SENA BAŞÖZ
ARCHIVES AND REGENERATION:
Holding on - Letting go
2020-2022
The investigation of loss and cycles of nature between 2018-2019 culminated in a new project on archives as a tool to regenerate. The artist views creating an archive as an act of care. Regeneration may happen when a third-party uses the archive to create a new narrative.
After her solo show On Lightness in 2018, Başöz worked as a content creator for 23,5 Hrant Dink Memory Site. Sourcing from the Hrant Dink archive, a narration was installed in his former office building. Through this experience, she realized how much time and effort activating an archive requires and observed the endless possibilities of potential narratives that an archive holds.
In January-February 2020, the artist was a resident artist at Delfina Foundation London doing research for a performance piece called Slalom on conditions of activating an institutional archive as the climate crisis changes how we position ourselves within time. Slalom is a proposal to activate the information that has been preserved in the face of forces of nature. The piece uses movement, sound and the spoken word to explore the potentialities of healing, and of slowing down time. Two different site specific versions of Slalom responding to different archives took place; in TAVROS Athens on 4th March 2022 and at Wellcome Collection London on 26th, 27th and 28th June 2022.
Parallel to her work on institutional archives, the artist questions the future of accumulated personal stories and knowledge that leak through the linear narratives of human lives and do not fit into an institutional structure. Her solo exhibition “A Consolation” open to the public between September 12th and October 31st, 2020 at KRANK ART Gallery, Istanbul is composed of her work on her own archive.
Her research in Basel at lotsremark projekte in Fall 2020 explores both what the city holds in its archives and what flows through without being archived. She mentions a time when the River Rhine stops flowing, reminiscent of global warming and related end of the world scenarios.
Slalom
4 March 2022 in TAVROS, Athens
26th, 27th and 28th May 2022 at Wellcome Collection, London
Performance commissioned by Block Universe Performance Art Festival London, Delfina Foundation and SAHA Derneği with support from Wellcome Collection and TAVROS
Concept and Direction: Sena Başöz
Choreography: Sena Başöz, Sedef Gökçe, Canan Yücel Pekiçten
Performance and Dance Artists: Sena Başöz, Sedef Gökçe, Canan Yücel Pekiçten
Original Soundtrack: Semih Fırıncıoğlu
2' excerpt from Wellcome Collection performance: https://vimeo.com/756114692
We are approaching the future at an accelerated rate whilst the future simultaneously speeds towards us. Technological advancements and human intervention in the environment have capitulated us into a climate crisis, a point of almost no return. At this pivotal moment, many communities around the world are looking for forms of regeneration and healing.
The artist thinks of our current relationship to time as akin to skiing downhill full speed. Activating an archive, on the other hand, requires time. In order to deal with the lengthy process of working with an archive, an accelerated body must slow down skillfully. "Slalom" investigates how to take these turns. The performance is tightly connected to the content of the archive that the performance space houses. Wellcome’s collections contain an array of topics relating to health and the human experience in many forms. TAVROS holds an archive on the economic history of Greece in the 20th century relating to agriculture, industry and the banking sector.
The artist reads Wellcome's collections under the title "climate" at Wellcome Collection and Piraeus Bank Group's historic archive at TAVROS while the two performers try to keep up with its rhythm mimicking slalom skiers' movements. Correspondingly, the artist tries to move forward and keep her balance together with them. Moving in an expanded moment, together they investigate the possibilities of conciliation.
Photo credit: Dimitris Parthimos for TAVROS
Photo credit: Nazlı Meriç Çukurova
Photo credit: Dimitris Parthimos for TAVROS
Photo credit: Dimitris Parthimos for TAVROS
Photo credit: David Sandison for Wellcome Collection
Photo credit: David Sandison for Wellcome Collection
Photo credit: David Sandison for Wellcome Collection
Photo credit: David Sandison for Wellcome Collection
A Consolation
September 12th-October 31st, 2020
KRANK ART Gallery, Istanbul
The name of the exhibition comes from Cicero’s lost philosophical work Consolatio written to soothe his grief after the death of his daughter. Başöz is concerned with the tension of narrating personal archives that don’t necessarily fit into an institutional structure.
