Aferim Yavrum Dialogue Forum Ligh

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AFERIM YAVRUM!Lile Gesures f Cerai

Dialgue Frum

Istanbul 14-16/10 2010


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SpEAkERSMeltem AhiskaSilvina Der-MeguerditchianAntje HeinemanHseyin KarabeyYasemin zcan KayaEstela Schindel

MoDERAtIonBanu Karaca

ConCEpt AnD CooRDInAtIonBarbara HfferSilvina Der-MeguerditchianBanu Karaca


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Cihangirs streets are not very kind to pedestrians.

Theyre full of stones, holes, obstacles. People usually walk

in the street itself. Sometimes the cars come dangerously close

on their way by and force you back onto the sidewalk, but, as

a rule, its easier to walk in the street. The cars know that

and put up with you. Some of them remind you of their presence

gently; others are more brutal. Walking through Cihangir is a

constant to-and-fro between street and sidewalk; you try to see

how many steps you can take on the sidewalk before you end upwalking in the street until the frst cars come along, remind

you once again that youre trespassing on their territory,

and force you back up onto the sidewalk.


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EpILoGUE AS pRoLoGUEby Silvina Der-Meguerditchian

This short text about Cihangirs streets in the

previous page reects my experience in doing theDialogue Forum Aferim yavrum! My intention inorganising it was to investigate the absence of theother. And to look deeper into the associated traumasfor both the Turkish and Armenian people. This projectwas a next step, a next gesture in a long path: An at-tempt to create a context where is possible to integratethe other back in our own self-image.

The gesture to open the dialogue forum with the artistwalk Deep Sea Fish speaks to my desire to overcomethe gap, the distance that theorization of memory andtrauma can bring.

In retrospect, I believe that for moments we achievedthis goal, but there were also moments where carsfull of theory came along and reminded us that we weretrespassing.

Lets take to the streets again and again. And remindthe cars that we will walk on the forgotten but notinvisible paths.


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ContEntS

INTRODUCTIONby Banu Karaca pag.1

TEXTS & IMAGES

ERUPTIONS AND THRESHOLDS OF MEMORY IN TURKEYby Meltem Ahska pag. 7

DEEP SEA FISH - by Silvina Der-Meguerditchian pag. 23

IMAGINATION CREATIVITY AND TRAUMAProcessing trauma by means of artistic creation

by Antje Heinemann pag. 35

THREEHUNDREDANDONE

by Yasemin zcan Kaya pag. 51

WORLDS WITHOUT NEIGHBOURSCan art heal the wounds of broken social relations?

by Estela Schindel pag. 61

STATEMENTby Hseyin Karabey pag. 73

TRANSCRIPTION OF THE DIALOGUES EXTRACTSpag.76


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Initiated by Silvina Der-Meguerditchian the dialogueforum Aferim Yavrum! Little gestures of cooperationwas the continuation of the conversations and exchangeson Armenian/Turkish rapprochement that began with herrst solo exhibition in Turkey at BM Suma (Istanbul,February-March 2010) under the same title. The forumwanted to create an opportunity to discuss artistic,sociological and therapeutic approaches to different

aspects of trauma, violence, remembrance, politics andhistory in the arts. We began, with the speakersand invited participants, a conversation that aimedat exploring both the possibilities and limitations ofartistic strategies of social remembrance andpolitical responsibility in the engagement with theArmenian Genocide in a comparative perspective to othertraumas and structural violence. Trying to bridge thedivide between theory and practice, the participating

artists and social scientists presented and discussedtheir works in an interdisciplinary context.

What are the possibilities and limitation of artisticapproaches in coming to terms with the past? How canart, if at all, contribute to reconciliation efforts?Where and how do artists struggle with impediments tofreedom of expression? These were some of the questions

that animated the conceptualization of this workshop.A few introductory remarks, before leading to thedocumentary contributions of the participants and

IntRoDUCtIonbyBanu Karaca


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excerpts that reect even if only fragments of thediscussion, might give a small insight into thedifferent facets of the subjects discussed during theworkshop.

It is interesting to note that this was adiscussion between persons based in Germany andTurkey. Germany has in many ways, even ifproblematically, become a template for state-recognitionof genocidal violence perpetrated during the ThirdReich, and provided a context in which the transforma-tive power of art is broadly acknowledged, both in itsformation of fascist aesthetics that helped legitimize atotalitarian regime, and in thematizations of the

trauma of the Holocaust.

In Turkey, these discussions, including the rolethat art might play in confronting the past, inproviding a place of alternative memory or a kind of memorywork that subverts ofcial historiography, has begun inrecent years. Well known intellectuals have frequentlyimplied that it is not only the state but also theman on the street, the sensitivities of the people

that has foreclosed open engagements with the past.

But as sociologist Meltem Ahiska (Bosporus Universi-ty) argued, this foreclosure might be because of theenormity of the rupture with the past as well asthe number of ruptures violence enacted againstdifferent ethnic, religious and political groups thathave constituted a particular challenge inTurkey. This challenge manifests itself in the manysilences that are also reected in the artworks of twoparticipating artists: The silences Der-Meguerditchiantraces in her audio walk (the text of which is reprintedin the following pages).These silences also appear inthe many different forms in the Istanbul-based visualartist, Yasemin zcan Kayas 301. Her work reects asilence that is formed not only in restrictions tofreedom of expression, but also in gendered representa-

tions of a womans body adorned with a necklace that,while beautifully crafted, is also a representation ofrepression and practices of targeting those whopublicly address uncomfortable truths. Ahiska also


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noted a certain impossibility in the narratization oftrauma; the question of how and who to remember remains anissue of debate: the victims? The perpetrators? Can theybe remembered together? How can we frame questions ofcomplicity, responsibility and shame? In her interven-

tion Antje Heinemann, an art therapist based in Berlin,showed where psychology and psychoanalysis might giveimportant clues to the intersection of collective andindividual traumas and how they might be approached.Visualizing and drawing a mental safe placemight present one strategy to address collectivetraumatic pasts, such as the Armenian Genocide, in Turkey.

Comparing different strategies through which

memory and loss due to state-sanctioned violence areinscribed in the urban fabric of Germany and Argentina,sociologist Estela Schindel (Heidelberg University)shows that in the latter case there is also a rejection ofreconciliation. Directed towards the hegemonic andterrorizing power of the state, its actors and enactors, thisrejection shows that engagements with violent pasts arenot put to rest, put aside, or relegated into distanttimes, but remain an active part in present political

struggles.

While in our discussions we focused on art as an avenueto address issues where institutionalized memory fails,the aesthetic itself has its own problems.

In an essay on remembrance Vincent Crapanzanostresses aesthetic dimensions as integral to commemora-tion and remembering. Taking monuments as an example, hehowever draws attention to the contradiction betweenthe aesthetic and the historical by stating that:With the aesthetic reduction of the historical, themonumentalized event suffers a loss of representationalimmediacy of stature. The originating event, its rstsignicance, is doubly displaced from the event to themonument, from the historical to the aesthetic realm(2004, 169). Viewed in this vein, we have to take

into account that artistic approaches to the past alsopresent aestheticizations that can create bothdistance and proximity. But there might also be chancesin the conscious calculation of these shortcomings and


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problems of artistic approaches, especially when theyare tied to demands for recognition and politicalresponsibility.Hseyin Karabey, a lmmaker based in Istanbul,

suggested that in his own artistic work empathy andability to generate empathy are driving forces;forces he believes can bring about societal change byanimating the viewer to act differently. But as feelingsand effect are themselves political, calls for empathy,produced aesthetically or otherwise, may themselvesperpetuate asymmetries and distances between those whoempathize and those who are empathized with.

While the discussions highlighted the potential of artin addressing difcult pasts, concerns where also voicedthat art must not be instrumentalized in this processof memory work. To avoid the instrumentalization of artand to ensure that its potential can unfold most fully,political debates and conditions also have to change.Yet, what all the contributions to the workshop bypanelists and participants had in common, and what is alsoreected in the excerpts reprinted of the discussion at

the end of this documentation, was the call for the de-mo-nopolization and multiplication of memory and its sites.

It is also in this way that the dialogue forum was partof an open process, an attempt to continue writingparts of history, the strands of which were violentlybroken. It is in this way that the conversations thatwere so timidly and carefully initiated over the lastfew years need to continue.

1 Crapanzano, Vincent. 2004. Remembrance. In his Imaginative horizons:an essay in literary-philosophical anthropology, pp. 148-177.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.


