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Babylon Urban Gardens

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What do you mean by “urban gardening”?

When we say urban gardening, we mean exactly what is said. What we understand from words. The combination of urban and gardening.

Although urban gardening seems to be a recently popular concept, its history goes back a long way. Hanging Gardens of Babylon can be considered an important example of an urban garden in terms of constituting the first example of the roof garden. Hevsel Gardens, which lie on the banks of the Tigris river and next to the Diyarbakır Castle, are another important example of urban gardens, with a history dating back to seven thousand years, as well as continuing agriculture today. Of course, while talking about urban gardening, we can talk about thousands of years ago, but the history of modern cities is not that old. The transformation of cities into gigantic concrete and cement forests and the transformation of people into crowds of people living with the mechanical ticks of the clock, far from the fluid rhythm and natural cycles, in these concrete and cement piles, begins with the industrial revolution.

When we consider nowadays, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. The magnificent urban life, portrayed by the mass media and turned into a magical dream for the people living in the countryside, unfortunately, is far from the way they are portrayed. For most of the people living in cities, except for a small minority privileged economically and socially, it means a serious struggle to survive. Life becomes a pendulum swinging between these two extremes for people who work to meet their basic needs in order to survive. On the one hand, they work most of their time; on the other hand, they hope to take advantage of fast recreational vehicles or the ancient teachings of Eastern cultures to get away from the stress they experience while working in their remaining time. Unfortunately, most people do not have the opportunity to make an effort beyond being swept from one end to the other until the moment of death, while the pendulum swings in the chaos of life. When viewed from the outside, cities seem like an ocean of endless opportunities; however, they cannot go beyond an offering of human life whose boundaries are defined and bordered by angled lines for the people living in them.

I think we can think of urban gardening as an effort to contact nature and its fluid rhythm within the very center of cities in which we are isolated by the mechanical life the city obliges us to live.

When and how did you start this project of “urban gardening”?

The pursuit of urban gardening started for me after a long period of depression when I did not want to engage in any sphere of life and life itself became meaningless. The period I mentioned was a period when I had no desire for life, and had a very poor appetite for life. I could not feel the slightest urge to make an effort, let alone try to get out of this mood. I was also aware that I could not go on with that mood any longer.

I started working as a waiter in a café with the support of a friend and with the suggestion that it would be good to have an occupation. My time had become a little more flowable but working in a cafe didn’t make much difference in my mood. Another friend of mine that I encountered in the same period suggested renting a house together and our search for a house started. Fortunately, the idea of ​​urban gardening came into being spontaneously when he found a flat with a terrace suitable for dealing with gardening.

Actually, my engagement in urban gardening started as a result of many coincidences for me. I thought that the feeling of being stuck after two years of being draft dogger for compulsory military service also contributed to my depressed mood. Accordingly, during the time we rent the flat, I thought that being a student again would make my life a little easier in terms of not only delaying compulsory military service issues legally but also making it simpler to answer the question “what are you doing?” as “I am a student” instead of faltering. So, I intended to do my master’s degree. Then I started applying to many different departments without a specific target about its focus. During this application process, I learned that there is a department called “garden plants” or “horticulture” and then I canceled all my other applications and focused on the Horticulture department. Gardening, both a vital occupation and an academic pursuit, came into my life this way two and a half years ago.

Which intentions and purposes did lead you to start urban gardening?

Getting out of the depressing cycles of cities and establishing a life in the countryside is getting more and more on people’s agenda. The situation is similar for me and the people around me. For many years, we have been talking about what kind of life we ​​dream of and where. Although some of us have taken small steps for this, for most of us, these conversations are a declaration of intent for the future or the sharing of a dream that starts with “oh I wish …”. It seems that the search for a life away from the cities will become more widespread, especially for people who are deprived of the social opportunities offered by the cities due to the effect of the pandemic. However, it would be very optimistic to think that there will be a significant decrease in the population of the city in the near future as a result of this search, and even a decrease in the rate of increase.

Industrialization and urbanization continue at full speed. Nevertheless, I do not think that the lives of small and large communities in rural areas alone will be sufficient to change this course. From what I have said, it should not be understood that I consider the efforts of people who have devoted their entire lives to the search and construction of an alternative life in the countryside to be worthless, on the contrary, I consider it very valuable but not enough. If we want to deviate from the ecological apocalypse route that we are heading at full speed, this will only happen through the social, cultural, and economic paradigm breaks we will create in the flow of urban life. People migrating from the city to the countryside and establishing self-sufficient lives there is just one of these breaks. What drove me to urban gardening is the question “is it possible to create another break in the mechanical rhythm of urban life within the city?”.

What kind of reactions did you receive from your social circles? Do you have people you work with?

One of the biggest benefits of this process for me was that it brought a new dimension to our relationship with my mother, we developed a master-apprentice relationship. For many years, my mother tried to create a garden within her limited means wherever she lived. She used to grow tomatoes and peppers in charcoal sacks, and greens in ice cream pots. Every time I went home, some fresh tomatoes and strawberries she kept waiting for me would be ready for sure. But since I did not have any interest in gardening at that time, I stayed quite far from my mother’s pursuit. When I intended to set up a garden myself, this distant stance became a great regret about the past. I think that the most valuable knowledge about plants in particular comes from experience, and I’m sorry that I missed some of the opportunity to benefit from my mother’s experience, which is a treasure in this respect.

At the beginning of spring, we worked with my mother during the establishment of the garden. More precisely, I apprenticed my mother. In addition to the experience I got from my mother, it was also so much fun to deal with the garden day and night for a week -there were not many activities that we have been doing together as a mother and child for years.

As a habit from my university student years, I pursue any occupation with other people through a collective structure. For this reason, I had the intention to bring a collective structure to urban gardening through a formation called Babylon Urban Gardens. But I cannot say that I have made much progress in this area yet. Babylon Urban Gardens continues to exist as an intention for the time being.

