SEASON 3: Futures of the Past

1. Başlık: Roots of the Mental Model in Ancient Mythology 

  Konuşmacı: Yağmur Denizhan

  26.11.2022

This Saturday at 6.30 pm Yağmur Denizhan hoca will open to discussion her reflections on the origins of the contemporary mainstream mental model, which she designates as a "system-founder mind-set". In her paper "Roots of the Mental Model in Ancient Mythology" she asserts that the mental model of a society/culture is shaped by the living conditions, under which the respective social system gains its unity and identity. Even though these conditions typically change during the subsequent social evolution, the main features of the mental model are preserved to a great extent. Taking this assertion as a point of departure, she presents examples from the earliest available myths from Mesopotamia, which shed light on different mental models and their clashes, and on the conditions under which the contemporary mainstream mental model may have emerged. This analysis is hoped to inspire some solution about how to escape from an entrapment in this mentality.

We are excited to observe the ways in which this week's discussion will open a pathway to our upcoming event series // Futures of the Past //

Here is the abstract of the paper:

This paper asserts that the dominant mental models of a social system are shaped by the conditions at the time when the society first gains its identity and unity, and that the basic traits of these models are maintained to a great extent throughout that society's subsequent evolution. Based on this assumption, some basic traits of the mental model's characteristics of today's civilizations are expected to have their origins in the mental models of early human agricultural societies and city states. Since Mesopotamian myths constitute some of the earliest available records originating from that ancient period, several of these myths are analysed here to examine the roots of some fundamental epistemological assumptions of our contemporary society.

2. Başlık: Mentality 

  Konuşmacı: Berk Kurt

  17.12.2022

Salutations to all, this week is going to be our first formal week for Futures of the Past. We are still grateful to Yağmur Denizhan, for she warmed us up to what will come after her. This week I am going orient the discussion by forming the basis of what we mean by mentality and will try to track it through various courses from various eras. When changes in lifestyles taken as a follow up of changes in mentalities, a new field emerges that we can investigate. Ultimately, an inquiry into the aforementioned subjects will help illuminate how people of a different time formed different worldviews. This forms a basis on which we will find the futures in the past. If you know anyone who is interested in these, please do invite them as well! With love.

3. Başlık: Azande Culture & Liminality

  Konuşmacı: Begüm Güven

  24.12.2022

Greetings,

This week I will be presenting an African culture, called Azande, which is infamous with their witchcraft practices. They are an amalgam of many different people thanks to them having been a migrating population in the past. They are now based around South Sudan and Congo. 

My presentation will be a complementary to Yağmur Hoca's preliminary discussion on Sumerian tales, and I will be adopting her mental modeling schema in order to discuss the emergence of their distinct culture and government. This is a hard topic to explicate because of the instability prevalent in all parts of their society, however I will do my best to argue that the society gained its identity before agriculture, while they were a hunter-gatherer society, which had an effect on their tales, worldview (that sees the world as unknowable and dangerous). We will also be talking about one of the main figures in their tales, which is the Ture Trickster, who embodies the unstable and liminal character of their mentality.

4. Başlık: Mezopotamya Tarihi

  Konuşmacı: Barış Demirci

  02.01.2023

Sevgili insanlar, bu pazar saat 18.30da etkinliklerimizi her zaman yaptığımız mütevazı evimizin kapısını uzun bir yolculuğa açıyoruz. Yolculuğumuz fırdolayı şiirle, müzikle ve samimiyetle sarılı yollardan geçip önce Mezopotamya'ya, Sümer'e, Uruk'a, oradan da günümüz dünyasına ulaşıyor. Çocuklar gibi, ırmaklar gibi belli etmeden uzuyor, ucu bucağı gözükmeyen yolculuğumuz ve nihayetinde kalbimizde son buluyor. Maalesef ki bu haftaki yolculuğumuz Türkçe olacaktır. Şeref verip yolculuğumuza katılan herkesin kalbine ulaşmayı iple çekiyor, herkese yeni yıla girerken mutluluklar diliyoruz.

5. Başlık: Social Processes in Primitive Societies

   Konuşmacı: Ramazan Fidan

Extra: Ivan Kurbakov

  04.03.2023

Salutations to all, this Saturday at 18.30 in our usual place our beloved Ramazan Fidan will be making a discussion. Here are the details, written by him:            Based on his reading of Nietzsche, Gilles Deleuze develops a philosophical perspective on culture, which aims to explain how primary social processes work in primitive societies. This account involves Deleuze's creative and complicated ideas about body, desire, language and social relations. In this presentation, we will go through some excerpts from Deleuze's texts and discuss them together. In a nutshell, Deleuze argues that social processes work as a machine of registration, while culture is a memory produced by inscribing the body. We will focus on how Deleuze describes this process of "writing on the body" because it not only involves pleasure and pain but also crime and punishment. From Deleuze's perspective, this is fundamental to understand any social formation and the creation of a new way of social life.

Afterwards we will be screening films by Ivan Kurbakov

Pleroma, 2016, 54 min

A remembrance floats through the world. Meeting in one city dreaming in another.

A covering white veil in which relationship becomes a poem, a dance. Affair will end briefly.

Conversations abandon themselves, voices ring. Levels of reality shift.

A person grows up dreaming, 2018, 28 min

Asya is a little girl who is always in doubt whether this world is real. She doesn't like to talk, but rather hear her inner voice and contemplate.

Umbilical cord, an introduction, documentary short, 2021, 14 min

Young people aged from 16 to 24 answer different questions on a certain spectre of themes: from their sense of present time to their belief in astrology.

6. Başlık: History of Sumer

   Konuşmacı: Barış Demirci

   12.03.2023

Dear people, this Saturday at 18:30 at Havyar (Havyar Sokak 7/7), I will try to tell you the history of Sumer in almost every aspect. The history of Sumer is a very complicated and difficult field to study and though I tried to take newest and most important sources as references, if I fail or forget to give some key point I hope you forgive me. I wish everyone a nice day.

7. Başlık: The Dawn of Everything

   Konuşmacı: Tatul Zeytunyan

   25.03.2023

Dear people of the Saturdays, this week 18.30, Tatul will be granting us what is best understood in his words: Michael Graeber's posthumously published final work, The Dawn of Everything seeks to illustrate the early stages of human civilization. Graeber, through a meticulous interdisciplinary research in anthropology, history, and archaeology draws an authentic narrative of the birth of sedentary life, state and inequality. Incorporating 'outsider' research, lost, forgotten, overshadowed, or rejected due to political reasons, Graeber seeks to define the mainstream narrative for the upcoming decades.

I shall summarize Graeber's findings, and criticise his shortcomings. In the discussion part, we shall speculate on the 'natural state'.

8. Başlık: The Dawn of Everything

   Konuşmacı: Yağmur Denizhan

   11.06.2023

Can one be nostalgic for the home one never had?

Salutations, 

this Sunday is an important one. We will be feeling the closure of Futures of the Past and this term of our events. Since next year I am not going to be with our beloved Hayyam, it will be the last event with me in its organisation. Albeit, surely, it won't the the last of Hayyam. 

Our precious Prof. Yağmur Denizhan will be discussing the Future of Nostalgia by Svetlana Boym, this will be followed by a discussion of what happened this term in Hayyam. For more information on the book: https://books.google.com.tr/books/about/The_Future_of_Nostalgia.html?id=EHk4DgAAQBAJ&source=kp_book_description&redir_esc=y

See you at 18.30, 

my regards and perpetual love,

Berk