Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Arranging Tangerines, conversations with contemporary artists, curators, and thinkers about the intersection of art, technology, and commerce.
Speaker: Your hosts for this episode are me, Joseph Wilcox, and Elisa Gutierrez Ericsson.
Speaker: Our guest this episode is Kadir Kaiser-Eliolu.
Speaker: Hi, everyone.
Speaker: How's it going?
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: It's going well.
Speaker: How are you?
Speaker: Good.
Speaker: We're happy to have you here today, Kadir.
Speaker: A little quick intro for Kadir.
Speaker: He is currently in the exhibition in Mexico City that Elisa curated, Pulsar, and he's a part of the project Projected Ecologies, which is a collection of films that explore the idea of what happens when humans use anthropo... what's anthropo... anthropo... anthropo-medic thinking?
Speaker: Yeah, when they focus on like when it's like an anthropocentric view of things.
Speaker: Anthropocentric.
Speaker: Yes, that's what I was looking for.
Speaker: Welcome, Kadir.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Thank you for inviting me for the show and this podcast.
Speaker: I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker: Nice to meet you as well.
Speaker: Yeah, it's great to meet Semi in real life here.
Speaker: And yeah, we were saying what a nice collection of videos are in the show.
Speaker: And Elisa and I did a lot of the kind of viewing, but there was five people who made the final selections, which is why I think the final selection of videos is such a strong collection of works that kind of like spans genres.
Speaker: And I think we'll probably talk about spanning genres a little bit
Speaker: in relation to your piece as well.
Speaker: But maybe just to start, could you give us like a little overview of the work in the show, The Walls of Heaven?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of a strange work for me because I wasn't creating anything for two years.
Speaker: I generally very interested in video art and experimental films, but I wasn't doing anything.
Speaker: I was feeling the lack of creativity for a
Speaker: I don't know, like, yeah, two years, I guess, because I was moving, changing cities.
Speaker: And yeah, there were lots of things on my mind and my work life.
Speaker: But after two years, I accidentally, not accidentally, by chance, I wanted to create a terrarium, a new hobby of mine.
Speaker: For the people who doesn't know what terrarium is, I like to explain it very, very shortly, like,
Speaker: It's a glass jar.
Speaker: You can just create an ecosystem in there.
Speaker: You can just put some dirt in there or moss.
Speaker: And when you close it, there's a sustainable life happens inside.
Speaker: You can keep those mosses alive.
Speaker: And then I accidentally find out that, sorry, I find out that I accidentally bring some insects with me, which are some centerpiece.
Speaker: And then everything started from there.
Speaker: I started to observe that terrarium.
Speaker: I wanted to keep them alive.
Speaker: But at the same time, I was thinking about some many, many stuff like creating life in, I don't know, in general, you know, this God complex.
Speaker: creating things in our culture, observing and watching at the same time, security, control, many, many kinds of stuff, and other creating life forms that emerged in popular culture as well, like, you know, sea monkeys.
Speaker: And yeah, then I was like, why don't I write these things?
Speaker: And this work just, first it started as a text.
Speaker: I wanted to publish it as a text at first, but then I wanted to
Speaker: make it a film again because I'm interested and I'm doing video essays and I did the same thing.
Speaker: So, and then it happens shortly.
Speaker: I can explain this.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's interesting to know that it was an essay first before it was a video piece, which I think makes sense after watching the film.
Speaker: And just for like some tech specs on the film, it's like an hour long, definitely experimental film that kind of like is a video diary slash essay, but also includes a
Speaker: kind of like research and video game footage and collected footage from the news.
Speaker: And it kind of like, it is a little bit of a mishmash of a lot of different source material that kind of explains your adventures with terrariums and related materials.
Speaker: Yeah, it's true.
Speaker: It's like a combination of many things, technically and conceptually, I guess.
Speaker: Technically, just like you said, it's a combination of found footage, collected news, YouTube materials, or the footage that I take from the terrarium or from the video games, and some setups that I did.
Speaker: Like, I wake up and you see me as I'm waking up, like that kind of stuff too.
Speaker: Yeah, technically it's very hybrid, conceptually hybrid as well.
Speaker: Yeah, I have a question that is maybe could be too intimate of a question so early, but it's one that Elisa and I had talked about, which was some of these kind of reenactments.
Speaker: Or were they reenactments?
Speaker: Or did you have kind of like footage that you just randomly recorded because you were recording?
Speaker: Or did you kind of go back?
Speaker: Because there was like the morning routine one.
Speaker: And I was like, I wonder if he redid this, like how much of it was real time?
Speaker: And how much of it did you have to do a little bit of reenactments?
