this year I have learned:
that
becoming American takes about 12 years.
that
leaving New York isn’t easy.
that
it's easier to leave than to be left behind.
that
there is a wood shop close by MoMA PS1.
that
the ceiling of MoMA PS1’s basement is very low.
that
WT Papier is coated with SunChemical white offset ink.
that
just before the final countdown begins, the Danish national television broadcasts a black and white German short film called Dinner For One.
that
watching Vito Acconci’s Openings makes me very uncomfortable. The camera focuses on his stomach as he pulls out his body hair, until he is hairless.
that
being in the same room with Jonas Mekas is magical.
that
I have to write and record everyday.
that I
have to write and edit my version of the calendar everyday.
that
in 1974 Danny Lyon went to Columbia to make a film about homeless children living on the streets. It is called Los Ninos Abandonados.
that
Cameraperson is a film by Kirsten Johnson which confronts the nature of seeing, being present, and dealing with memory and trauma.
that
dispossession means the action of depriving someone of land, property, or other possessions.
that
my desk at the garden room is the second most unwanted.
that
rumination means that you continuously think about the various aspects of situations that are upsetting.
that
there are 75 living plants in Werkplaats.
that
missing the first three weeks of school is not very nice.
that
there is something mysteriously hidden in school.
that
there is a space called John Cage in school.
that
I have limitations.
that
I have shortcomings.
that
memory can be fiction.
that
memory can be fact.
that
Rome wasn’t built in one day.
that
my new apartment in Arnhem is located on top of a fried chicken shop.
that
my new life is free of old restrictions.
that
my new apartment is too big for me.
that
it is not possible to find good avocados in the Netherlands.
that
it is not possible to be in two places at once.
that
it rains in Arnhem even when it doesn't rain.
that
I can cook Turkish lentil soup for 18 people.
that
Friday lunch team is the best.
that
Eloise is into Halloween as much as I am.
that
I have a big mouth.
that
sometimes I get very dark.
that
Rotterdam is beautiful and jenever makes you hug people.
that
I have troubling ideas about home.
that
I am interested in home, distance and yearning.
that
I feel foreign in my home town.
that
my work is about dislocation, memory, trauma, translation, time, collective memory and spoken word.
that
my work is also about
cultural heritage.
that
there are days I don’t speak Turkish at all.
that
there are days I can’t speak Turkish at all.
that
there are days I am afraid of forgetting Turkish.
that
there are days I react to sudden pain in English. instead of "ah!", I say "ouch"
that
a prototype is the bridge between one and infinite.
that
I can make a garden with using wild weeds that only grow in Turkey.
that
every cultivated flower is the descendant of a wild one.
that
I lost my mother tongue.
that
I am interested in emotional truth.
that
I have trust issues.
that
I am interested in dislocation and what it does to people.
that
turning thirty five is a disorienting experience.
that
there is a Turkish poem about turning thirty five.
that
I am reminded of my age almost everyday.
that
Gertrude Stein thinks we are always the same age inside.
that
she offered to translate George Hugnet's poem called Enfance for him but instead she wrote a poem about it. This first pleased Hugnet too much and then did not please him at all.
that
New York haunts me.
that
I can fail.
that
I might miss the boat.
that
I love repetition.
that
I love the action of
doing the same thing over and over again.
that
Currency is a magazine edited by Sico Carlier.
that
I was given the second issue to experiment with for WT Papier.
that
in Currency 2; Didier Lestrade interviewed John Waters about murders, trials, Divine, money, electric chairs, Baltimore, Edith Massey, Odorama, car accidents, eating no more shit.
that
Lestrade thinks John Waters is the craziest director of his kind.
that
I love disassembling design, imagining the beginnings of publications.
that
we can invite Sico Carlier for a living room session.
that
loose associations is a thought disorder.
that
I love LA.
that
I can live in LA.
that
United States of America selected the most awful president of its history.
that
asterisk means “little star” in Greek.
that
in computer science, the asterisk is commonly used as a wildcard character, or to denote pointers, repetition, or multiplication.
that
The original asterisk shape was seven-armed, each arm like a teardrop shooting from the center.
that
I am interested in memoirs as work.