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DEEP SEA FISH, video still - 2010- S. Der-Meguerditchian


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tEXtS & IMAGES


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IN BETWEEN, video still detail - 2008 S. Der-Meguerditchian


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ERUptIonS AnD tRESHoLDS oF MEMoRY In tURkEYby Meltem Ahska

Those who are familiar with folksongs in

Turkey would remember a couple of songs that wouldgo like, in the front yard of their houses there

grows (mostly herbs and plants), or as in arecently popularized version, in the front yard of

their house there is a painted lamp post.1

These songs are signicant examples of anonymousyet collective oral transmission of memory that

helps to mark a place or give an address inexperiential terms by reference to objects in theworld, that is, not by abstract labeling such asnumbering that has been a vital part of modern

urbanization. However, the connection of memory andplace is at stake in the modern world due to the

annihilation of place through a violent abstractionintroduced by the so-called progress- informed by

the operations of capital and modern state.The most striking feature of modernity in many

places around the world has been that of dispersionand homelessness, which goes beyond scatteredexperiences and leads to a major structural

transformation of experience named as transcenden-tal homelessness by Lukacs. Then, memory in modern

world, as David Lowenthal (1985) argues, is alsodened by displacement of large segments of societydue to industrialization, wars, massacres, forcedexiles and immigrations. The sense of belonging to

place has lost its organic meanings only to bere-marked in the symbolic realm as longing for the

lost place or the past as a foreign country.

I would like to dwell on some scenes from therecent and rapidly shaping memory culture in

Turkey in the light of the above-mentionedconnection between memory and place, and its

inevitable disjuncture and fragmentation today.I would like to draw attention to the impossibilityof reconstructing the primary ties between memory

and place, hence the fragility of forging a


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representation of identity in connection to memory.Yet, at the same time, narratives of memory areproliferating in the public space more than evertoday, and constantly urging us to make newconnections between the present demands for

justice and the past, mostly, in the form ofexperiences of loss and displacement. What appearin the current crisis of the hegemonic nationalnarrative of history in Turkey, are the painfulremains of a foreclosed past. What to do with them?The question is especially signicant if we wouldlike to politicize memories and seek justice intheir footsteps. Remembering the past hasrecently become a popular subject in Turkey not

only in academic circles but also in differentvenues ranging from art exhibitions, lms, books,newspaper articles to television programs; aphenomenon not independent of the currentexplosion of memory narratives all around the worldas scholars of memory note. However, despite thegeneral trend of the memorial turn, everycultural context has its own historical patterns offorgetting and ways of coming to terms with social

traumas. Tanl Bora denes the repression of thepast in Turkey as militant forgetting (2009:8).Early Republic has not only prohibited facing thetraumas in which the elite or the groups of its ownpopulation were the agents or culprits, but alsothose that beneted them (Ibid). Bora here thinksof the Caucasian and Balkan migrations and theexchange of populations at the end of the 19th andthe beginning of the 20th centuries, as examplesof beneciary traumas, while the list of traumasassociated with guilt and complicity are numerous,starting with the Armenian massacres and genocideand extending to the present day.

I nd the word militant highly explanatory sinceit signies many aspects of the situation at once:the enormous and radical rupture with the past, the

involvement of force in the prohibition ofmemories and in the fabrication of a nationalmemory, and the impact of denial and repression oneveryday life by way of building a certain


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habitus. Bora dwells on this last point bysaying that we cannot describe the situation in

Turkey simply as refusal of heritage but we shouldthink of its pervasiveness through the concept ofhabitus- a certain mode of daily conduct and habit

reinforced mainly by the economic and social gains.The governments also have relied on this kind ofoblivion, and reproduced it as normal and

desirable behavior, as exempied in the words ofSleyman Demirel, one of the most persistent

gures in Turkish politics: The people are likefresh fruit, their lives are daily (cited by Bora,2009: 8). I must note the irony that while Demirel

described the ordinary people as lacking any

long-term memory, he was himself recognized as aman with an incredible capacity to remember2. Theirony is signicant to reveal how those in power

could value memory while sentencing the people tooblivion. The hegemonic militant forgetting, both

in the sense of the forceful imperative toforget and the comforting or beneciary habit to

forget, that has been the backbone of Turkishhistory creates a peculiar atmosphere for memory

work today. Every attempt to forge a memorynarrative against or on the margins of ofcial

history produces, and is likely to produce conictand contestation. Even the more mainstream

representations of traumatic events, such astelevision serials on the near past are ercely

debated. For example, the TV serials HatrlaSevgili or Bu Kalp Seni Unutur mu? that both dwell

on the traumatic political events of the past,including the violent military coup of 1980 and the

terrifying Diyarbakr prison, have attractedcriticism from both the so called right and leftcamps3. However the debate is more about how torepresent the past today, then mere political

disagreements on the course of events. It is as ifthe claim itself -to represent the contentious past

through a particular imagery and narrative

fabricated for the purpose- produces discontentapart from the inevitable alienationinvolved in turning the traumatic past into an

enjoyable spectacle. The narrativization is bound


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to stay incomplete and dissatisfactory in its claimof representation as long as several witnesses,victims and inheritors of these or other socialtraumas bear affects that have not been publiclyrecognized. While some scholars see a pedagogical

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in these media representations for coming toterms with the past, the debate concerning how toremember the past is far from being resolved.

The impossibility of narrativization of socialtrauma is not only a problem of media representa-tions; legal or political narratives are not lessproblematic. For example, the continuingErgenekon court cases that had disturbing effects

on society by revealing the plans and archives ofpast conspiracies cooked within the deep state aswell as the horrifying remains of previous stateoperations, such as unidentied corpses and weaponsburied under the ground, attempt to forge anarrative endorsed by the present AKP regime thatTurkey now steps into democracy by getting rid ofthe shameful past. However, the found evidencesand legal actions have no direct power in resolving

the burning question of how to remember the past.The court cases have triggered the proliferation ofmemory narratives that reveal past atrocities -ofcourse only in a selective way- yet they also leadto further dissociation5, bitterness, cynicism, andviolence in society as can be observed in thepresent conictual political atmosphere. The traumaof dealing with the past traumas is overwhelming(Sancar, 2007:259). Furthermore the counterattacks against the investigations cast doubt onthe meaning of the past. For example, when themilitary regards Ergenekon as a psychologicaloperation against itself and the nation, it makesan impact on society as still one of the mostpowerful and most trusted institutions in Turkey.The society, which is already fractured by severalconicts of class, gender and ethnicity is

perplexed what to own and disown in terms of thememories of the past. The old strategies of thestate that opts for militant forgetting and denialcontinue to be at work while simultaneously it is


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no longer possible to contain memories, as it were,in the black box of the ofcial history; thereare spills and fragments allover. Another vital

aspect of the question at hand is how to dene andclassify social traumas. As Roth and Salas argue,

trauma is a medical term only used for collectiv-ities after 1980s, and what spurred and shapedthis nonmedical interest in trauma was thedevelopment of Holocaust studies (2001:2).

Leaving aside the discussion of -whether socialtrauma is a meaningful term6, in the case of

Turkey, one can list so many events that could beassociated with social traumas, from the Armenian

genocide to violent crushing of various rebellions;from the military coups to both legal and illegalattacks on minorities; from the war against the

Kurdish to massacres of Alevi populations. Each hasit own perpetrators and victims in a specic

context, yet all seems to be connected to eachother in a historical pattern. But how is it

possible to remember all of these, and in whatorder? And who is going to remember? Only the

victims? Or all of society including theperpetrators, accessories, and their inheritors?

