DI Evrim Altuğ
The Wisdom Stone of Civilization’s Fermenting Cellar This is a mortuary for memory. But also no different from the earth: it carries a sort of in vitro excitement within. The spectator and the spectacle/artwork – both parties secretly crave immortality and yearn to achieve it. The law of nature is strict, yes; but it comes with a guarantee: in order to be reborn one must at times risk being buried. As with this wisdom stone from Cappadocia buried in civilization’s ‘fermenting cellar’. It is not in vain that the work is titled the ‘Atlas of Blank Histories’: it appears that time, space and nature shall fill history adequately and genuinely, in and of themselves. Just like aging wine…
All right then, let our questions be: how is one to preserve what flies or flows by? How does mortal become immortal? What is worth preserving?
In resisting exhibitionist, by visualizing and hence voiding the consciousness underpinning the physical/sensual dumping ground of micro/macro ‘histories’ based on small or large interests, a time capsule concretizes this organic and cultural sounding of the inevitable destruction inherent within temporary order/s (history/s) governed by chaos. Submerged in the flesh of the earth in Cappadocia, it may also be considered as a kernel/seed of civilization sown in the myth/womb of Mother Earth.
The more we are foreign to these uncanny ‘seeds of knowledge’, first exhibited in the cool grey stone atmosphere of the upper floor of the mansion and then aged like the wines of the region in yet another ‘mansion’, a resting place, of sorts – a metal coffin within a ‘memory/monument/mausoleum’ in Cappadocian lands, the more they are destined to be forgotten, rendered apparently mortal, perishable.
Aren’t graves and tombs considered in many faiths to be temporary resting places en route to ways out from this world anyway?
Embedded within the Time Capsule, isn’t there the motherly worry, curiosity, excitement and patience of a century long ‘birth/death control test’ referencing civilization and memory in these peer ‘samples’ taken from Âşıklı Höyük and many different locations such Keyişdere, the Ihlara Valley, Gökçetoprak, Çavuşin and Mokissos, and ‘stamped’ in relevant spots in circular-shaped plates/inscriptions? Thrilling. Just like corks of old wine bottles with years marked upon them one finds strewn on the ground.
Each of them provoke our level of estrangement towards things we discover. They rub in our face, in our very essence, what tourists we are in relation to our own soul, our egocentric indifference, the irresponsible, selfish rootlessness in which we have almost come to pride ourselves. With a medical and forensic spirit of sorts they ask us who is alive and who dead with their sand, gravel, geological and territorial ‘origins’. Or what is contemporary, what historical, what local and what geological or global...
All of these samples, in fact also turn to earth and dust, being rendered mythical whilst disappearing, appearing as level upon level in a manner that excludes the samples of truth we have in our head, somehow melting, becoming molten.
The Time Capsule thus becomes a mortuary for memory in which perception is washed compassionately, just like the deceased. But also no different from the earth: it carries a sort of in vitro excitement, secretly craving immortality and yearning to achieve it.
We can also read a Time Capsule as a traditional Turkish and Mid-east food Borek/Burek. like a 'Gastronaut' / Masterchef that has the capacity to digest and perception of humankind, layer by layer, continent by continent, age by age, and indoubtfully, taste by taste upon any geography...
The more you feel the layer(s) in its cultural digging, the more you can joy and enlight of the journey of all tales, coordinates and mortal memories.
These slices of histories and possibilities, are getting their immortal taste, from their capacity for sacrifice and openhandedness and give a chance to us, to see and acknowledge the Earth, like a real and abstract puzzle in the same 'moment-us'.
