Sense of Place and Matter – Human to Human Touch

Sense of Place and Matter – Human to Human Touch

Project curated by:

Mürteza Fidan

Artists:

Nezaket Ekici, Sümer Sayın

In today’s world, people’s feelings about themselves are affected by the conflict between their economic needs and their beliefs. Whilst their faith’s compass is set on the temporality and spatiality of the powers of compassion, temporality and spatiality of economy’s compass is based on the forces of aggression. The global-standardizing consumption culture created by the growth ambition of the capitalist economy pushes us in terms of speed and movement, especially in metropolitan areas, breaking our ties with places and matter, creating a crisis of “touch”. In order to resist the currently accepted ethics of detachment that creates such insensitivities between individuals, we need to renounce meta-economy’s desire for uncontrolled growth and exercise the modesty of sustainable degrowth. This can offer us the opportunity of rebuilding the sense of place and matter by restricting our speed and movement, allowing the human-to-human touch that would create novel forms of dialogue. Off-centre (out of metropole) relations can offer us a field of experience to develop unique forms of dialogue. Due to its peripheral location, instead of rushing us over its “soil”, Sinop offers us the confidence of gaining knowledge by touching and thus allowing access to an effectual experience of place and matter. 

Retaking on R.Sennett’s words, “The closer one draws to another, the clearer will the meaning of events become which otherwise seem senseless or merely random.”

The artists will be asked how they positioned themselves, how beliefs – attitudes and boundaries – and judgements played a role and changed along the way in their production process.