These questions deserve further thinking andtheorizing. The subject of social memory has onlyrecently become a public issue, and a small number

of scholars, experts and journalists sometimes cometogether in forums, workshops or conferences to

talk about the problems of social memory in Turkey.In one of these forums7, in which I also

participated, the discussion in the concludingsession was signicant to raise the above questionregarding as to what should be prioritized amongthe several past and present social traumas in

Turkish history. The question was ratherfrustrating since all of these seem important and

have had big impacts on social andpolitical life. I would say that the

discussion ended in a mood of bewilderment in thesense that we cannot even agree on a shared past towork through. Mithat Sancar nds Turkey dissimilar

in this respect to many other countries that he has


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IN BETWEEN, video still - 2008 S. Der-Meguerditchian


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studied. He argues that while in other countries,one big event, either a military dictatorship,

civil war, genocide or massacres, holds a centralposition, in Turkey, events similar to all of these

has come one after the other, and have been

intertwined. Each event belongs to different partof a long history, some in the distant, some in thenear past. So, there is a layering of

social traumas shielded by a thick and hardcrust, the breaking of which is and could be verypainful (Sancar, 2007: 259). Many intellectuals

accept the debilitating power of the past in Turkeyand raise their voice against the mood of

bewilderment emphasizing the need or the duty to

remember. For example, Murat Paker argues stronglyfor devising strategies and mechanisms forcoming to terms with the past by employing terms

such as counter-psychological operation asopposed to the claims of the military. According to

him, despite the feelings of bitterness andhopelessness, Turkey has indeed achieved many

results in revealing past atrocities and ghtingagainst them. One needs decisively to go further,

and if the question of what to start with perplexesus, we should prioritize the black pages that have

actual and burning impact, that is, have thehighest potential to effect the daily lives of the

people. These denitely would be events such asErgenekon like (deep) state operations and the

Turkish-Kurdish problem8 (2009: 31). Paker insistson the idea that democratization should be a

necessary part of coming to terms with the past,and the goal should be to re-start relationshipswith what are deemed as Other in a more mature,

ethical and genuine way, and to build humanegrounds based on equivalence (2009: 30). One wayto establish this is to build truth commissions,

according to Paker. Discussion of truth commissionsand their applicability in Turkey goes beyond the

scope of this essay, however, I would like to

problematize one idea in the above-mentioned andsimilar approaches: the will to remember. We coulddiscuss this question in relation to its two

aspects: the relationship of memory and conscious-


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ness, and memory and power. As Pierre Nora (1989)argues, memory in modern society has becomeindividualized; rather than being based on sharedcollective traditions and rituals, there is duty-memory that orients the individual to construct a

past for himself/herself. In this sense, modernmemory is archival and looks more like history thanmemory, according to Nora. There is indeed a bigparadox involved in the idea of voluntary or dutymemory. Freud made clear that consciousness is ashield against disturbing stimuli, and becomingconscious and leaving behind a memory trace areprocesses incompatible with each other within oneand the same system (cited in Benjamin, 1969:

160). In other words, the individual consciousnesscrafts a memory or a screen memory, which is basedon forgetting and distortion, yet may seem morereal than the traumatic traces of memory. In thecase of trauma, the traumatic shock breaks throughthe protective shield to have long lasting effects.That is why traumas cannot be articulated in coher-ent narratives unless they are retroactively workedthrough their symptoms. We know from the psychoana-

lytical literature that the unconscious registersof traumas may lead to different pathologies inhuman beings. The same would be true for societiesand/or collectivities, at a metaphorical level.

Then how to deal with memory if it dees aconscious expression and is only elusive? It isinteresting that memory is at once very real in itsimpact yet its reality cannot be determined in apositivistic way. It is expressed through distor-tions and absences, such as the slip of the tongueor forgetting of proper names that Freud discussesin Psychopathologies of Everyday Life (1995).Forgetting is the very reality of memory. However,forgetting should not be regarded as mere erasureor absence. As Ricouer would argue the traces ofmemory and their image persist in forgetting

(2004). Ricouer makes an important move based onthis argument to connect the past with future, theretrieving of a past image with anticipation.Founding forgetting, in his terms, is different


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from destructive forgetting, and functions as areserve or resource for future remembering

(2004:440). The difference, although not at alleasy to delineate, seems to lie in the uses andabuses of forgetting. The destructive forgetting

based on negation that power structures impose onpeople entails the effacement of traces of memorysubstituting them with fabricated narratives.Forgetting then designates the unperceived

character of the perseverance of memories, theirremoval from the vigilance of consciousness

(Ricouer, 2004: 440). The question is therefore,how not to replace forgetting with an obsession of

memory, but instead, how to deal with the

untransmissible traces that forgetting contains?In all of this, the pathological structure, theideological conjuncture, and the staging in themedia have, on a regular basis, compounded theirperverse effects, while the passivity of excuses

has joined forces with the active ruses ofomission, blindness, and negligence. The famous

banalization of evil is in this regard simply asymptom-effect of this stubborn agglomeration. The

historian of the present day, then, cannotescape the major question regarding the

transmission of the past: Must one speak of it? Howshould one speak of it? (Ricouer, 2004: 452).

The importance of Ricouers elaborate questionsshould be clear. Forgetting as the structure of

memory is signicant because it containsuntransmissible traces that have potential

recognizability in the future. However, the problemis, who is going to administer forgetting/

remembering, and for what purposes? Whose memoriesare more important than others? How are they going

to be represented? Denitely the power structure isat stake here. As Cheryl Natzmer argues in the case

of Chile, telling the story of a nations past is ahighly political act involving struggles over whose

stories will be remembered and preserved and whosememories will be repressed or forgotten. The owner-ship of memory is a question of power (2002: 161).

In this context, rather than joining in the con-


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IN BETWEEN, video still- detail - 2008 S. Der-Meguerditchian


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scientious moves in Turkey that pose remembering asa duty, I would attempt to approach the question

from a different angle, and argue that, instead ofvoluntarily re-constructing various narratives of

memory from the margins and giving them an

intelligible and hierarchical order mostly for thesake of re-writing national history, we have totake notice of involuntary eruptions of memory to

conceive the thresholds of collective memory.By thresholds, I mean the borders erected betweenintelligibility and non-intelligibility, or to put

it in more psychoanalytical terms, betweenconscious articulations that necessarily entail

some distortion of memory, and unconscious

motivations that bear the scattered memorialrecords. Threshold can also be conceptualized asthe lowest point at which a stimulus sensation can

be perceived in consciousness.

In sociological terms, I would say that thecollective threshold is maintained throughperformances of power that separates the

representable from the unrepresentable, the sayable

from unsayable, the remembered from what should beforgotten. Therefore the thresholds, although not

actual places per se, can be considered asanonymous sites, which contain the traces of

fractured memories. As SilvinaDer-Meguerditchian poignantly captures the

experience of forced exile of Armenians fromTurkey in her short lm In-Between, it is as if aroad propels memories into unwanted destinations

separating them from the place of memory. The textin the lm reads: As if the road was guarded, asif you were driving somewhere where perhaps you

dont want to go. As if you had a wall around youor land, I do not know The road here is more thana metaphor, it is a built medium guarded by wallsor land that gives a new shape to memories by theactual movement of going, and which consequently

makes them representable in a certain way;yet the road also produces loss and longing bypushing one forward leaving behind the silenced

remains of memory that one cannot talk about. Road


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painfully breaks the remembering subject as well:he is facing the road but one part of his head isnot thereSomething has been stolen from him,something large enough to make him feel obliged tond it and gather himself. Road in this context

is a signicant example of threshold in my view. Inthat sense, thresholds do not reveal anyidentity or belonging but only the anonymous(yet monitored and channeled) registers of loss andtrauma. Threshold is both a social (and spatial)and a psychological category, that has itcomplex formation and variations sensitive to timeand changes, albeit contains materiality, certainxity and continuity in history. A threshold

comprises of movement but also of immobility, ofproximity but also of distance. You are here withme, and yet you are somewhere else, says the textin Der-Meguerditchians lm. Yet mostly thresholdsare normalized and remain unnoticed. Roads afterall signify progress and development in ourcontemporary world.

The representations of the past usually take thepresent as a normal and transparent vantagepoint from which one sees the past. However ifones eyes were dazzled by the light of thepresent, then most probably the past would just bea shadow without any substance. The lights thatcome from the epoch should be neutralized inorder to discover its obscurity, its specialdarkness. (Agamben, 2009). Reecting on thequestion of what is the contemporary, Agambenwould say the contemporary is he (sic) who rmlyholds his gaze on his own time so as to perceivenot its light, but rather its darkness (2009: 44).Akin to Ricouers concept of forgetting that isimbued with traces of memory, darkness is notsimply a lack of light, but a special activity ofseeing according to Agamben. And one should

actively perceive the darkness of his time assomething that concerns, as something that neverceases to engage him (Agamben, 2004: 45).I would like to emphasize that it is exactly this


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engagement with the darkness of the present thatthe memory work should undertake.

I would claim that the present eruptions ofmemory, and the crisis it engenders give us a

chance to attend to the thresholds of differenttraces of memory within the problematic of memoryand forgetting. As Ricouer puts it, the limit ofremembering the past facing the historian- just

as for the lm maker, the narrator, and the judgelies in the untransmissible part of extreme

experiences; but we should also take note of whathe adds by emphasizing, to say untransmissible is

not to say inexpressible (2004: 452).

The untranmissible can be expressed not in achronological temporal ordering but within a place.