Speaker: Well, yeah, the scenes where I was waking up, having my coffee and some scenes that I'm playing video games like The Sims or I'm watching the terrarium, they are reenactments.
Speaker: And I'm acting those moments.
Speaker: For example, when I was acting those moments, like when I was watching the terrarium very curiously on my study desk, the insects were already gone.
Speaker: It was a dead terrarium.
Speaker: I was re-enacting it.
Speaker: I was re-acting those moments.
Speaker: But, you know, the footages that I take where insects are alive, those spiders are alive, yeah, they were
Speaker: They were my personal collections.
Speaker: Then I picked them.
Speaker: And the timeline that you establish in the film, because you provide dates, right?
Speaker: Like this happened in January, February, March, April.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Kind of like it's like around six months of like observing the terrarium and like continuing this.
Speaker: I don't know if it was a daily journal, but more of a journal thing.
Speaker: Those dates, those were real, I guess.
Speaker: They are real.
Speaker: They are real.
Speaker: Okay, great.
Speaker: That adds an even more fun layer to the work that some of them are reenactments.
Speaker: Because I feel like, I don't know, especially with the Sims kind of like the Sims stuff, you are reenacting life a little bit when you play Sims, right, in this virtual world.
Speaker: And so it's fun to hear that you were also reenacting some reenactments or whatever that means.
Speaker: Anyways, it's a nice layer to the work to know that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I thought that it was really interesting what you were saying at the beginning about this God feeling and the power that it gives you to be able to create a world, even though we're talking a little bit about the behind the scenes, but the general narrative of the
Speaker: of the work of the film, it's about the power we have for creating life or even for maintaining life.
Speaker: There was an article that you shared with your submission that was really interesting that say that you question how the power to give life can quickly turn into the power of taking life.
Speaker: even in a simple and harmless simulation.
Speaker: That's a quote from the article.
Speaker: But I'm wondering if you can speak more about this fine line, which is also rooted in this idea of passivity, observation, action in action.
Speaker: How do you see that operating in the film?
Speaker: You're talking about that when you're creating life at the same time you're taking it.
Speaker: You're talking about this complex dilemma thing, right?
Speaker: I am, yes.
Speaker: Well, yeah, in the last parts of the film, I'm really explaining this thing and I'm talking about that.
Speaker: There's a little bit of drama in there, but these are my thoughts generally because I was establishing those ideas when I was thinking about sea monkeys more than the terrarium.
Speaker: Because sea monkeys got my attention way too early, many, many years ago.
Speaker: I first see them in a, I don't know, a grocery shop.
Speaker: And I was like, what the hell is this?
Speaker: Like, how could this happen?
Speaker: How could this be real?
Speaker: There are some real animals inside the small package.
Speaker: You can just bring them life, but they're going to die.
Speaker: And I was talking this to my friends and he told me that when I was a child, I was having them.
Speaker: He told me that when he was a child, he was having them.
Speaker: And just after a couple of weeks, they just flush them to the toilet because they were dead, you know?
Speaker: So I was thinking about that.
Speaker: I was thinking about it a lot.
Speaker: I was like, I need to do some work about that, but I couldn't find an idea.
Speaker: Then this terrarium thing happened.
Speaker: Then I want to combine these two things, terrarium and sea monkeys, because they are both, uh, sharing the same context in there.
Speaker: You're giving life, you're protecting life, but at the same time you're observing that, you're controlling that, you're doing it because your own pleasure, maybe, your own narcissistic desires, maybe.
Speaker: And it gets crystal clear in the case of sea monkeys because you're giving them a life, but if you give them a life, they're going to live a horrible life.
Speaker: like just inside the jar, they are very far from their natural habitat.
Speaker: So they're going to have an unproductive life and they're going to die very soon.
Speaker: But if you don't give them life, well,
Speaker: They're equal as that.
Speaker: They're never going to taste it.
Speaker: So it automatically gives you a narcissistic position, a godlike position.
Speaker: So I think that's a very interesting product.
Speaker: You don't really do that in video games because in the video games, yes, you create some characters, but they're not real.
Speaker: They're not alive.
Speaker: There are some systems, artificial systems.
Speaker: But if you perceive them in an ontological level, like in this new object-oriented ontology, well, you can maybe kind of find them similar to alive, you know.
Speaker: And yeah, there's a black mirror episode.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: That was an exact episode like that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which, which was mind, which messed my mind quite a bit.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: No, no, no worries.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's a good point.
Speaker: I remember that episode and shocked me when I first watched that.
Speaker: And it's very related to that.
Speaker: What that show does in the best way, right, is makes you think about how things are related to our current reality, which which I also think is what your film did, at least for me.