Although there is no one with whom we have been working on this endeavor together at the moment, many people have helped and continue to do so in many stages. Especially in the process of preparing the garden for spring, we worked together with many different people, such as moving soil, planting seeds, and changing pots. In the last two years, most of my time has started spent for gardening, especially when the spring period approaches. At that time, my friends, who stopped by or called me, suddenly find themselves carrying soil from the other end of the sack or preparing the pots for planting seeds.

Let's talk a little bit about the process. What did you hope for, what have you found?

As I mentioned before, the search for ecological life is widespread in cities. There are people working on this issue through various community gardens, organizations, and associations. I had hoped that we could build wider partnerships with people who agreed on this quest, but such a process has not started yet. Of course, considering that the last year has passed in the atmosphere of a pandemic, the fact that these partnerships have not been established does not create despair for the future.

What are your plans to proceed with this initiative in the future? Can you tell us about your road map?

I think it would be more correct to talk about two different road maps at this point. Personally, I want to gain a structure that will have a financial return in order to continue and develop this occupation. While setting up Babylon Urban Gardens, we also had the following idea. For people who have an interest and space to engage in gardening on their balconies, terraces, or gardens, but could not start doing because they did not have the time or because they could not take the first step, we can create gardening designs according to their own desired space and desired plants. The idea is to set up these gardens as much as possible with practical tools such as the drip irrigation system to make its continuation easier and to encourage people to start urban gardening and then continue their activities on their own through a short training on the care of plants that we will provide.

Another intention is to build an organization that will carry out more comprehensive studies and initiatives on urban gardening together with people seeking to create an ecological life in the city. I think that an institutional structure such as a cooperative will increase its acceptance as an addressee by institutions and organizations that carry out studies on this issue or support such efforts, and that it can be carried out more easily with or with the support of these institutions and organizations in order to spread urban gardening.

What are your dreams about urban gardening? How do you imagine urban gardening will look like in the future?

I think we have stepped into a limitless world when it comes to the imagination; therefore, it is quite enjoyable to imagine cities that are self-sufficient from the smallest scale to the largest, although I do not know how much it is possible. Wouldn’t it be super nice that the neighborhoods are self-sufficient in terms of certain vegetables where each apartment building meets its needs to some extent on its own roof or garden, the community gardens be established on empty lands, and hydroponic vertical farming gardens be established in abandoned and empty buildings, and also, with the integration of rural settlements around the city to live in a world surrounded by the barter networks to be established between cities that can meet their needs in terms of certain vegetables and settlements of different scales?

The pandemic actually showed us the fragility of the system we live in starkly. As people living in cities, we are desperate in the face of any problems in production or logistics.

What have you learned from your mistakes so far? What are your recommendations for beginners?

My biggest mistake, or more precisely, my deficiency was not planning well for the garden I was planning to set up before spring. Because each plant has different characteristics in terms of both the desired conditions and the rate of growth. It can be a serious problem to try to deal with many kinds of plants without investigating in detail like which plant will develop well in what kind of soil depth, and whether it likes sun or shade. So, my suggestion, especially for beginners, is to prefer specific plants that they can research on their growing conditions rather than trying to grow a lot of plants or start with easy-to-grow plants such as dill, and onion and then gradually expand their gardens.

What does urban gardening tell us when it is approached politically?

Perhaps the best statement to explain what urban gardening means politically is Deleuze’s saying “Life becomes resistance to power when power takes life as its object.”. While our lives in cities are to be shaped by many different power techniques, I think that the effort to create an alternative life outside of the lives we are offered or compelled to, and any intervention to the mechanical rhythm of urban life is highly political.

It is obvious that the increase in agricultural production within cities, lacking the ability to survive without the products produced outside of it, and the decrease in external dependence of cities is a liberating situation for individuals living in cities. In addition, it is out of the question that the relationship and acculturation between individuals with reduced external dependence will be very different from now.

Yaşar Ergin Demirhan

Interview: İlkin Taşdelen

Translation: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

ERKEKLER // the Carnist Method of Art-Making

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So me and my friends made a short film.

In total, it took about fifty-five days of pre-production, five days of proper production and roughly fifteen days of post-production. Not all of these days fully consisted of billable work hours. The writing started in late April. The actual act of writing itself took more or less two hours. At the end of those solitary two hours, there was a first draft. The following few days were spent editing the text, which produced the second draft, which in turn was oxidised immediately by being shared with people. Their opinions led to the third draft. 

(more…)

İsmail Türküsev and a Quick Guideline of Comedy

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We’re at İsmail’s place in Moda. The month of June is about to be over. Istanbul has surrendered to its swampy heat. The night before, we’ve watched Euro 2020’s best night of football with İsmail. One hour later, İsmail will leave the house and go to the shooting of the podcast he does for Socrates Dergi. I open my laptop. Run the recording software. “İsmail”, I say, “come, let’s get the interview out of the way”. This is the level of familiarity one has with each other after six years of friendship.

İsmail Türküsev is a comedian and a digital content creator. I intend to chat with him about it. The Dolmus squad has given me some questions and I have some more in my head. I open with the first one that falls down to my mouth. Is İsmail happy with the definition of his job? Does the term “comedian” fully encapsulate what he does?

“Comedian encapsulates it very much so, actually” says İsmail, “but the term itself doesn’t have an equivalence in the public eye. When you say you’re a comedian, people are like ‘Okay, but what else are you doing? Like I also fish but that’s not the first thing I say.’ ”

Of course, when you’re interviewing a comedian you have to accept finding some jokes in the answers you get. I invite İsmail back to seriousness. İsmail is talking about a reaction specific to Turkey here. He’s saying that being a comedian is not taken seriously as an occupation in the country. As a follow-up I ask him whether or not that has changed.

“Of course, it’s been changing for a while.” answers İsmail, “I’ve kind of entered into it in its golden years, while it’s on the rise.”