Is this not a paradox? I have mentioned in thebeginning that the connection between memory andplace has been severed to a great extent. Yes,

places are lost but there is always a new place, andthat place is haunted by an impossibility housed

there (Butler, 2002: 468). The place re-appears in

the twilight of forgetting and remembering.Coming to terms with the past and mourning aresuggested as remedies against the dominating

oblivion in Turkey today, however, I haveargued that coming to terms with the past

cannot be treated merely as a voluntary, consciousand subjective temporal act. The historical time

forces its continuity against which remembering thepast, en bloc, seems difcult if not impossible.

Memory work could only gain a radical meaning whenit sees through the darkness of the times

feeling the presence of the untransmissible tracesand the fractured relations between them at the

site of thresholds. And it can offer only a thread,a fragile thread that impossibly attempts to revivethe untransmissible traces within forgetting for apossible recognition in future life. It offers a

fragile thread but not an avenueof institutionalized memories. And even if thefragments and traces cannot be restored to theiroriginal place, their faint breathing could be


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heard through the hassle of the present, and couldbe given a second life mediated through creativeexpressions of memory. I think this is what SilvinaDer-Meguerditchians work modestly but preciouslyoffers: The thread of your story got lost for a

while. Someone has broken it. But there is thisthread, like Ariadnes thread that will help you outthe maze

Fes1Evlerinin n mersin; evlerinin n marul; evlerinin n susamor Evlerinin n boyal direk

2 A newspaper article from 1995, the years during which the waragainst the Kurdish people was at its peak, talks of SleymanDemirel as a man with a memory of 5 gigabytes. Milliyet, 08/03/19953 See Zeynep Gzel, Memory as Representation/Memory as Experience:A study of Hatrla Sevgili through the Narratives of LeftistsChildren, unpublished MA thesis, Sociology Department, BoaziiUniversity, 2009.

4 Murat Paker argues that both documentary and dramatic represen-tations of the traumatic past have incredible value for creatingempathy for the victimized Other, which otherwise remains demonizeddespite the growing information on traumatic events. He cites the

lm ki Dil Bir Bavul and the TV serial Bu Kalp Seni Unutur mu? assignicant examples (2009:30).5 Murat Paker employs the psychoanalytical term dissociation as akey mechanism in the memory culture of Turkey in the last centu-ry. Dissociation is a defense mechanism that separates the stimu-lus/perception/situation/memory/thought from the normal processesof consciousness. The dissociated part leads to an autonomous andmenacing life of its own that seriously harms the functions of theperson or society. I would say that the mechanism of dissociationwould continue to work even when evidences and symptoms regard-ing the past are revealed but separated from their deeply wovenaffective contexts, and instead channeled into pragmatic political

narratives.6 This issue was discussed at length in its various aspects at aworkshop organized by the Turkish Human Rights Foundation. Srme-kte olan Toplumsal Travmalar ile Baetmeye Ynelik Yol GstericiRehber Hazrlk Toplants, 18-19 December 2010, Diyarbakr.

7 Heinrich Bll Stiftung, Trkiyede Gemile Hesaplama: Dil veYntem, 5 April 2008, Istanbul.

8 It is problematic that in this frame, many crucial past eventssuch as the Armenian genocide or Dersim massacres would inevitably

be left out of the scope of memory work.


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ReferecesAgamben, Giorgio (2009) What is the Contemporary? in What is an Apparatus? andOther Essays, trans. David Kishik, Stefan Pedatella, Stanford University Press.

Benjamin, Walter (1969) On Some Motifs in Baudelaire in Illuminations, ed.Hannah Arendt, Schocken Books.

Bora, Tanl (2009) Syledim ve vicdanm kurtardmdan tesi?, Birikim 248.

Butler, Judith (2002) Afterword: After Loss,What Then? in Loss: The Politicsof Mourning, eds. David L.Eng, David Kazanjian, University of California Press.

Freud, Sigmund (1995) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Verso.

Lowental, David (1985) The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge University Press.

Natzmer, Cheryl (2002) Remembering and Forgetting: Creative Expression andReconciliation in Post-Pinochet Chile in Social Memory and History: Anthropo-

logical Perspectives, eds. Jacob J.Climo, Maria G.Cattell, Altamira Press.

Nora, Pierre (1989) Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de MemoireRepresentations 26, special issue: Memory and Counter-Memory

Paker, Murat (2009) Maskeli baloyu bitirmek iin kar-psikolojik harekatBirikim 248.

Ricouer, Paul (2004) Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K.Blamey, D.Pellauer,The University of Chicago Press.

Roth, Michael S.; Salas, Charles G. (2001) Introduction in Disturbing Remains:Memory, History, Crisis in the Twentieth Century, eds. M. S. Roth, C. G. Salas,

The Getty Research Institute.

Sancar, Mithat (2007) Gemile Hesaplama: Unutma Kltrnden Hatrlama Kl-trne, letiim Yaynlar.

IN BETWEEN, videostills - 2008 - S. Der-Meguerditchian


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DEEP SEA FISH, video still detail -2010- S. Der-Meguerditchian


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An audiowalk through the streets of Cihangir

Translation: G. M. Goshgarian

Five years ago, the rst time I came to Istanbul,I was very afraid. When I confronted the dichotomyMe-Turkey, I used to be afraid. People scared me,

cars scared me, sidewalks scared me,windows scared me...

This is the fourth time Ive come this year. I gotoff the plane as if I were at home. I knew the way

to the passport control desk, where to go toexchange euros for liras, where to nd the Havas

taxi stand to go to Taksim... Hardly had I arrived,they took me to a party in Cezayir, where the

Istanbul artists scene was that night. I saidhello to a couple people, but we didnt have much

to say to each other. I was somewhat disoriented,so I started dancing. Here people dance, they dancea lot, they put special energy into dancing, theydance. And there I was, dancing with the rest of

them. In a fraction of a second, my gaze split inhalf; I saw myself from the outside and I thoughtto myself: What am I doing, dancing with thesepeople? Are they my people? Are they my people

now? I like dancing with them, but I dont know if

theyre my people. Many of them must think that Imnarrow-minded and obsessed. Maybe theyre thinking,Why dont you just enjoy yourself and leave us inpeace? Surely there are more important things to

worry about than injustice and denial.

Turn down the rst street on the left and pause fora moment in front of an old, dilapidated wooden

house. For a second, looking at this house, I very

nearly gave up. I had the feeling that nothing Iwas doing was at all meaningful. That was it.

Everything was over and done with. Nothing in this

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neighborhood gives me the impression that we everreally walk these streets. We may exist, but weleave no traces. Perhaps re swept them all away.Fire seems to have consumed peoples memories. Thislast wooden house seems to be a left-over haunted

by death. When I look at it, its as if I were onthe verge of tumbling into an abyss.Paradjanov once said that windows are a citys eyes.This house has blinkers over its eyes. Rotten, deadwood... wood that doesnt say a word. Sometimes Iwonder about the nature of reality. Might the willpossess the capacity to make reality come intobeing? If so, then Id only have to nd people whowant us to surge up from the depths...

or to remind some people that theyve forgottenthis desire of theirs.

I look and look, but the WALLS say nothing to me,they treat me as if I were a tourist. They SEEMdiscolored TO ME, like a photograph thats losingits impact from being looked at so much. Its colorsare fading, like the memory of a love affair thatgave you butteries in the stomach, but, from being

repeated so often, is becoming more and more worn,so that all the details that your emotion made youfeel so intensely are starting to seem banal...to seem almost silly. I felt silly asking antiquedealers for ermeni antiques...What do I have to do with this neighborhood,Cihangir? These facades are mute and, when theyrein front of me, close their eyes. For them, Imlike the sh from the bottom of the ocean that wedont see, although we know theyre down there, inthe depths, horrible fantasy creatures, with theirlittle lights, hoping that somebody will discoverthem so that they can come up and shine outside,even if only as corpses. For them, anything andeverything can serve when it comes to afrmingones existence. Just one antique dealer was ableto show me items that bore witness to a past life

in its all fullness. He had a few copper plateswith Armenian inscriptions from a hamam. They werethe last vestiges of the sh who swam desperatelyon the surface before sinking into the depths and


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DEEP SEA FISH, video still - 2010-S. Der-Meguerditchian


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DEEP SEA FISH, video still -2010- S. Der-Meguerditchian


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pursuing their existence at the bottom of the sea.

At the next corner is another antique dealer with amultitude of empty chairs out in front of his shop.

If hes open for business, I can have a look at

these chairs. They seem to be a ghostly auditorium,with neither actors nor spectators...

Poor Istanbul this city with its barbershops formen, its men-only cafes, its shops specializing inturshi or halva represents a mass of thingsthat probably are not. Its a protective barrier,

because its a big city, and thus the most familiarand the most accessible for me, since I come from a

big city as well.