Speaker: And I also I wanted to mention that I recently had a baby.
Speaker: So I have a daughter now and she's young.
Speaker: And so I was rewatching.
Speaker: your film yesterday to come up with some poignant thoughts and questions to ask.
Speaker: And next to the screen with your film was her on the baby monitor napping.
Speaker: And when she naps, she looks like a little shrimp.
Speaker: And so I had already started making these connections between this idea of instant life.
Speaker: And if you zoom out on the history of existence, life is pretty instant for everyone.
Speaker: And who gets to choose to exist?
Speaker: Well, nobody does.
Speaker: And so it was like a fun added layer watching the film and thinking about this.
Speaker: I don't think I would have perceived it the same way a year ago or whatever.
Speaker: Wow.
Speaker: Well, that's very interesting because, well, I did this film and I think about all of these subjects, all of these topics through sea monkeys.
Speaker: And I think about creating artificial life.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I think about it about my flowers.
Speaker: I think about for the centerpiece inside the terrarium or other box in there.
Speaker: But I never I think about it for my dog as well.
Speaker: I never think about it for a child.
Speaker: It's a very challenging topic to perceive this subjects.
Speaker: comparing to the existence of a child that you have.
Speaker: I think it's very challenging.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, as soon as they're born, you got to take care of them or else they will not make it.
Speaker: So I definitely drew some parallels, like early on, even with like the centipedes, but then it kept going and I was like, oh, yeah.
Speaker: But anyways, I digress.
Speaker: It's very interesting.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: No, you go ahead.
Speaker: I thought I need to go ahead, but I think it's time for another question, I guess.
Speaker: Sorry.
Speaker: I have one.
Speaker: Unless you do, Elisa.
Speaker: I have a couple, but you go ahead.
Speaker: We're just like passing the ball.
Speaker: Mine's probably a quick one.
Speaker: But since we're talking about kind of like God mode and there's a Sims, I didn't realize that Sims could die.
Speaker: And if you were creative, you could find creative ways to kill them.
Speaker: And you mentioned that deleting the ladder in the pool was your favorite way when you were a kid.
Speaker: And I was just wondering if you knew why that was.
Speaker: Why it was a favorite way to kill them?
Speaker: Yeah, as opposed to not calling the fire department or removing the door when they're in the bathroom or whatever.
Speaker: Well, I never thought about it, but I think it was the easiest way that I can find in those times when I was playing.
Speaker: Because when you realize that you can actually kill them,
Speaker: It gives you a sadistic feeling.
Speaker: You can feed them, you can pet them, you can also kill them as well.
Speaker: And you don't need to feel guilty about that because they're not real.
Speaker: They're not actual humans.
Speaker: They don't have a soul.
Speaker: They don't hurt.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And I think I just realized that, oh, if I delete this layer, if I delete this letter, yeah, they're going to drown.
Speaker: And it happened.
Speaker: And I think it gives me some kind of an interesting, uncanny joy.
Speaker: And I think that's why it became my favorites, because when a fire happens, yes, they die, but fire happens by chance.
Speaker: If they get old, if you don't really take care of them, I don't know, it's a long process, but if you just, you can just delete the layer instantly, you can just click one button and they die.
Speaker: like i think that's why i think it gives you a control it gives you a quick decision on their lives maybe that was that's why it was my favorite yeah i also thought it was maybe one of the more creative ones uh that i liked it more than kind of like building a wall immediately because you can't i mean like you can in games but like in real life you couldn't do that you couldn't pull a ladder from a pool uh if you if you wanted to in real life i don't know yeah anyways elisa your question
Speaker: Well, I'm going to tie it to this because I thought that one of the most like like the biggest questions that I had throughout the film was about these three characters that are included in the digital terrarium.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And their constant passivity throughout the film, which now that we're having this conversation, I'm thinking of them more as maybe depressed.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: Like I'm thinking about this like situation where you put the Sims and they basically there's like nothing to do.
Speaker: So they're just like there.
Speaker: So that's kind of like one side of the comment more than a question.
Speaker: But when I was thinking about it yesterday, I thought that it was like an interesting contrast with the other example of violent Sims that you were presenting also in the film, but also with the insisting attempts at building worlds, right?
Speaker: But these three characters in seeing it like on the very opposite side of the depression made me also think about this like new word that it's been used a lot, which is rewilding, right?
Speaker: That refers to this attempt to restore the ecosystem by reducing human intervention.
Speaker: So you have like this like very, very
Speaker: passive characters.
Speaker: So now I'm wondering, like, how were you like seeing these characters?
Speaker: Is it one side?
Speaker: Is it the other?
Speaker: Is it none?
