without sound will be accompanied by some tunes by burial; respectively beachfires and night bus. duration: 62 min melting:MELTING shows the natural monostructural disintegration of a strawberry sundae, its passage from rigidity to softness, from edibility to waste. The spoon resting on the plate refers to the human presence, which lurks behind the screen, declining to interfere with what transpires. -from Film-makers Cooperative speechless:

3D photographs of human vulvae are animated and interwoven with surfaces and textures from natural and human-made environments. The genital images were taken from a set of ViewMaster 3D reels that accompanied a textbook entitled The Clitoris, published in 1976 by two medical professionals.

-Scott Stark

envio 32:

Envíos is cinema that ceases to be cinema in order to become the emerging space of what has been, of what is and what could be. It is sequences, incidents, occurrences, fragments, moments, glimpses. Envíos doesn’t have objects nor subjects, being its components heterogeneous. Envíos inhabits the intimate and the public at once. It has been made with and/or for a person and will be presented in public.

-Jeannette Munoz

green ash:

The Hênia/Kâmîare aboriginals inhabited the current territory of the Sierras de Córdoba (Argentina) for at least 1600 years. In 1575, the resistance led by cacique Onga was cornered and defeated by the conquering Spanish troops. 

After resisting the Spanish in the Charalqueta mountain (named after the God of Joy), hundreds of Hênia-Kâmîare women, children and elders jumped off the top of the Colchoquí mountain in order to avoid being enslaved. The Charalqueta mountain was renamed as Colchiqui (after the God of Fate and Sadness).

This was the biggest collective suicide in the territory currently known as Argentina.

-from Lightcone

sabulation:

Sabulation is created from video and sound recordings of the ‘Singing Sands’ in the deserts of Oman, one of the few places in the world where the shifting sand dunes emit deep tones.

-from matter.jp

4. Başlık: Antification Konuşmacı: Ahmet Berk Kurt Extra: Mark Volkov

27.11.2021

(Berk): Hello friends, this week I am presenting. My presentation is going to be about some patterns that I've observed  almost two years ago and some thoughts I formulated on top of them. I am not in the same position of thought right now, nevertheless I thought that it would be stimulating to talk about Antification, which is a locus of this thought bubble. This whole conception -which I hope you'll understand once you read the text- is relating to our overarching theme of manipulation of nature in a way to gives us a narrative of how could nature be manipulating itself. I hope that instead of going full-blown well-founded thought of who said what and what lineages of thought gave rise to whatever, what would some philosopher say about what, we can relax our logic a bit, and swim in the sea of joyful speculations. What is desired in the discussion is what YOU think, this week. With love.  P.s. I hope that you enjoy dismembering my once precious thoughtscape…

(Mark): As many might have noticed, Berk has got an altar in his room, the presence of which has recently posed a question that none of us instantaneously were able to answer, let alone respond in a manner of a definite modus operandi. An elevating feeling of unknowing that perhaps only the earliest witnessers of religions in their infancy were privileged to witness. "How do we pray?" 

The selection of films for tonight--although rather documentary than experimental--could in quite a stretch be addressing the question, but we are not certain if it will shed light on it or obscure it further.

1. Il culto delle pietre by Luigi di Gianni

2. Evasi by Franco Piavoli

3. Blind Kind by Johan van der Keuken

4. The House is Black by Forough Farrokhzad

5. Başlık: 4E of Cognition    

Konuşmacı: Yunus Şahin

18.12.2021

Traditional thinking in cognitive science assumes that mind/cognition is in some sense a module that is independent from perception and action in terms of its internal mechanisms. According to this view, cognition is supposed to take inputs from perception, somehow turn them into representations and then operate on those representations, resulting in some outputs for the action module. According to this isolationist view, thoughts were the result -or one can say they were exactly those operations mentioned above - of that encapsulated mind module. But over the years, many challenges that this view faced has been leading scholars to a different direction and its getting clearer that mind cannot be isolated from the environment in which it operates, let alone some mental or bodily processes that it interacts with. From that point on it is not hard to see how this kind of a change in the paradigm would also yield an alteration in the ontology of thoughts. Thoughts are not some isolated internal processes anymore; since the cognition is diffused across perception and action, it is not possible to speak of them as something separate from perception and action and that, interestingly, makes them actions, namely a mere response, a result of a complex chain of causality that triggered by some percepts. If mind is extended over, and mental processes are distributed over perception/action and the environment, and in a sense include/contain the environment without representing, will it be possible now to say that actions themselves are also some sort of thoughts?

6. Başlık: What is Spirituality (for me) Konuşmacı: Rok Backer

02.01.2022

Merhaba!