What do I have in common with it?

The couple of years, perhaps, that my grandfatherLevon spent in it after he escaped from a prison in

Marash and came here to start a new life?I keep on walking, without knowing in which neigh-borhood the han in which my grandfather had his

business was located, or when he last looked at thesky here, walking through these streets.

I cant be certain, but I suspect that hesuffered the second biggest disappointment of

his life here when he learned, in 1923, that hisfriends, the French, werent going to keep their

promise to protect him and that the question of hisexistence had ceased to be a question... He was

left with two choices:

One was to continue living in a place that toldhim: You are no longer a question and thus you

are not. As if being Armenian could only fall intoa category based on the ARMENIAN QUESTION.

The other was to go someplace that would ask him:And who are you?

He opted for the second choice.I think that that question disturbed the poor man


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so much that, despite his erudition, nding ananswer drained all his lifes energy.

These stairways, these trees, these facades studdedwith little tiles bearing names such as Atlas,

Atlan, Riza Bey, Seya Bey, or Gl told him, whilehe was out walking: YOU ARE NO LONGER A QUESTION,and therefore YOU ARE NOT.The rst time I took a walk through Istanbulsstreets, I, too, had that feeling: they weretelling me: YOU ARE NOT. It was the same thing evenat the Armenian church in Cameralte Cadessi which,hardly had I caught sight of it, moved me so

deeply. It hid its doors from me and I heard itsquiet voice saying: YOU ARE NOT.

Many things have happened in the past ve years.Today, I listen to quiet voices that tell me: YOUARE. I still dont know who or what I am, yet I AM,at least a little. Sometimes, at magical moments,I feel a passing gust of wind that tells me:YOU ARE...

I ate in the bar opposite the Firuzaga Mosque, toour left, in front of which we pause briey. It wasSunday, early in the morning. For breakfast, theyserved me a hot quet, fresh from the oven.Suddenly, from the depths of my childhood, I seemedto be listening to my sister, coming to make thehappy announcement that medz-mayrig had made quet!That night, I dreamed I owned an apartment here, inthis neighborhood. On the square in front of themosque and in the street behind it are a few barsthat make me feel as if I were back in my neighbor-hood at home. Istanbul is in the midst of a majorchange. The houses bear the scars of the change forall to see: the red and blue house numbers show usthe citys old and new numbering system.Istanbul has grown so rapidly that its had to

rethink its basic structure. Will there be a placefor me in the new scheme? Will I have to live in acocoon, with no one but the 100,000 people who tookto the streets to say, I, too, am Hrant;


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I, too, am an Armenian? Whats supposed to happenwith the millions of others who prefer to consider

that I dont exist?

Alice, a German friend, has loaned me a book by Krikor

Zohrab. Thanks to her and the French language,I was able to read him for the rst time. I had somany fantasies about the Armenian literature

written in the period before the genocide. I borea grudge against Buenos Aires Armenian schools,which didnt succeed in teaching me the language

well enough for me to read and enjoy it. The bookis entitled Life As It Is. Zohrab was an Istanbulwriter whom the Committee of Uniion and Progress

ordered killed in 1915. I was very curious to learnwhat life in Istanbul was like before 1915. I reada translation in French, a language I also learnedin school, but one which conquered my heart. For

me, French was a bridge to Armenian, the languagethat could have been my mother tongue...

It wasnt easy for Zohrab to capture my interest;he had to compete with writers such as Borges,

Cortzar, Sartre, Hesse, and dozens of others, all

of whom I could read in the original. To approachhim, I had to use crutches... French crutches aresexy crutches, but theyre crutches, after all.

I wasnt disappointed... he made me feel thespirit of a great literature. His book tells

stories that unfold in Istanbul. If it werent forthe fact that their protagonists have names such asSahag, Verzhuhi, or Vahan, and take the ferry to gofrom Uskudar to Karaky, these stories could have

unfolded in Paris, Madrid, or London.The prose is the classic prose of the early

twentieth century. The heroes and heroines areStambuliots, ordinary inhabitants of this city.

The book recounts love stories involvingemancipated, urbane, audacious Armenian women...

How I would have enjoyed reading it as an adoles-

cent! How I would have enjoyed knowing that we wereonce normal people, and how happy I would have beennot to have to identify with a stunted society

or heroes from the Middle Ages!


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On the horizon, in the background, was a churchstanding there all by itself. I heard, coming fromthat general direction, the sound of bells, for therst and only time. It was Sunday noon. Was thesound of bells coming from that church?

They stole Romanticism from me. They are stealingthe singularity of a plural from the Turks of ourday. They left me without the plural of my singu-larity. They left me thirsting after contemporaryArmenian artists capable of inspiring and movingme. How hard it is today to encounter the mastersof a culture ensconced in books from the MiddleAges. Our link with modernity was broken when they

hauled us out of our homes and dispatched us to theborderlands, to the limbo of in-betweenness. Well,then, here I am, living on thresholds together withParadjanov, who, as Krikor Beledian once put it,afrmed his Armenianness by conceiving it as aborderline existence.

Thanks to French, again, I read Zabel YessayansThe Gardens of Silidhar, an autobiographical novel

in which she recounts her childhood in Uskudar latein the nineteenth century. I found one of theconversations between the Armenian woman who is theheroine of the story and a Turkish friend of hersparticularly moving, because, although it waswritten more than one hundred years ago, it couldhave been an exchange of my own with someone withwhom I was trying to re-establishthis ruptured relationship.

Early one morning, while we were stretched out on

the sand waiting for the shing boats to return,

I asked Fayizeh: What does your uncle think about

the Armenians misfortune?

She started slightly and looked at me without

saying a word. We had never broached the subject.

Suddenly, with a reproachful note in her voice,she blurted out: My uncle is a good man.

I was prepared to make do with this ambiguous

answer, but I noticed that she was becoming more


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and more emotional. Finally, with tears in her

eyes, she murmured: My other uncle, the older

brother of the rst, is in exile. My Uncle Nahat is

very happy that you and I are friends. Hes told me

that its very good that we are, and hes described

the plight of the Anatolian Armenians for me. Hebelieves that we have the same enemies you do.

Then she nodded and said again,

My uncle is a good man.

Turn right and go around the Cukur Cuma mosqueuntil you come to Cukur Cuma Street.

From the end of the street, the Galata Tower can beseen on the horizon.

I read in a book that Galata was the neighborhoodearlier known as Pera, inhabited by the

minorities who, once upon a time, did not representsuch a minor segment of the local population.

When I stayed in this neighborhood the last time,I had a good feeling. One night while I was here,

I dreamed that my husband and I had gone to anorphanage and kidnapped all the orphans. I dont

know how we managed, but we gained the womanguards condence and abducted all the children.

She had such complete trusted in us that she wentto take a short walk. I grabbed my pocketbooks and

handbags and took a pretty plant with me, too;it was planted in a ower-pot placed in a biggerower-pot. There was a little blond girl withbright eyes and two pig-tails there. She kept

looking at me, and her eyes said that she want meto take her with me. Just as I was about to leave,the guard arrived. She realized that the childrenwere missing and started shouting. I ran off. At

that point, I woke up, frightened, with a very sharppain in my chest. What anxiety I felt! As soon as Ihad woken up, I tried to recall the dream. I didntremember seeing other children, or how we kidnappedthem, or why we took them with us, or who we were

going to demand ransom from.


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Now go straight to the end of the street.When you start to feel youre part of a place when you begin to feel at home, the rst thing yougive up is your childrens names. I wondered if mygrandparents Levon and Avedis, Araxi and Aghavni

started to feel at home just as fast when theyarrived in Argentina or if they surrendered tothe country from the word go. They named my motherElena and christened my aunts Aida and Luisa. Athome, my father was known as Juan. My grandmotherused to call him Hovhannes but, to make things eas-ier for the neighbors, she called him Juanoutside the house. His siblings were named Marioand Ana. My grandmother Aghavni, whose name means

dove in Armenian, even became Paloma or Colombato make it easier to mix with the other immigrantsin the La Boca neighborhood, who were Italianor Spanish. Always trying to make thingseasier for others!

While I was walking around here, I wondered how myclassmates from the Armenian school in Buenos Aireswould feel if they were to take a stroll in these

parts. Would they feel the same way I do? Wouldthey feel the warmth of a reunion the feelingthat this part of the world also belongs to me,or that I also belong to this part of the world?What would Eugenia, Marina, Valeria, Paola,Mariana, Carina, Cristina, and Sonia feel?All of them with names that were as Spanish orItalian as mine. Already, we were no long calledNunig, Vartuhi, Araxi, Manushag, or Aghavni. Thiswhole generation of Armenians, in their eagernessto be accepted by society, gave up their names andwere left only with last names that were translated,shortened, broken up, and translated again.

