The Manipulation of the Memory Theatre

Our past experiences and personal memories are like an extensive home in which we form our identity. The people who lived with us in that home, though not at the same time, made it fun, educational, safe, and even sacred for us. Being at home means being in one's soul. At home, artists interact with others and acquire a distinct form of vision, which Kafka refers to as vision particuliere. My home is Anatolia, which has hosted ancient civilizations throughout history and now serves as a bridge between east and west. That land, which is now called Turkey, is an open-air museum. My earliest childhood memories belong to the Roman Zile Castle, right next to the school where my father worked as a teacher. The stone column which has the famous phrase "Veni, Vidi, Vici" ("I came, I saw, I conquered") attributed to the Roman Emperor Julius Caesar written on it is in that castle. When I was playing in that historic place, with the shortest and oldest words of the world engraved on a stone, I realized that the Earth is a text that can be read and written. However, one should analyze the mystery of that text to better settle in the world. I decided that I had to exert a radical effort to achieve that. My academic studies can also be considered part of that effort. What inspired me to become an art historian was, of course, my desire to read ancient works and interpret their meanings. However, if I become a good artist, the artwork I will leave behind will allow me to communicate with a child who will live years after me.


  
Zela Castle/Amphytheatre                                       Veni-Vidi-Vici/Cesar

My critique of Edward Shanken made me realize that the landforms in my early paintings were very similar to that castle. There is a Byzantine arena in northwest of the court. I came across similar structures in Hellenistic ruins in North Africa, where my father worked as a teacher. This may be the subconscious reason for my attempt to write a "memory theater" themed play for my thesis.




Robot Carved Caesar and column

During my Ph.D. studies, I visited hundreds of museums in different parts of the world—similar works in different periods and lands. The Zig-zag time travel series, which emerged then, focused on those journeys in other times and places.


         Rifted Valey, 2013                        Gobekli Tepe, 2015



Numerous intertwined stories and characters have influenced me. I saw methods in the last decade of field research and academic studies that I performed in many places, from Göbekli Tepe to the Great Rift Valley to ancient civilizations and settlements. As a repercussion of this interaction, I want to make those nodes and loops visible in my artwork. What we call inspiration is our inner voice whispering into our ears. That voice might be that of the migrants, the ghosts, the persecuted, and the artists, writers, and thinkers who make the unheard heard and even that of our childhood and memory.    I had been criticized for using too many quotes in an article I wrote. I had said that when I sat at my desk, I felt like all authors were seated at my desk and whispering something in my ear.       

One morning, an artist might wake up to find herself speaking a different language from those with whom she lives in the same period or establish a bond with like-minded people even if she does not live in the same time or place. I can't dissociate myself from moral masters such as Epictetus, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Cicero, who have taught me how to perform my own "art of living" through the play.

Of course, we cannot think of humans as entities formed by chemical reactions in a test tube. However, if each reading is an interpretation and each performance is rewriting, then we understand ourselves better and express ourselves if we can analyze those connections. We cannot take credit for our artistic ways of thinking. We create artworks but are shaped by other ideas, artists and thinkers.



My thesis supervisor Professor recommended that I reveal that through a play. It was a pleasant subject that was compatible with all my work. People invite their families to their graduation presentations. As someone who has spent her last decade away from her homeland, I could imaginatively invite to my graduation exhibition our ancestors who have contributed to my personal life and Earth.



For a while, we have been using new technologies in artworks by making them think for us. Recent technological advances have allowed us to see that transformation better, wander in time, and face mythological beings. Using the free possibilities and advanced technologies offered by today's art, we can heterotopically transform people who have existed since the magical ages. Thanks to hologram technology, we can invite everyone to the stage, resurrect the dead, and bring them face to face in a play set up in the memory theater. For artists, their works are the doors of their universes that open up to the outside world. The interdisciplinary method in this exhibition will provide an opportunity to travel from the artist's universe to the resources of the memory pool. Artists, thinkers, or figures, who move freely in time, will come face to face with each other or with the advanced possibilities of the time.