This is exactly the assist I’m looking for because I’d been meaning to ask İsmail how he got his start. So I do. The conversation keeps flowing without breaking its course.

“Apparently I’d been doing comedy for years in different mediums. Actually I started on radio.” he says. İsmail’s talking about the popular comedy show O Tarz Mı here. O Tarz Mı had started its life on radio in 2015, with the crew of Can Bonomo, Can Temiz and İsmail Türküsev.

“All three of us were already friends and we managed to pull off that thing everybody talks about in between themselves, which is ‘how great would it be if we could put our conversations on the radio.” says İsmail as he’s describing those days, “but because there was somebody who does it in our group, meaning, not just because he does radio but because he does things in general; Can Bonomo did and led us to do as well.”

O Tarz Mı, after starting its life as a radio show; switches to digital platforms and becomes Turkey’s most popular podcast show for long years. İsmail interestingly states that this wasn’t something the O Tarz Mı squad actually followed up on.

“We were pioneers in the podcast world without estimating to do so.” he says, “Because we switched to the digital fast, because we were young and radio was entering into a different conjecture what with the selling of Rock FM and stuff. Then with the rise of Spotify, we started to put our stuff there and for a while we weren’t aware that there was a podcast category there and we were leading it.”

That’s why O Tarz Mı is a turning point in İsmail’s life. He was working in advertising as a copywriter before, and with this; he switches to performance arts.  

“Yes, blood dropped on the wolf’s tooth” explains İsmail, using an amazing Turkish idiom. Specifically, he’s talking about O Tarz Mı’s first live performance. “In our third or fourth year we staged O Tarz Mı Live in IF Beşiktaş and 1500 people showed up. We performed O Tarz Mı in front of 1500 people and my role in the show was more or less the guy who makes reckless jokes. And 1500 people laughing to the things I said deeply impressed me. It was incredibly different to imagine and hear the collective laughter of 1500 people.”

When İsmail says that, I think to the recently released Friends Reunion episode when the actor Matthew Perry said that when the jokes he performed didn’t do well with the live audience Friends was filmed in front of, he was filled with great anxiety and only felt a sense of completeness when he received laughs. I remind this to İsmail and ask: Is seeking laughter a form of validation?

İsmail laughs and answers: “No I received plenty of love growing up, it has nothing to do with that”. İsmail generally seeks laughter in life, it’s his disposition. The opposite side of what Matthew Perry was talking about, which is the anxiety a performer feels when their jokes don’t land, is a shield the comedian should develop early.

“I knew that 3-4 jokes going badly shouldn’t stop me from trying out the other 7-8” says İsmail, “and I think I was in a good place percentage-wise. When you’re making people laugh in 6-7 of your jokes, you burn 2-3 of them. If people are tolerating it, you become convinced that it is in general tolerable.”

Then we’ve got to talk jokes. We’ve got to talk about what a joke is. I start the conversation by asking if İsmail had followed the work of any comedians before. He responds by saying that he watches the classics, the famous ones. I ask him if he reviewed those works with a new eye after he started performing. “Of course” he says. Then what’s different about a standup show when you’re watching it as a performer?

“The empathy about what that person thinks when they say something becomes very strong. Because you inevitably put yourself in the performer’s place and see why they did that, what that action serves next and what they’ll transition into.”

So İsmail sees the ropes. Which is to say that he understands how much of a construct a standup is.

“Very much so. There’s that duality anyway. How good it is directly relates to how loose and improvised it feels and in order for it to feel that way it needs to be that much coherent and planned. Sometimes the comedian doesn’t trust their joke and immediately go like ‘so that was a joke I had’ or something. That breaks reality in terms of the audience. The audience then feels tense because they feel like something is being done to them. But the ideal is the feeling of doing something together. There’s engineering here, a schematic which turns feelings into reality.”

But it’s tough to make people forget that obvious power, because as Jerry Seinfeld correctly pointed out there’s only one person talking in a standup show. Everybody else is quiet. İsmail feels that this is what makes the performer – audience relationship special.

“In order for the audience not to turn on you you always have to be welded alongisde them and at the same time draw the lines of authority kindly yet firmly, otherwise you understand the audience is not always your friend.”

When is the audience your friend?

“When you make them laugh. So much so that if you make them laugh they’ll support you in anything you say. When you don’t believe what you say, they won’t, you all won’t laugh and then they will question the interior of the things you say.”

It is of course a weird dynamic to be on stage and to be the only person on stage, which reminds me of another part of this that I find weird. İsmail is somewhere between the underground and the mainstream, which means that he performs in polished stages like Zorlu PSM and BKM and bars like Aylak at the same time. On one hand, a comedian that stands elevated from the audience an on the other hand, a drinking environment. I ask him about the difference between the two.

“The higher the stage goes, the higher the expectation goes. For example I was very nervous in this beautiful theatre stage called Sahne Beşiktaş. Because we were very high up, there was this big stage light and the stage itself was huge. And the hall had a theatre setup and in that setup the audience acts like they’re watching a play. They don’t feel very involved. Because you know how laughter is also participation? It minimizes participation. On the other hand in bars and places where the audience – performer distinction is blurred people are much more relaxed. But that’s only possible in underground standup. The other is something else.”

Which brings the topic to the usage of that stage. We chat about how other performes fill the stage. Because İsmail prefers standup performances that rely on speech, he feels the types of performances -like the one Bo Burnham does- that rely on light, shadow and music shows is far from being pure standup. He follows the example of Cem Yılmaz and Dave Chapelle who fills the stage with pantomime or horizontal movement and expresses that these are advanced skills in this branch of performance.

“I get worried about who I’m telling my jokes to when there are three angles.” he says honestly, “They do it 360 degrees. For example let’s take Cem Yılmaz, how many floors does the place at his show have? He tells some of his jokes to the balcony, turns light, turns left. You’re so in control of your text and your performance that then you’re able to turn around and control the environment. I haven’t yet mastered my speech in order to be able to perform it the same way in all the environments, that’s another level.”