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I would love to hear more about those.
Speaker: Well, yeah, it's going to be a little bit hard for me to understand because not understand, sorry, it's hard to express this because that part where the replica of that terrarium
Speaker: that I create, you know, it's the, for me, it was a replica, another version of the terrarium.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: There was a very similar stone at the shape of a mountain.
Speaker: And there were some three characters and everything that I talk about, my researchments and cases that I'm talking, they were happening in that world too.
Speaker: So I was talking about drones and drones were
Speaker: Emerging in that world, yeah, appearing.
Speaker: And I was talking about guns and they were seeing some guns in the TV as far as I know.
Speaker: So I was talking about some homunculus, you know, those artificial men in the alchemy, you know, and they were seeing them like they're watching them in a museum, in a glass cube or something like that.
Speaker: So for me, that was the expressive part.
Speaker: I didn't really put so much thought on it, but I did it with feelings, I guess.
Speaker: This is that moment, that world, those scenes,
Speaker: And the scenes where sims are killing each other, you know, they were more artistic, expressive sides of this film.
Speaker: Or that digital animation of the homunculus, maybe, you know, it was just circling in a white blank space.
Speaker: He was seeming, he was, he was helpless.
Speaker: He was just lying there.
Speaker: You know, that's in the mythology of Islam.
Speaker: He's a man created by itself.
Speaker: So it's kind of, you know,
Speaker: It has some dignity, but I was showing them as a very weak and mutated being, you know.
Speaker: So there were some expressive scenes.
Speaker: And the rest of the film was like my research.
Speaker: I was talking about them.
Speaker: It's more like a video diary.
Speaker: They were, for me, non-artistic sides of the film.
Speaker: They were more direct.
Speaker: But those scenes, you know, the replica of the terrarium, the one with the homunculus or the sims are killing each other, they were more...
Speaker: I don't know, artistic, I did them more in a feeling way.
Speaker: So I don't have a specific answer for that.
Speaker: But yes, they were seeming very passive.
Speaker: A friend told me that they're just walking in the water with their shoes on and they don't care.
Speaker: So they look weird.
Speaker: They look very passive, depressed.
Speaker: I use Twinmotion for those animation.
Speaker: Twinmotion is a software for architectures, architects, sorry.
Speaker: You know, these architectures, architectural presentations, right?
Speaker: In 3D formats.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: People generally use Twinmotion for that.
Speaker: So you can create some 3D environments in there, but you can just, you can also add some animals and human models for, you know, for poles.
Speaker: to make those scenes look interactive with flow of people, you know.
Speaker: So technically they are very passive too.
Speaker: They just walk around.
Speaker: If you leave the Sims alone, they can do some stuff.
Speaker: They can just go and eat.
Speaker: They can just talk to each other.
Speaker: They live if you don't just intervene.
Speaker: But they are, those characters in the Twinmotion, they don't do anything.
Speaker: So for me, maybe I was feeling it that way.
Speaker: For me, they were really passive.
Speaker: They don't know what to do.
Speaker: They're born to be in that world.
Speaker: They don't have any other choice, just like sea monkeys.
Speaker: Sea monkeys, they just stuck in a package.
Speaker: They don't have any choice on living or anything.
Speaker: Only choice is we have.
Speaker: Just like sea monkeys, these characters have no choice.
Speaker: I can just delete them.
Speaker: I can just keep them as their...
Speaker: I can just give them another pose.
Speaker: So they are helpless.
Speaker: They're very passive.
Speaker: So they are under control.
Speaker: They're under oppression all the time.
Speaker: I was feeling it that way.
Speaker: For me, they were metaphorical things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Um, I, uh, one of the things that, um, struck me about the film, uh, is how funny, like how much humor there is in kind of the, in your process and not like, uh, not like ha ha humor, but like, um, observational kind of like deadpan humor.
Speaker: specifically the reenactment of the invisible goldfish.
Speaker: I was laughing out loud during that part.
Speaker: Because it's also this connection to conceptual art I thought was wonderful in this product that this guy made.
Speaker: Um, and, and I think that kind of like satire and irony and humor has had a really good run in recent years in contemporary art, but that people are maybe looking for things that are a little more authentic now and that have a little more sincerity.
Speaker: And I thought that this film really did both of those really, really well.
Speaker: And that's what I was most drawn to was kind of like how generous you were with your thoughts.
Speaker: Uh, and, uh,
Speaker: not just your thoughts about the sea monkeys or your ethical dilemmas with these things, but also the construction of the narrative that you're putting together.
Speaker: You let us in on some of your decision making, both in terms of this experiment with terrariums and sea monkeys, but also with how to proceed with the essay that you were making for us as we were watching.