Terzian, Mateosian, Kanzabetian, Mardirosian,Baliozian, Kardeshian, Yagmour, Koruk....

The same family names which, from the seaoor,suddenly seemed like fragments began speaking to meagain from this citys signs and billboards.They told me: YOU ARE.


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In one of the eyewitness accounts that ProfessorLeyla Neizi collected in the course of her oral

history project, an interviewee says that to cometo terms with the past, one has to be able to love

others, and that others have to love you in theirturn. I found myself thinking: I dont knowhow much one has to love others... its hard.

It might even be counterproductive.

I sense that Id love to love. I already feel agreat deal of affection for many people here.

Thats when I start to think: Why make these lovedones feel pain? Why make them remember something so

painful? When someone loves someone else,she tries to protect him or her from pain.

How am I to reconcile my need for justice and rec-ognition with the affection I feel for people?

If one is seeking justice,it might be better not to love...

Or else to try to make people love you more, so that

they will be the ones to seek justice and will doeverything they can to assuage... your pain...

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Pic. 2

Pic. 12

Pic. 13


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IMAGInAtIon, CREAtIVItY AnD tRAUMAprcessig rauma by meas f arisic creai

by Antje Heinemann

I would like to begin with a painting by Mexi-can painter Frida Kahlo (pic.1 - page 38). Born in1907, she contracted polio at a young age as the

result of a serious bus accident. In her painting,The Broken Column, she tries to translate her

pain into art. She said about it: I am not sick. Iam broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.To her, being able to paint means to be alive, tolive, to have survived, to know that she exists.

The painting thus seems like a possible bridge,allowing her to endure her traumatic inner

fragmentation.In this talk, I will approach thequestion if creative art enables patients to

process trauma. Which artistic strategies can beutilised to that end? Moreover, I will give an

insight into the practice of art therapy in traumatherapy. While I am not going to discuss individ-

ual cases or the therapeutic relationship, I willgive an account of my work with seriously trauma-tised girls between 14 and 20 years of age who livein a therapeutic living community, as well as withtraumatised adult patients at a drug rehab clinic.The pictures I will show here originate from these

therapeutic cases.

traumaIf one does not realise a trauma, one is forced tolive through it again or restage it.

(Janet 1889)

As an introduction, I will give a brief theoreticaloverview of psychological trauma. A trauma is an

overwhelming situation in which the aficted personfeels extremely help- and powerless. Their mental,

and in many cases their physical integrityis damaged severely. Trauma inicted onto one

person by another, so-called man-made trauma, is


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considered the kind of trauma that is the mostdifcult to process. A traumatic experience ischaracterised by an overstraining of the ability ofthe self to process internal and external stimuli,either intermittently or for longer periods. This

overstrain expresses itself in states of internaloverload, affect storms, catastrophic cognitions,confused perception, fears of ego fragmentation andself-dissolution. Symptoms of posttraumatic stressdisorder (PTSD) include states of internal overloadwith elements of the trauma as well as states offreezing, paralysis or emotional numbing, whichserve to avoid modes of experience conditioned bythe trauma. Typical responses to stressful situa-

tions are ght or ight. In a traumatic situation,these are no longer viable; the psyche respondswith so-called coping strategies. These includefreezing and also dissociation, which in contrastto association means splitting off. The traumaticmemory is fought off by dissociation and splittingas well. This is conrmed by results from recentbrain research, which show that events which exceeda certain stimulus threshold are stored separately

from our autobiographical memory. This means thatwe are dealing with two discrete memory systems.

Stored in dissociative memory, memories are notaccessible directly, but can be triggered, whichmeans that a memory surfaces in connection withparticular kinds of emotions, but isnt embedded inan autobiographical memory context. In the case ofunsuccessful trauma processing the emotional memory(hot memory) outweighs the autobiographical memory(cold memory). This results in the simultaneouspresence of states of intense recollection calledintrusions on the one hand, and memory gaps withregard to the concrete experiences on the otherhand. Therefore the successful processingof a traumatic experience requires reconnectingthe following aspects:

What happened? What did I feel?What did I think? How did I respond?


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Once the event can be integrated with its largercontext, a new attitude towards it can emerge, one

of: Its over. I have survived!One basic principle applies to all cases of trauma:Before one can move on from a horric experience,

one has to face it and integrate it without justslipping into ashback. The psychological effectsespecially of childhood trauma are manifold:

depression, suicidality, addiction, self-injury andpersonality disorders.

Ar heray

Art exists because it offers means through whichhuman experiences can be communicated.

K. Dannecker

My method is informed by several years of beingemployed at a drug rehabilitation clinic and by mywork at a therapeutic living community for girls

suffering from complex trauma who had had toexperience sexual violence. Taking a psychoanalytic

approach as the fundamental basis of my work, Iemploy an integrative concept of resource-orientedpsychodynamic imaginative trauma therapy developed

by Fr. Lcke and Fr. Redemann. Working withinternal images is a key component of this concept.

The therapeutic process follows the three phasemodel of trauma therapy:

Stabilisation:This phase includes working with resources;

recognising and appreciating coping strategies;imparting knowledge about the effects of trauma;

learning affect regulation and differentiation; estab-lishing safety within and outside; developing a

differentiated body perception; and learning to dealwith traumatic material in a controlled manner.

Confrontation of the trauma:This phase involves approaching traumatic situations

in a controlled setting.


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Pic.8

Pic.14

Pic.4

Pic.5

Pic.7

Pic.1


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Pic.3

Pic.15

Pic.10

Pic.11

Pic.9

Pic.6


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Integration and reorientation:This phase includes learning to acceptlimitations; recognising, naming and processingthe effects of a horric experience; trying outdifferent ways of dealing with oneself and

in relationships with other people.

I will illustrate this phase model with pictures bypatients. It has to be noted that the therapeuticprocess does not always conform to the model thisstrictly, but can go back and forth betweenthe individual phases.

SabilisaiWhen patients in art therapy draw, paint a pictureor create a sculpture, they grant us an insightinto their modes of experience, their autobiogra-phies, and the way in which they have shaped theirworld. The creative process brings into being anobject which exists in the outside world, and whichthus can be seen, handled, which can be grasped, inboth senses of the word. This object can be shared

with others and thus is a means of relief.I see my clients in individual or group therapy forone hour per week. At the beginning of the therapy,the focus lies with building the therapeutic rela-tionship. It has proven helpful that clients cre-ate freely and independently at this stage. To thatpurpose, they choose from a wide range of materialsand develop their own pictorial themes. Other moreguided methods are employed only over the further

course of the therapy and in consultation with theclient. The term initial image refers to imageswhich are created in the rst session.They indicate fundamental conicts. Here are someexamples of initial images: (pic. 2 - page 34)This drawing shows a landscape with a windowlesshouse, perhaps a barn, and a pathway along a eldand bushes. The repeated vertical lines on the roofare a striking element, they seem meaningful aswell as irritating, mysterious. The base line ofthe house seems to be missing, it looks incompleteand yet very much closed off.


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41

The horizon line is unclear, the perspective tooutline clearly dened spaces is missing.

This is the second object by a different client

(pic.3- p. 38), a ower pot which she painted red

on the outside and black on the inside. Thisobject, too, clearly presents an attempt to describea mental state by turning the pot into a symbol forthe body or the shell of the psyche, with an insideand an outside. Following the creative process, theclient described her inner mental state as a black,

dark, undifferentiated void. Thus, the objectvisualises the clients inner distress in a way

similar to the windowless house in the rst

drawing, inside of which it also had to be dark.Both examples are typical of an intrapsychic statethat is often encountered at the beginning of the

therapeutic process. It is characterised by fear oflosing control, by being withdrawn and distrustful.

The central feature of this drawing (pic.4- p. 39)is the plaited hair. It reveals wounds and injurieswhich the woman could not have inicted on herself.

In this image, pain is not suffered silently, butit is made visible. The long hair could hide thewounds, but is was conceived in such a way that

they could still be seen. With traumatised people,it frequently is important that their pain is seen.Ultimately, the invisibility of their pain is often

worse than the traumatic experience itself. Thismeans that there is a need to nd ways to express

the pain and transform it.The artistic creation canbecome a counterpart and mirror which can be

encountered directly. This challenge provides anopportunity for change and transformation. This

drawing (pic.5- p.40) by another patient also dealswith pain and overload. Woven into a concentrationof searching lines lies a person, who has a woundat the level of the heart. The lines contain the

repeated words Wo? (Where?) and Da! (There!).