When the conversation comes to text, I ask him about his writing process. He says everything, including improvisational breaks and interactive parts are written down.

“Where I’ll improvise is set. I will improvise there if something comes up, if not, I’ll move on to the next one. The interactive parts are set.” he says, but adds: “Of course there’s a unique feel to each performance. The hecklers, people who react differently etc. Sometimes the joke feels different because I said it differently and then I take it and use on my next show.”

Then the jokes have a lifespan. They are born, they grow up, they change. Do they die?

“For example let’s say I write a joke and realize that joke became a hit, it always draws a laugh and it always works. I do that for a while, because it makes me laugh. It’s hard to talk about something as if it’s entertaining if it’s not entertaining you anyway. That joke is an instrument, so you start making that joke better the more you make it. When you stop being better about it, the joke sort of peaks and after that peak the possibility of you discovering something new about that joke is finished. When that’s finished, it stops exciting me. When that happens the joke dies.”

When İsmail says that I’m reminded of Louis CK, then simultaneously alt-J’s oath-like songlet Ripe & Ruin. Like the balance of life, the lifespan of jokes resembles good fruit. There’s ripe. There’s ruin. We talk about the pandemic in regards to that. Just at the beginning of his comedy career, just as he made the jump from a full-time job into his dream; the pandemic came and put him under terrible financial and emotional strain. We talk about this. İsmail had spent this period writing, believing he’ll return one day. And after a year anda half, in the summer of 2021 in which these lines are being written; he’s slowly returning to stage. I ask him if he’s noticed anything different.

“There’s something sikko about it” he says laughingly, invoking the unique Turkish word ‘sikko’ to explaing that there’s something amiss and not all there. “Not just with me, there’s something sikko in the entire world. Everybody’s laughing but they’re laughing nervously. That nervousness spills over to us. I’m sure it spills over to the grocer too.”

I have a different idea about this topic. I’m reminded of the recent research I carried out on the history of the bikini. There a historian talking about the topic, who says that there’s a common ground in the fact that after WW1 women abandoned their corsets and after WW2 they cut their bathing suits; which is to say that there was a celebration of body and joy after moments of big crises. I ask İsmail about it, telling him that I expect such a reaction post-COVID. Is that summer this summer?

“I don’t know, I feel this summer will be about recovery. Because people have been hurt a lot, I don’t know if we’re at the point of throwing away the bottom part of the bikini. Maybe next summer. At some point a discharge like that must happen.” he says. Then perhaps because he said that or perhaps because conversation opens conversation, he shares an observation he made in one of the open mic sessions he participated in recently after the pandemic. 

“I see a lot of young people in these open mic sessions. They’re incredibly offensive. They spit poision. I don’t know if that’s going to bring about a comedic revolution or if they’re going to fuck us all. Young guys don’t know of course, but I for example had to give up some of my jokes six months ago because of external pressure. There have been people who were jailed, who were lynched, whose lives were turned upside down. If the youth come like the flood and break down the barriers maybe it’ll be a light of hope for us.”

I throw myself out to the streets of İstanbul filled with police barriers because of the Pride walk the day before. The weather’s dirty and swampy. The weather’s filled with a weird smell of hope. People’s faces aren’t smiling, because perhaps this summer is not that summer indeed. But there’s a summer ahead. Me and all the people who are trying to crawl under a year-and-a-half-long pandemic know this. The youth or the people who feel young, doesn’t matter. Somebody needs to turn into a flood and break all these barriers.

I arrive at the destination where I’m supposed to meet İsmail again. I take out my computer and sit down. İstanbul’s dirty. İstanbul’s swampy. İstanbul’s streets are filled with barriers and İstanbul’s stages are waiting for all the raindrops that will turn into a flood and wash over all of these things.

Aesthetics are the only requirement. Everything else is permitted. 


Interview: Yiğitcan Erdoğan

Translation: Yiğitcan Erdoğan

MOKOROS: a Social Initiative in the Field of Education

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  • How would you introduce this project to someone who is not yet aware of the Mokoros Project?

Mokoros is an R&D and social enterprise project, that does not require any instructors, to produce fun and accessible learning tools founded by some friends came together. It aims to provide the information people need, especially for the topics that can create public benefit such as ecology, gender equality, in a way they can learn by themselves within the framework of equal opportunity. We plan to do this by producing games, videos, interactive media tools, learning programs and materials, and experience areas.

www.mokoros.com

  • What kind of problems, needs, goals, concerns, affections, motives did you have in the beginning and construction process of this project? What were the main motivations to start Mokoros Project?

We have been thinking about learning processes and styles for a while. Alternative learning methods to formal education caught our attention. Especially we saw that non-hierarchical and participatory-oriented trainings are very valuable and non-formal learning methods are very remarkable and useful. Moreover, we realized that learning from peers without a direct learning purpose is also a good resource. At this point, problems arise about accessibility and equal opportunities. These kind of trainings are very limited and only few people can benefit from them. We want to spread these trainings so that people can learn by themselves or from their peers. In this way, we want to create resources that anyone could tap in and benefit from.

  • What kind of problems did you encounter until this point? And what processes did you experience and what kind of solutions did you develop to overcome them?

Every work we do as Mokoros is also a learning experience for us. In every project we do, we try to find creative solutions by doing various research to deal with different problems. Until now, we have completed a fairy tale themed pictured book making game called Binbir Kare (1001 squares). We had some problems with establishing the rules for the game. Yet, as the project progressed we have made simplifications and solved the problem. Then we made the Mokoros Calendar with the support of Sivil Düşün(an NGO). We have ended up with a calendar that the dimensions and content were too large. For our future endeavours in calendar design, we will pay close attention to this issue as we had experienced difficulties with its printing and distribution. We managed to overcome these both by developing our network and with the support of volunteers. We designed a game for DRC called “Space Fiction”. This was supposed to provide a wide range of age groups with a learning experience in science and technology. That’s why we had to do a lot of research in a short time ourselves. We are currently dealing with an animation project that supports children in creative artistic productions. We again move forward by solving the problems and learning through experience in this regard.

