Restoring our Temples

The Videos “Restoring our Temple” I & II were created during the 2nd Sinop Biennial, “The New Order of Things”. I was invited to conduct a workshop on the theme of Sinopale, involv- ing local students of Sinop, the historical town at the northernmost point of Turkey.

This “new” is employed possibly as an ambiguous term to imply the vanity of contemporary art system to continuously advocate the newness in art making, but also as a skeptical reflection on the state of political and economical affairs in our territory. In the age of inventing “a new” every five minutes which sometimes turns out to be a new crisis, we feel obliged to question the “politi- cal, economical and cultural new” that effects our everyday and lifetime. “The new as a value is something which is gone now.” (Nicholas Bourriaud, in his interview with Karen Moss) Thus, by using “new” and knowing that artists are not doing new things, we challenge the public’s para- dox conventions on the newness of things. (Text By Curator Beral Madra)

These 2 videos are the result of the workshop “Restoring Our Temples”.
The process of restoring our temples: in the sense of re-energizing our own bodies. Another order of rejuvenating ourselves, our bodies, minds and recognizing the benefit of collective energy created as a group. The participants in this workshop chose to sit crossed legged on the ground and rotate their bodies from the waist upwards in a circular motion. By repeating this movement for a certain amount of time, they focused on their inner self. This is one ex- ample of how we can learn to engage ourselves in meaningful activities rather than violence or war.