Speaker: So my question, I guess, is like this candidness and generousness with your thoughts, is that something that spans your practice and your other works?
Speaker: Or is this kind of like a new way of working in terms of your video art?
Speaker: You're talking about the humor in this work?
Speaker: I'm talking about your generosity with your thoughts, right?
Speaker: Like giving the audience a view of your mind in a way that I don't think you have to do, right?
Speaker: People can kind of like keep their thoughts to themselves.
Speaker: And you were really giving us a lot as an audience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: where it felt like I was getting to know you as a person, not just an artist.
Speaker: And I was curious if that shows up in your other works as well, this kind of intimateness of you giving your thoughts and candidness.
Speaker: Well, yeah, I got the question now.
Speaker: Let me just first talk about humor and then the generosity of giving information, talking directly to the viewer, that stuff.
Speaker: But humor, I like humor.
Speaker: I like funny stuff.
Speaker: And I think when you're making some do-it-yourself work, it automatically has a strange vibe, like an absurd humorous vibe it will have.
Speaker: So my work is kind of a do-it-yourself work.
Speaker: So there is this kind of things.
Speaker: They don't have so much production.
Speaker: And yes, it can give some chances
Speaker: to some absurd moments, like those reenactments maybe.
Speaker: And generally, I like humor.
Speaker: I like absurd stuff.
Speaker: I like absurd humor so much.
Speaker: So I think it reflects on my works.
Speaker: And this kind of generosity about giving the information, talking eye to eye viewer, well, it has some different aspects, I guess, because first of all, I'm an academician as well, and I like my work.
Speaker: I like my job.
Speaker: I like talking.
Speaker: I like talking to students.
Speaker: I like discussing with students.
Speaker: I like giving information, sharing information, listening to some information.
Speaker: So talking is a part of my work, a huge part of my work.
Speaker: And I think it also reflects on my, these video essays as well.
Speaker: They are half semi-academic works too.
Speaker: They have their research and
Speaker: I was, my last work after this one, before this one was also a video essay, the past Xenelli implant was a kind of a video essay as well.
Speaker: And I was talking in that video too, I was sharing information as well, but not like this.
Speaker: This is more than the other one.
Speaker: So since my job takes a huge part of my life and my job as a huge part of talking in it,
Speaker: I think it happens in a natural way like that.
Speaker: So for me, it's not a big surprise that I'm choosing this medium.
Speaker: And there's another small aspect of this thing, of this case, is that
Speaker: I also really like stumbling in YouTube as well.
Speaker: I like watching YouTube.
Speaker: I like watching YouTube videos.
Speaker: And you know, there was an old phrase in YouTube like losing yourself in the right side of YouTube or
Speaker: the weird side of youtube you know you just lost in the videos you just watch one another after another and you just lost and stumble upon some weird videos so i like this way of surfing the internet i like this way of walking inside those digital spaces so i think uh i perceived it's
Speaker: aesthetics as well.
Speaker: So in this work, I'm also using some YouTube aesthetics too.
Speaker: For example, when I'm talking about Parcelcius, you know, the alchemists who are talking about the homunculus, at the right side of my screen, there was the image of Parcelcius appears.
Speaker: And it's just like slide from the outside of the corner.
Speaker: So this is basically YouTube aesthetics, presentation aesthetics, let's just say.
Speaker: or found footage or YouTube materials, combining them, editing them.
Speaker: This is also another aesthetic, another cyber aesthetic, let's just say, internet aesthetic.
Speaker: So an internet aesthetics, YouTube aesthetics, well, there's a person in the camera and he talks, he or she talks all the time.
Speaker: It's more interactive.
Speaker: It's more, it has its own closeness, closeness and generosity.
Speaker: So the combination of all of these things, I guess,
Speaker: is the language of this work I have.
Speaker: Yeah, thank you for that answer.
Speaker: I think finding out that you work with students makes a lot of sense in terms of the way in which you kind of approach the camera like you're talking to the audience.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And tied to your practice and how you built your practice, I'm wondering if you could talk more about this thing of your practice being chance-based, right?
Speaker: Which interests me a lot.
Speaker: I mean, obviously we see this in this video work, but I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more.
Speaker: Is there like some sort of structure that you still apply for that chance to happen?
Speaker: Or is it more just like a constant what if that just forms part of your daily life as an artist?
Speaker: If you could talk more about that.
Speaker: Yeah, well, chance is a big factor in my works.
Speaker: In my daily life, chance, well, I'm not a very spiritual person, so I don't put attention on to chance or some, I don't know, spontaneity or some weird cases.
Speaker: But speaking of this work, there was a weird thing happened.