  • What have you found on the road until the project reached this point? What do you hope to find for the future?

In a sense, we see ourselves as a research and development company. That’s why we learn new things in every new task. We encounter a lot of people who support us in our every project. It encourages us and boosts our enthusiasm by a great amount that people voluntarily support us. We have received very positive feedback about the work we did so far. We look forward to present accessible learning tools to our users in every field we can, by improving our communication and establishing partnerships with different stakeholders in the future.

  • What kind of interactions did the magazine project  and its process create in your close circle? What kind of reactions did you get?

Our close friends supported us in every aspect during this process. We always go for their opinion first about every task we do. Afterwards, they also give their support to us for the content, mechanics, testing, creating relationships, distribution and extension. Again, I would like to thank our friends and volunteers who supported us.

  • In what direction do you want to advance Mokoros in the future? What goals do you have?

We want Mokoros to continue to work on this vision with many stakeholders in many different fields. We want to be beneficial to the society in equality of opportunity in education, accessibility and quality of education. We want to produce tools that enable people to have a learning experience without instructors about issues that create public benefit.

  • Do you have any calls for solidarity regarding specific project challenges?

We want to increase our relations with our volunteers. We especially need the support of volunteers to improve Mokoros. That’s why we plan to create a learning community composed of volunteers and us. We plan to call this in 2021. We would be very happy if anyone would like to show solidarity with us about this.

  • Any last words?

If you review our website and follow us on our social media accounts, we would be very happy.

Interviewer: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Translated from the Turkish original by Tevfik Hürkan Urhan 

Her Absence Fill the World – Inside, Outside

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It is a rebel. It is a crisis. It is a sad resistance.

KUBI
  • Can you describe the main components of your aesthetics you have been constructing through your music? What kind of artistic, cultural, and social inputs have fed your music so far and constructed “Her Absence Fiil the World”?

Kubi: For me, “Her Absence Fill the World” is an intuitive outpouring gathering whole our past experiences, attempts, failures and orientations. It is a project merging our diverse transnational roots, aesthetics and ideologies.

It is a rebel. It is a crisis. It is a sad resistance.

Sascha: There’s nothing I would add since this is so beautifully said. Maybe that I like the idea that it is somehow shaped by all my past selves. I can discover so many memories of myself in the music which comes out – sometimes I’m surprised. Also because I don’t always want them to be part. I don’t know if this is about shame. It’s really intimate and makes me sometimes feel vulnerable when passed identities of mine come to light – and since we make music together it’s sometimes really hard to discuss them and for them to be seen. But I feel it is important to accept also parts of ourselves we don’t like. I do not mean to like them and to feel positive about them. But to build the strength not to hide them because they’re part of the mosaic we call identity.

Photo Credit: Emrah Özdemir
  • How is your journey going so far? What have you found on the way? 

Sascha: In my opinion our journey is going like the best journeys are – a journey to Ithaka. I found a lot of joy, a lot of pain. Some pride and insecurities and I don’t know where exactly this will lead to. For me it feels like growing constantly and of course that is not always a good feeling. But somehow we try to release our emotions to music and for that the result is always precious for me. 

  • It seems you benefit and use inputs from many genres. How do you prefer to address your music in terms of genres?

Sascha: I would address our music generally as post-punk. It’s not that easy, I feel we’re still shaping our style – or maybe it is just shaped by itself depending of what comes out of us. But I can identify mostly with that. I guess the real categorization to a genre can just be made after we produced everything we’ll ever produce. 

Photo Credit: Emrah Özdemir
  • Why now?

If Not Now – Tracy Chapman

If not now, then when?

If not today,

Then, why make your promises?

A love declared for days to come,

Is as good as none.

You can wait ’til morning comes.

You can wait for the new day.

You can wait and lose this heart.

You can wait and soon be sorry.

If not now, then when?

If not today,

Then, why make your promises?

A love declared for days to come,

Is as good as none.

Now love’s the only thing that’s free.

We must take it where it’s found.

Pretty soon it may be costly.

‘Cause if not now, then when?

If not…

  • What do you expect to find in the future?

We are constantly playing with ideas. There are some couple of tunes that we feel like sharing yet we don’t know if we go with singles or shares as a whole in a label.

Interview by Tevfik Hürkan Urhan 

Digital Art Revolution: Balkan Karışman on NFTs

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How would you describe your work to someone who is not familiar?


By using real images and manipulating them, I produce a kind of work called “generative video art”. This approach, also called “Generative”, enables random selections from infinite results. In this way, I can reach the final state of the work by screening, which makes the process more exciting for me. In this sense, we can call my works “digital new media visuals based on trial and error”.

Can you share with us the main motives that are effective in the editing and construction process of your works?


I think this method I use serves my content well. My art can be considered postmodern in terms of technique and medium. My design aesthetic is influenced by de-constructivist architecture, glitch art, and op-art. Regarding the content and main motives of my art, I make spatial manipulations that can trigger discussions on the idea of ​​infinity, and then I want to question our perception of time. Although we perceive otherwise, time has no beginning or end. Time is looped and endless, just like in my video art. My works go round and round in cyclical order, regardless of the presence of the audience. This consciously chosen approach helps me convey my art by just constantly reinterpreting the continuous ordinaries rather than being declarative. In this sense, the works of art can be pieces that exist on their own.

What is NFT and how does it work?

Non-Fungible Token (NFT), in its shortest definition, is a unique digital asset. In a sense, we can think of NFT’s as validating images, music, data, web pages, 3D objects, and similar data on the blockchain with smart contracts. In this sense, we can see a similarity between NFTs and collectors’ items. I liken them to the pokemon cards I used to love. There is data describing the features of the card on it, it has a visual. The card has no fixed monetary value and can change hands from person to person.

