evre:onarım // phase:repair

Until very recently, I had truly believed that “existence” as we know it would come to an end when the last human passed away and closed their eyes to the world. This surely is a very self-important, incalculably human-centered attitude; but just as much a visual centered one. It is apt to disregard worlds of other people, just as much as it renders animals, plants, stones existences meaningless. I try no longer to envisage ‘existence’ by placing the human or the eye in the center. It is never easy to disentangle from habits of years; of centuries… thankfully art does not abandon me in this effort of mine.

The history of art’s feud with the eye, is as old as the power of the eye. Even though it could be said to have reached its peak with Marcel Duchamp’s declaration of his opposition to retinal art, it is always possible to defeat the eye by various means in modernism’s agenda. In this struggle, the position of photography is highly critical. While the photographic device fosters eye-centrism with its claim to imitate the human vision, it also renders it possible to interfere with this mechanism and proves the possibility of an image beyond what the eye observes. We know based on this evidence and the result of various experiments on images, both in the field of photography and the breadth of picture, that seeing is a result of cultural premises just as much the laws of optics and human biology. Even the slightest change at any point in this network of relations is eloquently capable of creating a chain effect. Art frequently uses this opportunity. Questioning the visible may lead to questioning the eye, and interfering with the eye to the liberalization of the visible.

Görkem Ergün’s works collected under the title of “Phase: Repair” hybridizes the “nature” of men by playing with the “nature” of photography. The works that are formed subsequently with the artist’s interventions to the process of creating a photographic image, offer to the world the possibility of existing differently, even if to only a certain degree. The ambiguity created by this difference to the slightest degree is more than enough to provide momentarily spaces of freedom to the objects that Ergün has placed in front of the lens and/or has produced himself. Objects within this small range violate the distinction between natural and artificial by primarily rendering the process of their release ambiguous. As objects undergo metamorphosis, nature and culture are intertwined; the world is freed from its bipolar, taxonomic ominousness which doesn’t allow the blend of modern man. The world of objects in Ergün’s work detaches from its surface and disposes of the oppression of the eye.

What does a world free from the domination of the eye mean, how does it appear? Trying to answer this question brings along the search for alternatives to a human-centered existence. Humankind has been using the eye in order to get acquainted both with itself as well as with the world. When the search for the truth with the eye and the obsession with seeing the world distinctly and explicitly in this quest emerge with the motivation to prevent possible dangers that may occur in human life, the complex relations in the fabric of existence disintegrate their roots and evolve easily into a merciless, yet futile effort to establish strict boundaries which obstruct transitivity. The only concrete result to this futile effort is to incarcerate one’s self in between walls and to regard the rest of the world as an enemy. This self-aware man detached from the world assumes loneliness in an anxious state to be his intrinsic nature. He waits in loneliness for what he fears the most, the date of his death approaching closer and closer.

Ergün not only frees the objects in his photographs by releasing their images and by avoiding to create distinct and clear images of them, but enables concurrently the people who look at them to form different relationships with the world. These routes may appear dark and uncanny to those used to feeling safe only when everything is out in the clear, under the lights but Ergün’s world is not a dystopia ruled by death. Fearing shadows in which black and white intertwines is valid only for those who hide behind walls. “Phase: Repair” allows objects in the shadows to hybridize and to violate the distinction between natural and artificial, while also offering “subjects” who look at these objects, who are weary of loneliness, hiding and eager to step into the shadows in order to join life, the opportunity to be one with the world. When the eye loses its power, other sense organs come to the rescue. The imagination steps in to comprehend objects which avoid being seen, which the eye distinguishes but that logic cannot perceive.

In a period when various hybridizations appear everywhere; when the concepts of human nature, life are compelled inevitably; when we realize desperately that hiding behind walls may not be enough to avoid death, conceiving life as a communion between all organic/inorganic entities may be our only chance. In order to do this, we must first destroy the illusion of what we believe to be human nature. If one recognizes the world and themselves through images, intervening with these images may as well result in changing the manner in which man sees, knows and exists. “Phase:Repair” tries to fix our disrupted relationship with the world by corrupting mankind’s accomplice, the camera. It attempts to establish a world that avoids conflict and is in harmony not on the horizon, but here and now.

Text: Murat Alat