Speaker: When I was observing those terrarium, I was writing the text of this work, and I was like, should I order a Sea Monkey's package or not?
Speaker: Because I want to observe them as well.
Speaker: I want to include this work.
Speaker: include sea monkeys in this work as well.
Speaker: So first I need to observe it too.
Speaker: But I was just having a dilemma, an ethical dilemma.
Speaker: Should I buy it or not?
Speaker: Like if I pay for that, I'm going to support something I'm not going to do.
Speaker: I'm not ethically support.
Speaker: But during those times, I just went to a store.
Speaker: for totally different reason, then I find an old Sea Monkeys package, which was the thing that you see in the film.
Speaker: And it was not a toy shop, you know, I just seen that.
Speaker: And they were just keeping that for some, I don't know, for the people who have some interests for a nostalgic thing, maybe.
Speaker: And when I saw that, I was shocked by like, this cannot happening.
Speaker: So I need to buy that.
Speaker: So this was a huge chance factor in this film, I guess.
Speaker: I was thinking about that.
Speaker: I was studying on that and it's a rare product and I seen it on a totally random way.
Speaker: And,
Speaker: The other chance factors in this film, like, you know, they're not chance, actually.
Speaker: It was always that those centipedes were going to die, you know, so it's not chance.
Speaker: It's a very natural way.
Speaker: It was going to be.
Speaker: Yeah, the chance is the is the win, right?
Speaker: But definitely, definitely going to happen for sure.
Speaker: But generally as a concept, chance as a concept, yes, conceptually or philosophically, politically maybe, I'm more interested in that concept.
Speaker: Chance, you know, because chance means spontaneity, chance means disorder, chance means surprise, chance means non-linearity, chance means, I don't know, chance means
Speaker: everything rather than control and huge structures, social structures, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, chance means possibilities, right?
Speaker: Possibilities, yeah.
Speaker: Versus limiting possibilities.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker: I had a question about, so in the film, and I think it showed up a couple times, but you were talking about kind of like the shrimp aren't being, like they don't choose to live, or the kind of like, I can't remember what the other kinds of shrimp that they found at Burning Man.
Speaker: that kind of like showed up when it rained.
Speaker: The tadpoles, right?
Speaker: Tadpoles, yeah.
Speaker: Tadpoles, okay, yes.
Speaker: Those things are wild.
Speaker: Those are very cool.
Speaker: And you were kind of like speculating what the future might look like for that species.
Speaker: And if humans no longer exist, you know, they've survived mass extinctions for millennia.
Speaker: And so this kind of like species will probably still be there even if us as humans are not.
Speaker: And I kept thinking about the individual shrimp and whether they get to live or not.
Speaker: Because oftentimes, people will talk about humanity and like, oh, we're not going to make it.
Speaker: And some people are like, well, maybe that's better for the world or maybe not.
Speaker: But there's individual people in that conversation.
Speaker: And in your packet of instant life shrimp, there's also individual shrimp that are not being animated and maybe never will be.
Speaker: So I'm wondering how the individual plays into this conversation you're having with yourself about who gets to choose who lives and how it happens.
Speaker: I don't know.
Speaker: I kept thinking about the individual shrimps that weren't getting chosen to exist.
Speaker: Sounds like an interesting question, but I'm not really sure I get that.
Speaker: Individual shrimps, you mean?
Speaker: Yeah, like, so each packet comes with, you know, 200 shrimp or 100 shrimp or whatever.
Speaker: And you were kind of thinking about, well, if I don't animate them, their species will probably still exist later.
Speaker: But those ones that are still inside your packet never got to.
Speaker: And so I'm just curious about this idea of individual versus kind of like species.
Speaker: And if one is more important than the other or how they kind of...
Speaker: inform your thoughts about this experiment that you did well uh i think we are speculating now so uh i'm still not sure if i get it right but uh i will try for example like if humans disappear if this is our time and we have it and uh
Speaker: Those species, those tadpole shrimps, they continue, they continue, they resume on, uh, existing and they evolve.
Speaker: But some other shrimps that I keep inside the package, they just stay there.
Speaker: So these were the ones that you're talking like individual shrimps.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So they are isolated for all of that was happening outside.
Speaker: So for any chance, if rain happens, heavy rain happens and they just mix with the water and if they just animate, so what will going to happen to them?
Speaker: You asked, right?
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: And I think maybe I'm not thinking of those specific ones, although I'm using them as my example.
Speaker: But I guess maybe it's a bad question.
Speaker: Is it a bad question, Elisa?
Speaker: No, I think it's an interesting question.
Speaker: I have a couple of thoughts about that, too.
Speaker: I think it's a very interesting question.