What role do you think NFT will play in the next generation of “collecting”?

NFT platforms create a more liberal market for collectors, making it easier for both the collector to reach the artist and the artist to the collector. It removes the local boundaries of artists and allows them to meet with other artists from many different parts of the world in common selections. In this way, I think it ensures that the collections are in diversity.

What are the reasons behind you preferring this platform as an artist?

The reason why I prefer digital art platforms and NFT as an artist is equal opportunity, I think this reason is common for most young artists like me. While the meeting of artists with their collectors in the conventional art market requires intermediary institutions; NFT digital art platforms can eliminate these bureaucratic stages and bring the artist together with the audience in the fastest way possible. This provides the opportunity for talented artists who are just starting out and who have not yet made their name to be heard, to show their work in a global way.

What kind of problems did you encounter with both your art and the NFT platform? What methods have you developed to overcome these problems?

The first surprise, especially for new beginner artists, will be transaction fees. When I researched why these transaction fees were given beyond the financial aspect of the work, I found that these fees were paid to crypto miners and that these miners were spending a lot of electricity by using powerful computers. This problem both made my conscience hurt and made me question the ecological effects of the existence of the system. Fortunately, not every network is harmful to the environment, and it doesn’t come with transaction fees. I’m trying to work with more such platforms.


What did you find on the way to this point? What do you hope to find for the future?


Until I got to this point in my NFT process, I still have a long way to go tho, though I’ve found that the art I make attracts, arouses curiosity, and is appreciated by people from different parts of the world with very different tastes and collections. I also witnessed the creation of an art community through digital art platforms. The digitalized artistic activity also enables global collaborations. NFTs are preparing our place in the virtual reality and game worlds, where we will be much more intertwined in the future. I believe that NFTs, the most talked about event in the art scene, will appear in many more areas that we cannot predict for now, and I look forward to where these areas will take us.

What have you learned from your mistakes so far? What advice do you have for those just starting out?

When I first entered the platforms, I had a hard time positioning myself as I was unsure of the asset and economic value of my work. It took some time to get used to this system, which does not work as in the art scene in Turkey. Retrospectively, I realize that I hurried up to sell my first works due to the excitement created by this new trend. But at the moment, I believe these processes should not be rushed and artists should be patient. I recommend to beginners that they should think about why and how they want to exist in this field, and not let the record sales shared on social media affect them emotionally.

Language of Stones

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Naomi Takaki

One day, while hiking in the Alps I began to notice the stones beneath my feet. 

The contrast between the shimmery black granite and the white limestone, their irregular shapes, the simplicity of its’ beauty and the complexity of their origin fascinated me. Each stone a small part of the enormous mountain range spread out into the distance. I found these remnants of such natural grandeur awe-inspiring and I was filled with new reverence and inspiration.

 

They are the memories, the thoughts, tiny recollections of the mountains’ history; the plates violently colliding beneath, the reckoning of an ice age, the powerful gracefulness of its formation, fully alive.

Yet it is just a stone…

But a stone that gives me a vision to express its’ spirit, its’ fragmented memories and the impressions I received when I was hiking on that mountain.

Naomi Takaki

Permaculture: a Pathway to a Sustainable Future

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Permaculture is a word we’ve heard a lot lately. How would you describe permaculture to someone who is just starting to get interested in this topic?

According to the most general definition I heard from my dear teacher Murat Onuk, I can say “ethics-based, sustainable human settlements design science”.

When and for what purpose did your interest in permaculture begin? What was the reaction of your close social circle?

I don’t think I have a clear answer to the question of when my interest in permaculture had started. I can find some traces of permaculture in my earliest memory of my life. If you ask when I heard that there was such a thing as permaculture and when I said “oh, this is it!”, I would say 2016 is the year. In this period, my perspective and the way I relate to my dreams started to radically transform thanks to my dear friends who came into my life. Of course, in retrospect, I realize that this is very blissful. I think that an anger had accumulated inside me against the life I live in, the world, the system we live in. I was in a period in which I sensed that there was something wrong and I was not satisfied with my lifestyle. I had deep concerns about the world, about being alive. As I walked on streets, I used to think that everyone was crazy and how they lived in the city without oxygen and water. However, I had little idea about what to do or what kind of world I wanted to live in or maybe I had no energy to think on this. At such a stage of my life, I met my dear friends and learned about the existence of permaculture from them. I saw “Zone 0” as myself and dreamed of a spacious, happy, and central life.

Apart from my personal transformation, I was faced with a serious problem of the climate crisis that transformed all parts of the world. It is a very shortcut to get stuck and despairing about this issue, and at that time I was closer to such a point. Alternatively, there is a reality in which there are colorful and endless possibilities. Permaculture can be water in the desert at this point.

Bill Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, has a sentence that I love very much: “Though the problems of the world are increasingly complex, the solutions remain embarrassingly simple.”

What is this “Zone 0”?

We do “zone analysis” in order to use energy efficiently in design. We can think of zones as intertwined circles. Zone 0 means the regions we are in mostly and where daily work is the most intense. Like our home. According to our scaling, the last circle, zone 5, is mother nature itself or our universe that is determined as the area in which we develop, live and explore. So, it is a journey from zone 0 to zone 5.

A great start! So, what are the principles and practical areas of permaculture? Could you briefly mention?

Permaculture is based on the life ethic of respecting and caring for everything, living and non-living, just because they exist. There are three basic principles of permaculture on this;

“care for the world”, “care for people”, “employ the leftover”

Permaculture has a claim “We can provide the entire food stock needed by all people in the world by using only 4% of the cultivated areas we currently use, and leave the remaining 96% to forestry and nature to repair itself.” In order for this to be actualized, we need to establish the right relationships. Permaculture also explores how this will happen. We learn this from the nature, which includes everything in it, as we learn all the life itself. Permaculture design is based on patterning. Recently, I am in a process where I am intensely trying to grasp the patterns where I am looking into.