that
I believe that feelings are facts.
that
I believe in Yvonne Rainer.
that
imagination and design never really align.
that
in Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides.
that
walking is a strange gesture in Los Angeles.
that
protesting against Trump feels amazing.
that
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's second film is about a movie director, going back to his hometown to make a movie using a cast of local people. It is called Boredom of May, but was translated as Clouds of May.
that
Theaster Gates had a solo show in Regen Projects. It was called But To Be A Poor Race.
that
there are about 53 bookstores in Los Angeles.
that
once a person is misplaced they become immediately vulnerable.
that
ASCII is abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange.
that
most of the time my work is about underlining or highlighting other people’s work.
that
I like finding the common denominator.
that
I love working with sound.
that
footnotes are as important as the main text and deserve more attention in general.
that
there is a thrift store in LA that offers HIV Testing.
that
Trisha Brown died.
that
one of the ongoing metaphors in Trisha Brown’s MG: The Movie was time; not metered time or measured time but stranger notions like the volume of time, past time, time peeling away.
that
in order to become a group, each person must give up little pieces of themselves.
that
the present perfect is a grammatical combination of the present tense and the perfect aspect that is used to express a past event that has present consequences.
that
Quad is a television play by Samuel Beckett, written and first produced and broadcast in 1981, the year I was born. It is a brief, wordless exercise in movement and geometry.
that
small towns in north France feel like the end of the world.
that
everything tastes better in France.
that
Kendrick Lamar sounds better in France.
that
Paris is terminally beautiful.
that
Turkey said yes to
dictatorship.
that
people laugh at you when you say you are feminist in Turkey.
that
there are still street cats, dogs and children everywhere in Turkey.
that
no one complains about hearing the same prayer five times a day, everyday in Turkey.
that
there are lots of things under the carpets in Turkey.
that
there are lots elephants in the rooms in Turkey.
that
personal space does not exist in Turkey.
that
places change when someone leaves them.
that
I feel shame when I speak Turkish in Arnhem.
that
I am interested in Turkish rituals, traditions, archetypes, and anomalies.
that
if I can understand Turkish tradition, maybe I can go back home again.
that
there is a Turkish expression that reads: A person who is separated from their lover cries for seven years, but the person who is separated from their home cries till they die.
that
in the Ottoman Empire belly dance was performed by both boys and women in the Sultan's palace.
that
during the 80’s turkish actor Masist Gül made a series of six comic books by hand with the title Pavement Myth–The Life of the Pavement’s Wolf. The story takes place between 1905 and 1978. It is written in Turkish and is impossible to translate without significant loss of meaning as he wrote everything in rhyme, using the language in a highly personal way.
that
Jodorowsky's latest film, The Dance of Reality is a magic-realist memoir of the director's own childhood, filled with iguanas, circus clowns and amputees. He shot most of the action in his hometown of Tocopilla.
that
a will-o'-the-wisp is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travelers at night, especially over bogs, swamps, or marshes.
that
the movie Un chant d'amour by Jean Genet has no conversation.
that
Chris Kraus' writing is magic.
that
Simone Veil is the first radical philosopher of sadness.
that
she said “To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.”
that
Nabokov said “My private tragedy, which cannot, indeed should not, be anybody’s concern, is that I had to abandon my natural language, my natural idiom.”
that
Agnès Varda said: “I am putting together elements that touch your memory of your own life. I want people to get back to themselves; I don’t want to impose anything.”
that
the Indonesian mass killings of 1965–1966 were large-scale killings occurred over many months, targeting communist sympathizers, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists.
that
there are lots of things swept under the carpet in Indonesia.
that
Bruno Munari designed a fountain in 1954 and it was erected in front of the Book Pavilion at the Venice Biennale Exhibition.
that
Auriane and I are making a door bell.
that
the WT will soon have a new door bell.
that
WT doorbell is becoming a platform.
that
reversing the fundamental function of an object is forever exciting.
that
A civil defense siren is a siren used to provide emergency warning of approaching danger and sometimes when the danger has passed.
that
the bell is confronting, magic making.
that
the bell is scandalous.
that
the bell is the the very act of hearing.