SENA BAŞÖZ
SYSTEMS OF SUPPORT:
Agents and Tools of Caring
2009-2017
The investigation of friction and wounding between 2006-2011 culminated in a new project in search for tools of care and healing.
In 2009, Sena Başöz realized a series of street performances about a nurse who did not know what to do with herself. For two weeks she was in disguise of an 80’s nurse, who is both a personal admiration as well as part of her personal history. She had been thinking on how nurses’ caregiving and selfless attitude is associated with women among the society as an idealized gender role.
As she was going through tools and agencies of healing, she realized that bandages are collages applied to the wound. Her video work Doctoring, consisting of a series of operated photographs, emerged as a result of this period.
The Artist Book Working through the Beginning Sequence blocks/censors images of Gezi Park events with black patches in a similar fashion.
Her nurse alter ego resurfaces in her video Be the Doctor, Practice Nursing in 2016. In the video, the nurse realizes that the wound might require dressing, but it will also heal by itself over time.
Working Through the Beginning Sequence
2014
Artist book
Be the Doctor, Practice Nursing
2016
6’24” single channel video
Commissioned by SPOT production fund for Produce 3
Be the Doctor, Practice Nursing is in three parts: In part one, the nurse separates herself from the rest of the world. Part two is about depression and desires. It proposes a moment of activation of what is kept frozen. Part three is on reuniting. The wound requires dressing but in reality it can also heal by itself in time. A nurse wishing to transform the world knows this well.
The Screen
2016
This project was commissioned by SPOT production fund for Produce 3 exhibition.
3’ video loop on vintage medical screen
Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/173021043
The playful video of floating white bones on the sea is shot in Çeşme on a shore that is close to the Greek island Chios. The images in the video are cut outs from the Sobotta Atlas of Human Anatomy, first issued in 1904 and has been published in more than 300 editions, still in use today. It maps the layers of human body. The cut outs float between borders and dissolve onto the source of life; representing an ultimate unification. How can we grasp the meaning of human life and tragedies when we look from the perspective of the earth and its own time?
Naming is Death
2016
lecture performance with Yasemin Özcan
Commisioned by SPOT production fund in 2016 for Produce 3
Is it possible to recover through art? Is the creative process always simultaneously healing? With references to their own personal histories, Sena Başöz and Yasemin Özcan take the concept of healing within their respective artistic practices off the table and onto the sick bed for this lecture performance. This is also an invitation to explore the potential space between positive sciences and accumulation of esoteric knowledge. Without failing to nod at Jung and Beuys, a poem begins.
Date :April 25, 2016
Place: Koç Pera
Notes on a Parallel Life
2017
5’50’’ Performance video
Realized as part of Experiementierfeld Tokyo Project with the production grant of SAHA foundation.
Notes on a Parallel Life is a performance Sena Başöz realized in her alterego ‘the nurse’. The nurse tries to adapt to Tokyo while also attempting to alter it using a tool she builds.
Sweetheart
2017
Site-Specific Sound Loop
In her sound installation Sweetheart, Sena Başöz reads terms of endearment directed towards an unknown subject expressively. This recorded sound is then installed at the bottom of the pittosporum shrub in the garden of the exhibition space. In this way, the shrub in the secluded corner of the garden starts speaking, just like the reeds not being able to keep a secret, whispering; "King Midas has an ass's ears". Freed from the holy mother or the desire of a woman, these terms of endearment are broadcasted to the public space.