So, Sunday's event is going to be a bit different from the previous events. As some of you alreaey know, I pratice yoga, which I use as a tool on my journey to spirituality. What brings us to the subject for this Sunday. I will humbly try to depict an idea of what spirituality means to me and how it's integrated in my life. Yoga, let alone spirituality, is a matter of great vastness, supported by a lot of traditional theory. I, however, will not dive deep into it, but will only use it briefly to support what I'll talk about mostly, and that is my experiences (including my pilgrimage in France). 

I also picked some of the verses from Bhagavad-Gita for you to read and a chapter from Yogananda's autobiography. Since the conversation we're going to have is not based on those text, you don't need to feel obliged to read them all. My selection might seem a bit strange, but I hope, you'll get an idea of why I picked these, once I deliver my experiences with yoga 😊

And since this event will be quite a challange for me, I decided to challenge you also. I want you to reflect, not so much on the texts, but rather what love feels to you and what it means when I invite you to come in love ❤️

6. Başlık: Expressionist Art

Düzenleyen: Özlem Salt

    Ekstra: Mert Eryılmaz

(Özlem):

Hello! So apparently this week is going to be quite experimental. We are going to practice a concentrated Expressive Art session which will require us to decentralize ourselves in order to produce. 

The field of Expressive Arts has an arts-based approach bringing several disciplines such as psychology, anthropology and philosophy together. It was started as a therapy but later used in the fields of education and social change as well. Our session will not include therapeutic methods since I’m not a licensed therapist yet :D, but we will focus more on the transformational aspects of art. 

The core notion of Expressive Arts was taken from the concept of poiesis which we have already discussed in our first session.  As we discussed, poiesis is not just an artistic production but it is producing, making and building in a broader sense. The participants in Expressive Art, try to incorporate poiesis in an experiential nature which requires stepping out from everydayness of our life to a liminal space. In this space we will unravel the unpredictable, imaginary space of communal art-making. 

Our session will be an interactive production process in which I will take the role of spaceholder. It will mainly consist of our body, and some paints. I will bring some with me but it would be good if you bring some paints and paper/canvas with you as well, whatever you prefer.  See you 💕

(Mert):

heyy peoples, as you know this saturday i'll come with a film selection again :) although the selection will be about 2 hours, i could not really exclude any one of them. we can maybe have a break, but it is my kind request to not stop until we watch the 4th film, baroque statues. i think they will make a good bond together and also apparently having a break after baroque statues will cut the selection right between on the half :). the films in the selection may be categorized within the concepts of body, dance, perception of nature and performance. while until baroque statues we'll be watching some different ways of representation of the concepts of body and dance with strict concentration on them, after with baroque statues and earthearthearth will nature perception be included into our watching experience. i guess the 6th film we hold where study will be the one where they all come together. i didn't write down any info about the 7th and last film on purpose, i'll talk about it when we come to it. 🤍

7. Film Session: Mark Volkov 22.01.2022

The eye of the camera is inhuman. It sees where one chooses not to. Where one lies about what one sees the camera reveals what is. The camera knows no fear, it has no survival instinct, it sees where it pleases (“the Spirit blows where it will”). It is a hungry seer. Not even death can avert its gaze, it is already dead and, as angels according to Rilke, sees the living and the dead equally (think of old family portraits where there would be a recently deceased husband or brother made to pose for the last photograph before he is buried; the eyes are wide-open, a stick holds his back straight). To see a film one has to die for the duration. The darkness of the cinema is a grave, wherein one dreams. And in the dreams the sky is the earth, up is down, life is death, and what is true is out in the open.

An outstanding act of seeing beyond comparison is Artur Aristakisyan’s ‘Ladoni’ (Palms). The 16mm black&white film follows the lives of homeless and crippled people of Chisinau from the end of the 80s to the beginning of the 90s, the period of collapse of ruling ideology and the final dissolution of the system. The film has no sound apart from Artur’s narration, which is a monologue addressed to his unborn child, whom he initiates into the things of the world through the images and faces of those who live outside of the devouring system. There is St. John’s Apocalypse (Revelation) and there is Artur Aristakisyan’s Ladoni, an eschatology beyond the word, written in light and shadow.

The film is 2h 20m long, so brace yourselves

And as a little treat.

Artur is currently preoccupied with shooting one-frame films, which are his facebook posts where he talks about (or rather--through) old photographs (mainly taken in the war) that he buys from antique dealers. It has come as a realisation that one frame is enough for a film, and it doesn't have to be in motion as long as there is an attempt at seeing. He himself "watches" those in his home cinema, in a dark room with a projection, so one could say that the main components of the cinema experience are all there.

All of his posts are in Russian, but I have translated one for your interest. May it be an introduction to the artist, whose film, hopefully, you will see tomorrow night.