When you say what are the practical areas of permaculture, I want to say everywhere and every moment, but  with the concern that it may be very abstract and incomprehensible, I would like to draw attention to David Holmgren’s “Permaculture Flower”. Each component in the flower can be functionalized in practice entirely depending on our creativity and how we want to live within the concept.

Permaculture Flower is adapted from Jonathan Woolson’s drawing, modified from David Holmgren. Each petal shows a basic human need.

What does permaculture mean to you in city life? How do we make this concept a part of our daily life?

I think “zone 0” is yourself, permaculture starts to settle in every area of ​​your life. A serious waste is generated in the cities we live in, at the same time, these wastes have the potential to turn into considerable resources. For this reason, I dream of being able to act together with institutions and municipalities and transform city life from within. Ankara Development Agency’s (Ankara Kalkınma Ajansı) studies and projects on this subject continue. In recent months, we attended the “Introduction to Permaculture Training” presented by Taner Aksel with Sevecen. We talked about “what can be done to improve our cities” and talked about the support we can offer. The development and proliferation of permaculture works fill me with hope.

I believe that it is very valuable to live in cities with as little waste as possible, recycled and upcycled. There are compost applications that can be done easily in apartments. In this way, it is possible to turn food waste into humus soil, so you have a wonderful soil and you feel good. Some kind of a way of connecting to the planet, I think. Apart from that, there are very good organizations. Getting together and collaborating with people is both easy and important in cities. It opens up a space where you can be a derivativer instead of a consumer. In food purchases, it can be bought directly from the producers as much as possible. When you change your food preferences, you can really feel the bodily change directly. In fact, there are so many methods of this practice when you decide to care for everything, living and non-living, you find yourself in endless options with creativity stripped of all theories.

Based on your theoretical and practical background related to the subject, what are you doing and what do you plan to do in the future?

We make “bokashi compost” at home and consume as little packaged food as possible. We strive to transform our shopping preferences in ways that I believe more connected to social networks and healthier. We make washing machine detergent and cleaning vinegar. I use vinegar, baking soda and sometimes soft soap for cleaning. I think the perfect trio is the solution for everything. I have learned it is possible to make soft soap at home from waste oils. We will try it soon. I use soap in the bathroom and vinegar as hair conditioner is great. İlkin and Sevecen care about me in terms of cream and fragrance because they make perfumes and creams. I use EcoFont Vera Sans when printing even in the office and I use less ink. These are the first things I can remember.

Nowadays, the desire to do a permaculture internship is very vivid for me, I want to come together with the people who spend effort for this and may increase my knowledge. Essen has some projects carried out for years in Izmir. They are trying to create a permaculture garden on their land in Foça. I want to create some time and help them because they have a lot of practical experience that I can learn from.

On the other hand, we intend to create a permaculture-based garden in the front garden of Hamleci Mansion. In the recent past, we have started to take concrete steps regarding our ideas. Our soil analysis has arrived and we will soon have the well water analyzed. Our ideas, sprouting over the years, are beginning to deepen their roots. I am at peace.

What have you learned from your mistakes until today? What are your recommendations for the beginners?

I suffered from my tendency to be pessimistic and looking from a limited perspective. I learned how valuable it is to be hopeful and to be aware that the problem contains the solution. I understood the importance of taking care of each other and saw what we can achieve in cooperation.

There are very nice tutorials, videos, resources and they are increasing day by day. In fact, everything starts with increasing individual and environmental awareness as well as connecting with each other and with ourselves. Thus, our way of handling of the world becomes fun, constructive and sustainable.

Ayşe Yayla

Interviewer: İlkin Taşdelen

Translation from Turkish: Tevfik Hürkan Urhan

Let’s Go to Cappadocia: Hamleci Mansion, its History, Evolution and Influence

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If Ayrancı is a shining spot on our inner world maps, Hamleci Mansion in Ürgüp is one of these luminous spots. For many of us, all these spots are the places where the feeling of being a community and the taste of being together penetrate our minds and hearts. While these vibes are transformed into Ayrancı-Neukölln Dolmuş magazine, we continue our journey to Cappadocia and then to our stop in Ürgüp, Hamleci Mansion. In this article, we want to try to explain how Hamleci Mansion has come to this day and where it goes. So, we want to go on a mini journey together.

Ürgüp is a place where the fabulous nature of Cappadocia survives, and the mansion is a place where the historical traces of the region can be followed. The famous fairy chimneys were constructed by wind and water giving shape to the texture formed by the drying of the waters in the history of active volcanoes. This geography, where different societies and cultures live, gives the feeling of an open-air museum that we can visit and see even now. Cappadocia, which Assyrians call “Katpatuka” and means “the Land of Beautiful Horses” in Persian language, is referred as the land of fairies according to a local legend.

Dear Yılmaz, who has absorbed Cappadocia into his soul, says that those who come here cannot leave when they enter the right door. It is indeed so, the roots that pierce and hold onto the rocks are so strong that it is impossible not to feel. This is the reason why we have not been able to get enough of dreaming of going back to and producing together in these lands and the Hamleci Mansion.

Hamleci Mansion was built about 200 years ago by the Greeks living in the region. One day when we were interested in the maintenance of the mansion, we learned from someone who came to do a research on the old Greek houses of the region that, in Evangelia Balta’s book “Prokopi”, there is a photograph of the first owner in front of the mansion. With the combination of these information, the stories about the mansion began to merge one by one.

We learned that the first owners of the mansion were Greeks and when they had to go during the population exchange period between Greece and Turkey, the grandfather, nicknamed Hamlecioğlu, bought the mansion. Hamleci Grandpa, whose stories we had been trying to learn for a while, was Atatürk’s telephone handler. According to what is told, he did not speak much. He was highly respected by those who knew him, and was able to see his great-grandson while he was alive. At that time, we learned that Hamleci Grandpa’s own family, as well as tenant families and “Yoğman Ağa”, who was handling some of the works of the mansion, lived together in the mansion. Ürgüp was the most famous and developed region in Cappadocia at the time that Hamlecioğlu Dede and the generation after him lived.