Speaker: Well, it's a little bit.
Speaker: Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker: Well, like you're talking about preserving them from the outside world.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And aren't we like you making the decision to animate them is chance.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: I mean, if we're thinking of the kind of like this kind of like entire ecosystem that we live in, it's all chance.
Speaker: No, I think I think here it goes more into the gut like feeling because I feel like like.
Speaker: And like if you follow the instructions of the sea monkeys, right, like you have to do this, put the water, you you like clean the water, right?
Speaker: Like there's like this cleaning of the water that has to happen and then you put them in and then they grow and live and then you feed them.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But what is it that you actually feed them?
Speaker: You know, like, what is this thing that you're putting in the water?
Speaker: Why did the tadpole shrimps didn't need like a specific type of water?
Speaker: You know, like, why were they thriving and why would the sea monkeys were not thriving?
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Like, what is it about like...
Speaker: Is it really chance or is it the conditions?
Speaker: Are conditions also chance?
Speaker: I feel like there's all these other questions.
Speaker: If you still have your sea monkeys in the box in your house, what happens if those sea monkeys, you kind of drop them where their natural environment would be?
Speaker: Would they thrive and would they continue living?
Speaker: Not in this enclosed environment where you're ensuring their deaths, but just kind of releasing them into the world and living into the world.
Speaker: And then a follow-up question would be how...
Speaker: are they going back to this original environment is actually not affecting the environment in itself?
Speaker: Like, are they still supposed to be existing, right?
Speaker: This like living fossils?
Speaker: Or is it just, you know, like, I mean, obviously, maybe I need to do some research about that.
Speaker: But I think those are like interesting questions that come with it.
Speaker: Yeah, well, yeah.
Speaker: First of all, the first thing that comes to my mind right now is that choosing which shrimp species is going to survive or the other one is going to be suspended or straight, maybe.
Speaker: Well, first of all, they also sell tadpole shrimps as well.
Speaker: So you can also buy them.
Speaker: There are some subspecies of tadpoles.
Speaker: There are some colored versions of those.
Speaker: So you can just buy.
Speaker: any shrimp you want, they're all sold by different companies right now.
Speaker: So their whole existence are objectified right now.
Speaker: They are meta today.
Speaker: So, and for me, my decision on how to end this conversation on their lives, how to end this dilemma, it happened when I first exhibited this movie,
Speaker: solo exhibition.
Speaker: I also displayed the sea monkeys package and the terrarium itself, like, like a structure, maybe like a sculpture and people were there to observe the terrarium.
Speaker: Oh, this wasn't the,
Speaker: the actual sea monkeys packaging the film so when the exhibition ends the gallery space belonged to my friends I was like okay the terrarium and this package is yours it's not my responsibility anymore so I delivered that to other people I wanted to be happened that way I didn't want to keep them forever I didn't want to you know present them as an object as an art object in my room so I wanted to leave this to other people's judgment I guess I don't know if it's a
Speaker: fair thing to do, but I think the whole general, one of the whole concepts of this movie and the lessons I learned through it, that there's always some contradiction in your actions.
Speaker: Like you can just criticize the narcissistic position of observing, but at the same time, you can just, you know, watch them and feel some joy about that.
Speaker: So we have full of contradictions.
Speaker: So inaction is still inaction, right?
Speaker: It's still like choosing to do nothing or choosing to do something is still choosing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It means confusion.
Speaker: It means, you know, disability in your position.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: It's kind of a nice way to to get rid of your responsibility over deciding the fate.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: True.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, maybe this is a good spot to ask if you're working on anything new, what's coming up for you?
Speaker: What's been on your mind as of late?
Speaker: Well, I'm not really sure.
Speaker: I'm writing an article, an academic article in these days, so I only focused on that.
Speaker: It's a job that I have to do.
Speaker: But artistically, I'm not really sure what will happen next.
Speaker: There are some strange topics on my mind, but I need some more time to combine them, get some message through them.
Speaker: Maybe it's going to be a process like in this film.
Speaker: Maybe it's going to take a span of time to research everything and document everything.
Speaker: Well, there are some certain topics on my mind for sure.
Speaker: For like one of them is I had a surgery six months ago, which was kind of a kind of a serious one.
Speaker: And I felt the fear of that in that moment in those times.
Speaker: And I thought I thought about the social space.
Speaker: social concepts of a hospital, staying in a hospital, that liminal space, that liminalty in the hospital room, you know, physically and mentally and culturally, because when you're hospitalized, when you're in your recovery area, you are a social person at the same time.
Speaker: You know, there are some wars in the world.
Speaker: You want to know what's going on, but at the same time, you don't care any of them.