The Manipulation of The Memory/Artfacts

In the exhibition, I used body sculptures, video installations made with robots and 3D printers, and advanced technologies used in art production, such as HoloLens, scanners, projections, augmented reality, and virtual reality. The recent union of art, science, and technology has enabled us to understand even the most ancient and mythological eras. Reproducing and constructing fiction has allowed us to go to the depths of memory and to the origins of humanity, where information in our subconscious and collective memory is stored. Therefore, this method has animated more vividly the memories it has witnessed on Earth and, thus, shed light on our future. In this exhibition, which is based on hybrid technological methods, we will reconstruct the "subconscious," which is responsible for perceiving, infiltrating, organizing, coding, and concealing in the face of our emotions in the "now" with a heterotopic transformation that Foucault uses in his spatial analysis.


Adorno's emphasis on "breaking through the deception" encompassed real or imagined spaces arising from a utopian-analogy relationship and existed in all cultures and civilizations. For millions of years, images were dynamic and animate things for people. We will stage an interactive play with a robot-designed and amphitheater-like set and with writers, thinkers, artists, ideas, objects, and images from the past. The exhibition will allow us to have a "daydream" and travel with Freud from the subconscious to the unconscious and into the world of meaning.


             

The Mandala of Memory Theatre/Bruno/Neo Mandala of Memory Theatre


"The Memory Theater" is a theater for memory. It concerns the possibilities of representation and compensation for the tragic adventure of humanity on Earth. Memories leaving marks on the mind are recollected so that they find the opportunity to be transformed and rewritten.


The Memory Theatre by Camillio

According to this fiction, people who lived in the past and sought solutions for understanding and justice are invited by imagination to the scene of memory. The performances in the exhibition brought together imaginary characters from the past, which allowed us to witness the moment where they stand face to face with the people of today.


New The Memory Theatre

Sculptures, augmented reality, and projections accompany the 3D component and decoration I made using a robot arm. The sculpture representing my childhood and the Caesar statue welcomes the audience at the entrance.

There are seven columns representing the Prophet Solomon's (known as Hikmet's father) seven commandments encouraging the wisdom that would result in decency. The arrangement of the columns is reminiscent of that of an amphitheater fiction.

The intertwined layers of dimensional consciousness perceived in time and space carry the human form of holographic perception and the whole dimension within us. The universal organism in our lower brain is about 4 million years old. Our memory is an archive handed down from generation to generation since the beginning of humanity.

If the power of DNA and RNA molecules are not controlled, they are potential dangers because if memory is not controlled by reason based on inquiry and reasoning, governing the self is pointless.

Based on works and footprints, it scrutinizes a consciousness capable of deciphering the truth, power, and violence addressed by people who lived hundreds of years ago and felt pain, thought, and fought for humanity. This journey opens the door to deep meaning, knowledge, and truth.

Today, we live in an environment provided by technology, so we can better understand ancient times. This way, we feed off the past to invent the next generation. For example, we can transform the projection and symbols of a form, which was assumed to be two-dimensional in the universe for millions of years, into multi-dimensional designs through artificial intelligence.   Carl Gustav Jung, an analytical psychologist, draws attention to the connection between the symbols of memory of the Earth and our fantasies. The earliest forms and ancient texts open up the doors of our reality to the magical planets of narrative, such as immigration, flying, dying, and dreaming, allowing us to wander through layers of time. Our ancestors, the deceased, and the ghosts, who are the former owners of the Earth, have been replaced by false images. Their works are what is left of them. Each image sinking into oblivion is a covered repository of experience, an archive of memory, and a cellar of feelings.

These works located in different layers of the Earth combine forms, symbols, and stories, and thus, allow us to connect to them like our nervous system or ivy covering the Earth. In his work Terra Nostra, Carlos Fuentes considers our land and the Earth a theater of humanity, where the same people take the stage in different disguises as the scene changes. The true-life experiences repeat themselves like a reincarnation of those who hold power, those who say "stop" to oppression, and those who order the massacres.
Life is like a cycle within a cycle, or a spiral of a dream in a dream, with the intertwined stories of the world of dreams, hopes, meaninglessness, and injustices.