Especially patients suffering from internaloverload can use the creative process to bringstructure to an inner world they experience aschaotic. The subject of the drawing may also


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represent a differentiation of the ownimmediate state and the outer context. The innerchaos is translocated to the outside. Thus, a newperspective becomes possible. The client learns howto distance oneself, which is categorically useful

in dealing with traumatic material in a controlledmanner. Externalising internal processes allows fora distance which makes a new perspective on theinner events possible. Against the background ofthe loss of control experienced in the traumaticsituation, the powerlessness experienced in thepast, the importance of restoring condence in theown action competence cannot be overstated.

One example that shows the above mentionedcondence is an assemblage made of a gesso bedunder which lay several paint bags. The dry gessowas punctured. The client was able to transferaggressive impulses onto the image in a self-regu-lated way. This process of destruction at the sametime created something new. This is calledsublimation. Aggressions are transformed intocreative power and made communicable to the outside

world. Working with resources nding counter-images to the images of horror.P. Levines model enriches the stabilising workwith traumatised patients. Levine compares the bodyto a river in which life energy ows. In thismetaphor, the river bank represents the bodyboundary. In a case of serious traumatisation agreat amount of energy breaks through a rupture inthe bank and forms a turbulent trauma vortex beyondthe normal ow of life energy. Nature immediatelycreates a counter vortex as a compensatory force. Theprocess of overcoming trauma is about tracking downthose counter vortices, making them accessible to theconsciousness, and mending the damaged river bank.

In resource-oriented art therapy, the resources in

an artistic creation are purposely brought toattention, which activates the counter-images. Thisallows the client to go back and forth betweendestructive and constructive representations. As a


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rule, the client is encouraged to ensure a balancebetween images of horror and positive images.

In psychotherapy, resources are the innerpotential of a person, for instance a skills,

abilities, knowledge, competence, experiences,

talents, interests and strengths of which thepatient is often unaware. The capacity for symboli-sation is usually well developed in trauma patients;

after all, they used fantasies of a better worldto survive. Therefore, imagination exercises suchas the safe place and the inner helper present

an advantageous method. This method makes use of theclients faculty of imagination; they are instructed

to imagine a safe place and, subsequently, to paint

it. This image shows a landscape, a large meadowwith horizon, sky and sun. In stressful everydaysituations, the safe place offers support, strengthand consolation, even though these internal images

can never be found in the desired perfection in theoutside world. The school of Milton Erickson (1981)

calls this approach utilisation.

A cat (pic.6-p.39) can be used as an inner helper

during the stabilisation phase, as a companion,consoler and guide. In this phase of the therapy

the artwork is not subjected to depth psychologicalinterpretation. At rst, the aim is that clients

have these positive internal images safely at theirdisposal when they are in need and feel alone andhelpless. Just as well, the helper could functionas a cheer leader who encourages and emboldens.This exercise is an essential prerequisite to

confronting trauma, for the helpers will then beable to lend their support.

Another goal of the stabilisation phase is to learncontrolled abreaction by means of a safe frame, in

order to bring lowering of impulse control like angerinto a xed and thus controllable form. To this end,the client rst creates the frame and makes sure that

it is safe. The action impulses connected to theaggression can then be expressed within the frame.During the stabilisation phase, surfacing images

are often connected to body perception. In this im-


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age (pic.7- p. 38), the body is clearly experiencedas fragmented, which is related to the experienceddissociations. In this pictures mixed technique ofcollage and coloured pencil drawing thephenomenon of dissociation becomes vivid through

artistic means. The torn woman seems caught in aweb lost, fragmented and disconnected. Herlonging look is turned to the right. The confusingimpression is fortied by the artistic device ofmixed technique, which brings about an expressionof disconnectedness.The picture could also beunderstood as a combination of dissociative andassociative elements, body and web.

In the rst place, dissociation is an ability thatensures survival. In contrast to association, whichmeans combining and connecting, dissociation meanssplitting off. Traumatic experiences are split offto protect oneself from severe emotions such asanguish or unbearable pain. The ability ofdissociation becomes a disorder when it can nolonger be controlled. Dissociative behaviour can betriggered by everything that evokes

the memory of an earlier trauma.Therefore it seems reasonable to regard theproduction of connective images as a benecialprocess (pic.8/9- p.39). These connective imagesinvolve creating lines and pathways, whose purposeis the development of networks. Systems emerge,gures whose internal planes can be designed anddevelop towards a picture resembling a map. Some-thing whole, something complete becomes visible.

This picture (pic.11- p.39) conveys the impressionof looking directly into the brain. People andsituations appear as if tied to colourful threads.Possibly these images can be compared to theadaptive processes of the central nervous system.This ability of the brain to adapt as a result of

ones life experience is called neuroplasticity.Thus, the reverse becomes feasible: fear constrictsthought, but creative work, free from fear, expandsit. New neural pathways are formed in order to be


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able to move beyond the old one-way streets.Artistic processes are processes of internal

formation and transformation. In the course ofworking creatively, images and symbols are foundand placed into new connections. This can lead to

situations which make a changing and developing pointof view, perhaps a change of perspective, possible.

trauma cfraiOnce sufcient safety within and outside is

established and the patient wishes to do so, theprocessing of traumatic experiences can be begun.

In order to do so, it has to be made sure that

there is no contact with the abuser and noadditional stress from the social environment hasto be expected.In order to be able to process andintegrate a trauma, the fragments of the trauma

that were dissociated in the past have to besystematically recombined. Artistic creation can

contribute to getting in touch with layers of theexperience that have been dissociated so far. It

can be especially useful when words are not enough

or when no words have been available.One of the fragments which again and again appearin pictures by trauma patients is eyes (pic.10 -

p.39). Raped women often remember the eyes of theabuser, the look which penetrated them, lled with

hatred, with the will to utter destruction.This weapon, - the eyes of the abuser -, sadly

focuses on the victims all too often, and it makesthem paralysed with horror, which means that it

encourages a freeze reaction.

Horror, shame and helplessness are particularlypronounced reactions, as they are expressed in thiscollage. As if it was frozen, the face is coveredby a half mask, through which only the eye can beseen. Gray industrial buildings bear down crush-

ingly on the woman. Every victim internalises theabuser in some patterns of behaviour and thought,

introjecting them. For these pictures I useBennett Brauns BASK model as part of the trauma

exposition. In its gurative meaning, the bask is


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the basket in which fragments of the trauma have tobe systematically collected and connected in orderfor the trauma to be processed. According to Braun,the complete recollection of a situation comprisesremembering all layers or elements. All are present

and can be accessed. This takes place in a dialoguebased on the picture. The elements are:

Behaviour, which comprises all behaviours andactions which were part of the traumatic event,which were performed or left undone. Affect,which includes all emotions connected to thesituation, such as powerlessness, fear, anger,shame, guilt, etc. Sensation, which refers to

all bodily sensations and sensory impressions, forexample pain, tensions, suspended reexes of ghtand ight, freezing, sounds, smells, tactile andvisual perceptions which were relevant to thetraumatic event. Knowledge, which includes all spo-ken words, unspoken thoughts and negative cognitions.

These drawings depict a sadistic scene (pic.12-p.34); they are about taking pleasure in sadistic

torment. Smiling, the cat extends its claws andlets the mouse dangle. This subject was chosen bya 17 year old girl who had been sexually abused byher father and several other men from birth untilshe was 15 years old. In her case, things alwaysreturned to the identication with her father andher joint guilt as well as an intense internalsadomasochistic restaging, in which the inner victimparts were humiliated, tormented and raped again bythe inner abuser parts, creating a kind of tortuousperpetuum mobile of memories and fantasies.This drawing (pic.13 - p.49) allowed the client totalk about her being abused, about the things thathappened behind the closed windows. By purposefullyapproaching the traumatic memory, a guidedencounter with the trauma and an abreaction becomepossible.


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IegraiAr as a Aideressa

In the act of artistic creation the personexperiences him- or herself as an autonomous

creator. In this example (pic.14 - page 38), thedevelopment from victim to condent, active and

action competent self is clear.

Both gures were created in the same session andportray the process of integrating oppositionalemotional states. This experience can lead to a

change in dealing with oneself.Again and again, it is important to become

reaquainted with the hurt, alienated, abused body,to perceive it differently and be able to

experience it in a new context of meaning.