Another feature of the mansion that is the subject of architectural research today is its wooden door. This door was painted green after Hamleci Grandpa went on his pilgrimage.

There is a garden on the right side extending from the old door. Once in the garden, there were horses in the barn, old fruit trees, a vegetable patch and an irrigation pool. This fertile garden, which has been neglected with the decrease of the residents one by one over the years, is covered with weeds and trees. Even a part of the house was destroyed by these trees and according to the stories, this destroyed part was quite magnificent. Apple trees, which were said to have at least ten varieties before, have left their places to the self-growing apricot and black elderberry trees as well as a walnut tree that is hanging from the neighboring garden.

 When you continue from the plain that extends from the garden to the mansion, you will reach the stone stairs leading to the courtyard. When you arrive the courtyard, you will see the old stone house, some parts of which are in the rocks, and the “yellow house” where the vine trees make a shade at the entrance. The courtyard, which connects the mansion and the yellow house, is in the shadow of the vines during the day and the stars and the moon at the night. According to Evangelia Balta’s book Ürgüp – Prokopi, the shape of these stone houses was determined by the rock on which they rest.

We can easily feel the natural fabric of Ürgüp in this wide area where there is a gazebo that overlooks the front garden. This mansion, which once hosted a crowded population, has sections that serve different purposes such as flour place, barn, sheep pen, tandoori, grape distillery.

When we returned to the mansion after fifteen years long abandonment, while cleaning, we discovered that there was a chapel carved into the rock between parts of the house. We think that this chapel may have inherited from the early times of Christianity. In the third century, Christians trying to meet their shelter and security needs in the Cappadocia region were able to protect themselves from the religious pressures of the Roman Empire by taking advantage of the structure of the region’s rocks suitable for carving. During these times, they continued their lives and religious practices in these safe areas. We think that the chapel, according to another assumption, may have inherited from the tunnels connecting the houses in the area.

The flour house between the yellow house and the mansion served as a cellar where cheeses, meats, vegetables and fruits were stored thanks to its location in the rock and thus keeping it cool even on hot summer days. There are two separate wells in the garden and under the “yellow house” where the tenants stay, and even the neighbors would come and take water from these wells. While there were two separate symmetrical stairs leading to the yellow house during the time of Hamleci Grandpa, today only one of them stands.

The place under the yellow house, which has an independent entrance and which we transform into a workshop today, was previously a sheep pen. The place that involves the tandoor and is used as kitchen is between the flour house and the sheep pen. This place is called “tafana” in the local language, and neighbors used to come to benefit from the tandoori. There was a grape distillery in the garden and grape molasses was boiled in large cauldrons through making fire.

Especially during Ramadan and during the holidays, the mansion was full of relatives. When grandfather was alive, they would come to kiss his grandfather’s hand. These meetings were used to lead to get 3-4 generations of the family together. Local dishes of the region were cooked for the arrivals. Hamleci Grandpa always sat on his cushion next to the wood stove in the left corner of “the room with stove”.

We have not even been able to open most of this place, some of which are in the rocks, and new rooms are linked from the other rooms. However, the never-ending features of the mansion and the fact that Ürgüp has a huge differences and great calmness compared to Ankara provides us the space we need to construct the projects we want to do.

You start carving each rock with a hole. To begin with, we decided to revive the wine culture, that is unique to Cappadocia but is hurt, within ourselves. For this purpose, last summer we had an attempt on winemaking in cooperation with our friends in the region. We have experienced winemaking in terms of the grape harvest, the crushing of the grapes, the correct maceration. During this process, we visited the wine room daily and talked nicely with wines. We are currently at the stage where the grape juices waiting in barrels and patiently waiting for them to become wine. 

In permaculture, there is a crop / harvest / benefit cycle. According to Bill Mollison, all kinds of useful outputs that come out as a result of the behaviors or operations of the elements in the system are the benefits in that system. At the same time, these benefits are theoretically unlimited. We chose this principle as our road map while we construct a life system we will create in Hamleci Mansion. While buying what we need from the areas we live in and from each other, we chose to diversify and increase what we can give. With the awareness that everything is possible when we come together, all kinds of benefits we have achieved – from creating a rainwater pond in the garden to enjoying each other and healing – has been our motivation. We were good for each other, when it was good for each other, we were good for our environment as well. There were times we worked hard for Hamleci Mansion, and also we camped together in magical landscapes. It can be said that we work in festival vibes. This is our biggest reward.

It is not an easy task to get Hamleci Mansion back on its feet. Its historical nature makes any kind of renovation difficult. Considerable amounts of financial resources are required for the restoration. We are currently writing a project to receive grant support. We dream of in Hamleci Mansion, there will be a gallery area, a suitable environment where we can host artists from different places, a garden kept alive with permaculture principles and a boutique cafe or restaurant connected with the products of the garden. We are open to any improvement of and contribution to these projects that we dream of together.

In fact, what we are aiming at is to build a life woven with the art of coexistence while providing a space to everyone to discover what they want to do and helping them bring their discoveries to this life. What we experience while doing this is, starting from our uniqueness, learning to be “the one” and reflecting this; accordingly, we reach a state of “being a collective one” formed by the coming together of “all the ones”.

We are sending you all the smell of potatoes and chestnuts on the stove from Hamleci Mansion and our journey with the dream of having a place where we can enjoy our existence and materialize our ideas by taking care of each other. Let us know if you come nearby!

Contact with the authors:

Sevecen Kaplan @sevconot

Esin Metin @kaplumbagamutfak

Ayşe Yayla @aysmayslay

Translated from the Turkish original by Tevfik Hürkan Urhan