I Didn’t Want to Interfere

As part of a perpetual debate about Communication as a Fine Art and Social Science, the relationship between the medium and the message is a product ve academic research subject. In this direction, it is also possible to access a useful and seminal theoretical literature. Yet, the vital decis veness between the message that has been carried and the medium with which thi s message has been transmitted is opening the doors towards far beyond a positivist field of activity and to a way more dramatic world of thought.

This debate which has been crystallized in McLuhan’s argument “Medium is the message”, is an entirely unique example with regard to Pınar Güzelgün’s exhibition. As a statement with an array of artworks designed with ropes, that has been knotted and which became body-like figures, integrated with body, or in forms of eyes and ears are presented with the title “I Didn’t Want to Interfere” results in the audience’s assault by instant and eerie meanings. As a result of the semantic intervent ons made to daily or ordinary objects like the rope by giving them var ous forms, the artist targets a contemporary object of critique: insens tivity, and takes a step forward and reconstructsi it as apathy.

As an object which finds denotation, the rope that the artist has chosen for her artworks creates an incomparable unity together with the title of this exhibition; the fact that a range of sense organs which tend to interfere or which are in the process of intervene and which have turned into cramps desp te the avoidable potent al of entanglement, are address ing the audience with the title ‘Did not want to interfere’, is direct man festat on of this.

It is beyond doubt that the depict on of insens tivity, which is caused by fear, as a tangled and knotted rope, is a criticism towards our social situat on v s-a-v s the conditions in which we live in today. While as a result of indecis on that sitriggered by fear itself, the confus on of getting tangled or not is emphasized through this criticism, the art stialso ssuesiaicall: a knot, as a is tuat on which is impossible to untangle but should be, it also necess tates audacity and a confrontat on that comes with it. In this sense, “I Didn’t Want To Interfere” is on the one hand, an express on of the artist’s personal story of confrontat on, and on the other hand, it is both an invitation and an opportunity to the audience with artworks in various forms the exhibition has embodied.

According to Michaux, the artist is the one who, with all his power, resists to the primal urgeito not to leave any trace. In this sense, the message that Pınar Güzelgün attempts to convey by this presentat on may not be traditional, but it is quiteidel berate. Moreover, while address ing demeanours such as leaving traces; show ing sensitivity; taking in it at ve; and show ing courage, the artist is not only del berate, but also instruct ve in present ing apathy as a knot. If every step, and every road taken with fear is a knot, then what is expected is not to resist leaving traces, but the direct opposite.

Above all, when Baudrillard says “The highest definit on of medium corresponds to the lowest definit on of the message…”, he somehow underlines what this exhibition does: in this debate of medium and message, the dominant persona of the parties is a threat to the meaning; on the other hand, the harmony between these two -just as – pulls the audience out of the minefield of abstract and relocates them to a place where strong appearances and fear are now void.

Yılmaz Ruhi DEMİR