To this end, the outline of the body was lled withplaces of safety and happiness. Over the course ofseveral sessions, the client was enthusiasticallydesigning trees and other nature scenes. In the

end, she was proud and impressed with being ableto experience her body in a self-determined way andfrom a new perspective. Important aspects were

integrating the own body boundary, which may not betransgressed by anyone and which has to be accept-ed, as well as the different way of dealing with

oneself, loving and caring. This picture(pic.15 - pag. 39) contributed greatly to an

improved sense of self-worth.


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SummaryIn closing, I would like to show you three pic-tures (pics. 16, 17 and 18 - p.49) that were madein three successive sessions and which depict theprocess of coming to terms with trauma in a compact

and examplary way.

This rst picture portrays feelings of overload andlack of perspective. The drama concerning thetraumatic loss of control comes alive in thetroubled, turbulent water. In the next picture, theview expands, a horizon and thus a new perspectiveare revealed. The raft affords an opportunity toreach the safe shore.

The shore is reached and a mountain is climbed.From up there, it is possible to look far into thedistance, forward as well as in all directions.Distancing and reorientation become possible.

With this transformative process I end my talk; Iwould like to encourage you to accept the notion

that people are able to process serious trauma withthe help of pictures. Step by step a positive worldcan be created, a counterworld to the world oftraumatic images. The traumatic images can then beapproached against this background. Eventually, thehorric experience can be integrated with the con-text of ones life as a whole.


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49

Pic. 16

Pic. 17

Pic. 18


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Threehundredandone necklace-2009


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Kimlik kapy aldmzda;*When identity knocks on the door

the response we give to the question:

-Whos there?

is merely

- Its me

this phrase may help me describe

the axis of my art practice.(*Louis Althusser, Ideological State Apparatuses)

In my practice which I employa number of mediums together, my recent work mostly

consists of photographs and video installations.

I might say that the resonancesof the Hrant Dink Memorial Workshop organized bySabanc University again in this conference hall

that I participated in over a year ago

have been a factor compelling meto accept this forum invitation

In the context of the Forum framework, I wouldlike to show simsiz / Untitled (2005), yzbir /Threehundredandone (2009) and Ko / Run (2010)

YASEMIn ZCAn kAYAvisual aris


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tHREEHUnDREDAnDonE330 video installation-2009

2009 Haksz Tahrik /Unjust Provocation- Hafriyat Karaky/stanbul-TR2009 yzbir - Apartman Projesi / Threehundredandone ApartmentProject /stanbul-TRThreehundredandone necklace-2009

2009 Threehundredandone Apartment Project /stanbul-TR

The video Threehundredandone makes reference tothe controversial *article n301 that stands as anobstacle before freedom of thought and expression.The two channel video installation is accompanied

by the Threehundredandone necklace in theexhibition space. I think Hrant Dinks assassina-tion on January 19, 2007 is a watershed for boththis geography, as well as for my personal history.Hrant Dink was convicted of article 301, but whatis much worse is he was killed because of the atmo-sphere spawned by this case. The video installationThreehundredandone actually consists of questionsIve circled around and sought answers to in thelast two years....

The jeweler workshop I worked at as a designer in1993 while I was a student at Mimar Sinan Univer-sity is one of the sources of inspiration for theconcept of Threehundredandone. When I startedworking on the project, I made my rst visit to thesame workshop for the production of the necklace.

Their support for this work is invaluable. I woulddescribe the world of jewelry as a masculine worldworking predominantly for women. As I was producingthis video, obviously my knowledge of that worldand its production processes, as well as my visualmemory of that period were very benecial.

Thinking about *article 301 as one of the obstaclesbefore freedom of thought and expression, the dex-

terous Armenian masters making the necklace, thefact that women own only 3% of the property in theworld, the relationship between women and jewelry,


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how womens bodies are used inthe advertising world The dominant tradition in

which womens value is crowned by jewelry functionsin a similar manner in wedding-birth rituals.

A saying from Anatolia is rather ironic:No matter how fed up I am with pregnancy, I wontgive up the gold diadem if the woman gives birth

to a boy, she is rewarded with a gold headdressjewel called diadem. Even though we appear to have

advanced to *I bought my own diamond ring fromdiadem today and the actors have changed,investment over the jewelry-women-value

relationship still persists

*article 301 - The controversial article of theTurkish Penal Code against the denigration of

Turkishness and an important legal tool torestrict freedom of expression. There are still

ongoing court cases and discussions on the issue.

* I bought my own diamond ringThe name of a popular song by one of Turkeys women

pop vocals, Nil Karaibrahimgil

Threehundredandone 330 video installation-2009


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Threehundredandone HDlm video still-2009

Threehundredandone necklace from installation-2009


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UntItLED330 video installation-2005

2005 Transfer-santralistanbul-Bilgi niversitesi/stanbul-TR

The Neva Shalom Synagogue in the Galata districthas been bombed three times; in 1986, 1992, andmost recently on November 15, 2003, which I havebeen witness to (since I live in the district).A couple of days after the incident, my fatherasked me to make a video recording for insurancebureaucracy purposes (as his ofce is right next tothe synagogue). When I watched this recording madeupon demand two years after the bombing,

I decided to exhibit it after editing with minorinterventions

Untitled video stills - 2005


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RUn330 video-2010

2010 Tabiatm Bu!-Kasa Galeri/Istanbul-TR

I would like to start with an excerptI wrote for the press release

Run (2010) travels from the multilayeredboundaries of psychology to the physical boundaries

of the athletics track. Empty stadium standsaccompany this metaphorical representation:

Sometimes sprints, sometimes hurdles and more oftena marathon or Sreyya? Ayhan? Nevin? Answer?...*

*Sreyya Ayhan and Nevin Yant are professionalathletes from Turkey with considerable

international achievement. Nevin Yants surname

means answer in Turkish.

I would like to conclude with a passagefrom Ceren zseluks text on the video Run

that youve just watched

RUN video still -2010


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(...)Could it be that emotions performed with theforce of a habit are ways of effacing ourselvesfrom the unsettling eld of affects? Yasemin zcanKayas video, Run, approaches this question from adifferent angle. As we watch the artist herself run

next to the empty tribunes of Atatrk OlympicStadium, what at rst appears to be a competitiverace against a smoothly dressed woman leaves itsplace to a performance of running together-apart.As she runs, moving through a series of uncannyobstaclesa female hand (the mother?) extending tooffer a sugar cube, a ower pot of geranium,nishing line and a cupreferences to the practiceof psychoanalytical therapy are implied.

One can read, for instance, the overcoming ofobstacles in terms of a certain release fromfamilial investments, or, more broadly, as adisidentication from approved answers. Similarly,the dream-like presence of the obstacles, of thedisappearance and re-appearance of the woman (atherapist?), and of the empty stadium all makeallusions to the fact that change, according to

analysis, concerns the transformation of ones in-vestments and not an adaptation to the desire of theother, be it concrete people, such as the mother,the therapist, or the symbolic authority as embod-

RUN video still -2010


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ied by the grandeur scale of the stadium. Moreover,the physical effort the artist exerts in running

connotes that such transformation comes not only asa result of linguistic articulation of ones

history, but also involves a simultaneous corporeal

experience of affects. If one, however, slightlysteps away from the metaphor of therapy, the act ofrunning itself offers a model to contemplate analternative way of relating to the world. The

runners in Kayas video are present to one anothereven though they seem to carry distinct identications,have different internal temporalities and are not in

constant physical and emotional togetherness. Whatinstead connects them is an enjoyment of a means

without an end. Maybe we can also think of runningin parallel to art and the distance it creates withinthe artist, allowing the expansion of her singularity

towards unknown receptions? (...)

* From Ceren zseluks published texton the Its In My Nature! Exhibition

RUN video stills -2010


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Jorge Velarde Ferrari, Dibujos en el ro (Drawings on the river)


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Massacres against large groups of population do notconsist only of the act of murdering. They startlong before the crime is perpetrated, through a

long process of progressive stigmatization,hostilisation and exclusion that neutralizes

visually and morally the targeted group. For a

massacre to take place, it is necessary to previ-ously destroying the bonds among the population andisolating the future victims from the rest of the

society. Before the physical annihilation, thecollective to be murdered must be removed from whatthe sociologist Zygmunt Bauman calls the universeof mutual obligations. The target population mustbe effectively sealed off, removed optically andpsychologically from the context of the daily life

and concerns of other groups, and their membersdened as aliens, so that the majority population

does not react with indignation to their prosecution.When this happens, the world itself becomes

the ghetto. It is life without empathy from thenext doors man or woman. It happens when the

future

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