Berkay Tuncay’s solo exhibition “Human, how strange, so vulgar, such a masterpiece and yet so primitive” opened on 13 March in Sanatoriumtaking its title from the Hande Yener song Kibir [Hubris], from this link the exhibition can be visited virtually.
Tuncay shapes his practice around his research on the effects of the internet on the global society, likewise via the internet. I met Berkay on a video call to chat about his exhibition. During the course of that chat the virtual and the real, the primitive and the modern, the superficial and the deep ceased, just as they do in his work, to be dichotomies and nested inside each other, becoming successors or perhaps versions of one another. Interview is translated from Turkish by Zeynep Beler.
Where the Works Belong
S: I saw the show on the digital platform. What do you feel is the detriment to a virtual exhibition tour as opposed to seeing a show in a gallery?
B: I initially composed the show with the gallery space in mind and created the works in accordance. The preparations begin months in advance and we designed the show to be experienced inside the gallery space. Of course in the broadest sense my show is about internet culture, so I’ve been getting a lot of feedback from people that they find it very adaptable to experience online. They almost feel that it’s back where it belongs. I feel the same way. But then also, I had for example applied the memes meme we send to one another over the internet in the present day onto the gallery walls with the technique used by cave people to make their first marks on the cave walls. The applied technique of those wall paintings and the clues about the materials I use could have provided a different viewing experience.
Bulantı | Nausea, 2020. Copyright © Berkay Tuncay.
S: You take this technique you mention that dates back to 30,000 years ago and merge it with Sponge Bob. Sartre’s nausea merges with the nausea from a song written in our current era. What’s the meaning of this duality in thought?
B: I enjoy making these connections. One is confronted initially with something that maybe evokes a form or an idea. I rather like to track these trails and dwell on the circular aspect of time. We as humanity have now “attained” our technological peak or so we think.
Perhaps we’re only a variation on the ways of communication and dissemination of information used since the dawn of humankind.
So these ebbs and flows really intrigue me. There are also such examples in my earlier works.
S: And You had a work with hieroglyphics.
Smiley Column, 2017, Copyright © Berkay Tuncay.
B: Right. I had a work in which I questioned the possible connection that could be forged between a pop icon such as Kanye West and the Sumerian tablets. I’m looking at the human desire to pass on information. I set out from the hand prints on the walls, for instance. Dipping a hand in paint and leaving a print on a wall establishes a cultural stasis and it lasts for thousands of years. As in that era, memethe understanding of art as we know it today did not exist, some authorities refer to these as cave paintings whereas others are content to just accept that it’s a kind of cultural legacy.
Futile Record
S: Not going into work in person these days has given me some extra time for myself. It is said that right now the air in Sultangazi is thirty percent cleaner than before. So it appears that when we do less, we can actually reap great rewards for our environment and ourselves. I also think about Tempelhofer Feld in Berlin a lot. The decision not to build a complex or a shopping mall onto the defunct airport has been hugely beneficial for both the people and the environment. You have a work with a to-do list with the word “nothing” written on it and then scratched out. I thought that was the perfect memefor these times that we’re all stuck at home. On the other hand, Poems From Instant Messagingspeaks to our anxious frame of mind and the invitation, if not practically the obligation, to be happy all the time. How has it turned out that your works are totally analogous to these quarantine days we are in currently?
To-Do List: Nothing, Berkay Tuncay, 2020. Copyright © Zeynep Fırat
B: Of course I didn’t make these works knowing that COVID-19 was going to take over the world. It simply concerns the present so specifically because my working domain is the present. And in a way I’m trying to keep a futile record of the things I see on the internet.
Futile, because the popularity of say, a viral video, lasts for a day. You can probably show it to someone within two hours and get the reply, “I’ve already seen that”. My futile effort is to track these down and preserve them.
As an internet user and an individual, I try to chronicle my own history as based on my own experience online. These two works are descriptive of precisely the present moment, because my work echoes the sounds of the internet and it takes place simultaneously with “real life”. The same way that we are able to measure the impact of internet culture on the streets by means of the revolts, disasters, and phenomenons that affect individuals or society. We saw that in Gezi and continue to see that in social movements around the world.
I’ve concerned myself with the anxieties and feelings of internet users since 2011-2012. The title of the previous book was “Poems From Relaxation Videos”. It originated in the desire of the 9-5 employee to listen to the sounds of tropical beaches or the rain or do yoga off a screen due to not having the time to take out from their urban lives. Here once more, examples of experimental poetry derived from a life in which language has become sparer, can be observed.
Seriousness and Humor
S: Both the title and content of the exhibition present findings on human nature. The mention of human nature brings to mind deep topics such as existential philosophy. Why do you want to tackle it together with popular culture which is more often than not associated with superficiality?
B: First, I believe that humor is essential in discussing serious topics. Second of all I find it difficult to discern the limit between superficial vs. deep meaning. These lyrics out of popular culture, written by Sezen Aksu and sung by Hande Yener, are profoundly meaningful to me. If the goal is to set off from the same existential place and create meaning, then it matches up with my life experience.
So there could not have been more suitable words than “human, how strange, so vulgar, such a masterpiece and yet so primitive” for me to compare the times that we consider to be “primitive” with the present day in which we believe that “humanity is at its apex”.
S: Thank you.