The video installation that gives its name to the exhibition, A Consolation is placed on the floor of the exhibition space. While the artist was working with Hrant Dink Archive for the creation of 23,5 Hrant Dink Memory Site, she went through her own archive of photographs, written and printed material questioning the future of accumulated personal stories and knowledge that leak through the linear narratives of human lives and do not fit into an institutional structure. She places a looping video of posidonia oceanica, a seaweed native to the Mediterranean, next to the pile of shredded material from her own archive. The seaweed resembles the shredded archive formally. Can the underwater meadow offer a consolation for the lost, the destroyed, or the forgotten in a morass of information? The artist reflects on cycles of knowledge and memory through the seaweed that sway collectively in an underwater meadow before drifting away, eventually forming piles on beaches, and then turning into compost.
Next to the installation on the wall is a series of 4 collages on paper called Postcards for the Future. The artist leaves notes to the future through these postcards made from shredded sunrise and sunset photographs from the artist’s personal archive, bird feathers, human hair and dried seaweed. These materials initially exist within a multitude and continually disperse. She is interested in the medium of postcard as an archival material and what it preserves. Can the dispersed material be re-activated as parts of a whole?
Aviation Series is a series of cubes made out of bird feathers of varying sizes. The artist has been repeatedly interested in the form of the cube as a metaphor for the rational mind. The cube is the most efficient shape to fit and preserve articles in. Tidying up, categorizing are methods of the human mind dealing with the complexity of the universe. These feather cubes offer a proposal for reconciliation between nature and the human rationality.
Family Album is made using 2 reversed photographs placed on top of each other in order to create the illusion of a 3D cube. The artist has been interested in the form of the cube as a metaphor for the rational mind. The cube is the most efficient shape to fit and preserve articles in. Tidying up, categorizing are methods of the human mind dealing with the complexity of the universe. These cubes question the photographs capacity to hold and preserve.
This Used to be Sea is a collage made with a vintage postcard of ruins from Denizli, the artist's hometown, placed on dried seaweed. The Moon brings together shredded photographs soaked in water with dried seaweed. Both pieces investigate continuous coming into pieces of the world and cycles of renewal.
The Box, The Box consists of a sequence of various objects hidden inside thick, dark, long hair being picked over sometimes by a male and sometimes by a female hand. In the video compassion and care trigger phenomena in contrast such as concealment and revelation, holding on and letting go, death and life.
The Box
2020
4’31” video
A Consolation
2020
Varying sizes
Shredded photographs and paper documents with 1'35'' video loop documentation: https://vimeo.com/753580508
Aviation Series
2020
Varying sizes
Bird feathers
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Postcards for the Future
2020
44x28 cm each
Shredded photograph, bird feathers, hair and dried seaweed on paper
_jp.jpg)
This Used to be Sea
2020
52x40 cm
Vintage postcard and dried seaweed on paper
.jpg)
The Moon
2020
50x38 cm
Soaked shredded photograph and dried seaweed on paper
Family Album
2020
44x32 cm each
Photograph and watercolor on paper
.jpg)
Ars Oblivionis
September 31st-December 12th, 2020
Installations at various spots in Basel, an installation at lotsremark Projekte using white flags and paper strips and a book of interviews titled Riverbed
Lotsremark Projekte installation documentation: https://vimeo.com/497704349
Sena Başöz took the River Rhine as a metaphor of memory during her two-month stay as artist in residence at lotsremark in Basel. The artist explored both what the city holds in its archives and what flows through without being archived. She conducted interviews with archivists of important archives of the city and people with immigrant backgrounds to explore transnational cultures of memory that extend from Basel to Turkey. In her artistic research, she mentions a time when the River Rhine stops flowing, reminiscent of global warming and related end of the world scenarios. The idea of a potential end, intensified by the current Covid 19 pandemic, is set side by side with the human effort to preserve. She installed flags pointing to the flow direction of the River Rhein wherever she conducted an interview. The result of this research is presented as a site-specific installation in her exhibition titled Ars Oblivionis. that took place between September 31st-Dec 12th, 2020 at Lotsremark Projekte in Basel and a book of the interviews titled Riverbed published in 2021 by Onagöre.
The Outline is a looping video of combing the River Rhine with hair combs in the opposite direction of its flow. The hair combs stand as a metaphor for tools of the rational mind, creating small ripples within the turbulent flow of the river.
The Outline
2020
1’38” looping video
.jpg)
Riverbed
Year: 2021 Size: 12,5 × 18 cm 128 pages Edition: 300
Published by: Onagöre
Sena Başöz’s Riverbed builds on interviews she conducted with migrants and archivists in Basel. These conversations are set against a fictional end-of-the-world scenario inspired by current catastrophic trends.
Using the river as a metaphor for memory in flux, she asks:
“What would remain if the river Rhine stopped flowing? What would you want to keep?”