A book of mistranslations and poetry. Constructed, organized, cut and glued, fixated with images, texts and words. From English to Turkish to Turkish to English to Turkish once more. Arranged newspaper clippings to produce a new sound.
Growing up bilingual and occupying two continents that speak these languages, I have often found myself in a position where I couldn’t relate to either of the cultures. Before leaving for my studies to the U.S., I found myself conducting my projects and writing in my book of essays entirely in English. Perhaps it was that I felt unrealized as well as unrelated to my surroundings. Perhaps it was as if I did not want anyone around me to read my thoughts and projects. Arriving in Worcester, MA I found myself in a most bizarre mindset where I would only write in Turkish. This kept on for the five years I have spent living and working and studying there, where I could easily say that I bravely produced some of the most disagreeable work, which were the ground stones to my artistic projects. After dragging myself back to Istanbul, where I currently live and work, I again found myself not being able to adapt to my environment and the language. So I picked myself up, found some old newspapers and began constructing my own language. Arranging the newspaper titles from Turkish daily newspapers, I created poetry. Using my previously written texts in English- I would use Google Translate to roughly translate them to Turkish to be used in my notebooks. Being driven with words and sentences, I found myself being attached to this processed and altered way of self expression. For the Unrealized Project, I am proposing a hand made notebook, full of texts that I have written and have been mistranslated- as well as texts that I have put together- all the while being concerned about the loss of the meaning as well as structure in the words we are reading in the final stages. This project is unrealized because it is ever ungoing. I am concerned with it so much, and it drives me to explore other forms of putting together mistranslations and destructions, that I feel that I have walked far away from the initial book project as I could have. I would like to present with two images an example of the beginning stages of the hand made mistranslated texts as well as an image of the currently constructed poetry.
The image’s text reads garip bir yeni keskinliği görme (sokakta) insanların çirkinliği ya da güzelliği translates (again) into noticing something sharp and new (on the street) people’s ugliness or their beauty
The poetry reads Eve dönmek korkunç bir hata translates into It’s a horrible mistake, going home
A book of mistranslations and poetry. Constructed, organized, cut and glued, fixated with images, texts and words. From English to Turkish to Turkish to English to Turkish once more. Arranged newspaper clippings to produce a new sound.
Growing up bilingual and occupying two continents that speak these languages, I have often found myself in a position where I couldn’t relate to either of the cultures. Before leaving for my studies to the U.S., I found myself conducting my projects and writing in my book of essays entirely in English. Perhaps it was that I felt unrealized as well as unrelated to my surroundings. Perhaps it was as if I did not want anyone around me to read my thoughts and projects. Arriving in Worcester, MA I found myself in a most bizarre mindset where I would only write in Turkish. This kept on for the five years I have spent living and working and studying there, where I could easily say that I bravely produced some of the most disagreeable work, which were the ground stones to my artistic projects. After dragging myself back to Istanbul, where I currently live and work, I again found myself not being able to adapt to my environment and the language. So I picked myself up, found some old newspapers and began constructing my own language. Arranging the newspaper titles from Turkish daily newspapers, I created poetry. Using my previously written texts in English- I would use Google Translate to roughly translate them to Turkish to be used in my notebooks. Being driven with words and sentences, I found myself being attached to this processed and altered way of self expression. For the Unrealized Project, I am proposing a hand made notebook, full of texts that I have written and have been mistranslated- as well as texts that I have put together- all the while being concerned about the loss of the meaning as well as structure in the words we are reading in the final stages. This project is unrealized because it is ever ungoing. I am concerned with it so much, and it drives me to explore other forms of putting together mistranslations and destructions, that I feel that I have walked far away from the initial book project as I could have. I would like to present with two images an example of the beginning stages of the hand made mistranslated texts as well as an image of the currently constructed poetry.
The image’s text reads garip bir yeni keskinliği görme (sokakta) insanların çirkinliği ya da güzelliği translates (again) into noticing something sharp and new (on the street) people’s ugliness or their beauty
The poetry reads Eve dönmek korkunç bir hata translates into It’s a horrible mistake, going home