Speaker: You only think about yourself.
Speaker: You're isolated in one room, but everything's around you belongs to a social construct.
Speaker: So you are rather an outside person or just a person inside the society.
Speaker: You're somewhere in between all the time.
Speaker: You're between life and death.
Speaker: You're between the public and isolation.
Speaker: So yes, this liminality of hospital rooms really interested me in those times.
Speaker: Maybe I will
Speaker: think about that, study on that, and I will do something about that.
Speaker: I'm not quite sure.
Speaker: Sounds very interesting.
Speaker: And if it's that topic or if it's something else, I look forward to your next film.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: I hope I will do that.
Speaker: And you watch it too, I guess.
Speaker: Any final thoughts, Alisa?
Speaker: I had a last question that kind of like remain in the back of my notes.
Speaker: If we have time, we already went kind of like to the future, but I would also love to hear about this other work that you did and that you sort of like hint at it in the video, The Garden of Forgetting.
Speaker: The Garden of Forgetting.
Speaker: What is that about?
Speaker: It looks beautiful, by the way.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: It was not a video essay.
Speaker: It was more like a video art, a short film.
Speaker: There was a cyber, a digital garden in the space.
Speaker: It was just a fragment of a piece of a garden, but it's very outgrown.
Speaker: There were no humans inside.
Speaker: There were just some plants, bugs and frogs.
Speaker: So the nature overthrown the man in there.
Speaker: garden.
Speaker: It's like a forgotten garden, you know, and a garden of forget garden of forgetting is a book.
Speaker: Actually the name coming from a book, a Turkish writer called Letife Tekin.
Speaker: I really liked that book.
Speaker: The book is about building a utopia, an autonomous place, a collective, building a collective in there.
Speaker: But true times there are some problems emerging, some personal problems emerging in the, in that collective.
Speaker: And
Speaker: people were unable to make it run.
Speaker: So I was thinking about that book and it inspired me a lot.
Speaker: And in that video, there was a digital garden in space, in the nothingness, basically.
Speaker: And the camera was just walking around in the garden.
Speaker: You were seeing some aspects of the garden, some flowers, you know, lake, fishes, frogs, bugs, birds, maybe.
Speaker: And you were always seeing two people are playing the voices of two people, two persons, and they were playing a game called, what's that game called?
Speaker: First you ask a question like pizza or hamburger, which is your favorite.
Speaker: And you ask her and then you ask another question.
Speaker: So it's a question and answering game, like a game of meeting, a game of flirting.
Speaker: Maybe I was doing that with my girlfriend and those people are me and my girlfriend.
Speaker: We were playing that game and at the same time we were recording our voices.
Speaker: So there were some two anonymous person were meeting and playing that game.
Speaker: So you were hearing those voices when you were just walking around in that digital garden.
Speaker: So like those two figures are long gone and you're hearing the voice of their ghosts maybe.
Speaker: So the work is more about like, you know, a garden itself.
Speaker: Like what is a garden?
Speaker: It is a private property for sure, but at the same time, there are so many creatures living in there.
Speaker: So it's yours, but at the same time, it belongs to them as well.
Speaker: What's private property?
Speaker: What is general life?
Speaker: What's your relationship with life and that?
Speaker: What is meeting inside of a very inhumane environment?
Speaker: What's the meaning of meeting in a place where very stranger to you?
Speaker: So these kinds of stuff.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: That sounds really interesting.
Speaker: Is there somewhere besides your website where people can see your films like to see any of this?
Speaker: Well,
Speaker: Not yet.
Speaker: Maybe I will release them online one day because I don't sell them.
Speaker: So maybe I will do them online, but I feel very lazy to update my personal website in these days.
Speaker: If anyone is interested, they can just tell me, they can just email me or they can just follow me on Instagram and text me.
Speaker: I can just directly send the links of my words.
Speaker: Amazing.
Speaker: Thanks, Kadir.
Speaker: Cool.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Thank you so much, Kadir.
Speaker: It was a pleasure speaking with you.
Speaker: Well, thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for inviting me.
Speaker: It was a pleasure as well.
Speaker: It was fun.
Speaker: Thanks for everything.
Speaker: Arranging Tangerines is recorded, edited, and produced by Lydian Stater, an evolving curatorial platform based in New York City dedicated to showcasing emerging artists with a focus on ephemeral, conceptual, and time-based works.
Speaker: You can learn more at lydianstater.co and lydianstaternyc on Instagram.
Speaker: Big thanks to Tall Juan, who graciously provides our intro music.
Speaker: His albums are available at tallwan.bandcamp.com.
Speaker: And thank you to you, listener, for spending your valuable time with us.
