Tekinsizlik Üzerine Görsel Çözümlemeler

Abstract

No doubt, the 21st century is an age where ties with reality are severed rapidly and lies legitimized. In many spheres of life the subject is experiencing facts, phenomena and circumstances that do not match the definition of reality. This is a fact intensely experienced in our country; and combined with uncertainty, insecurity and the loss of ethical values, it complicates the rational comprehension of our situation. Circumstances deprive the subject of a sheltered, safe and subjective sphere, reinforcing a deliberately induced feeling of uncanniness. Surveillance deepens this feeling, and can drag the subject into a future expectation that is even more characterized by insecurity, anxiety and despair. A look at the creation of artifacts throughout history of art, however, reveals that suspicion of the real (undeniable facts, phenomena and circumstances) can lead artists –notwithstanding their feelings of fear, anxiety etc.– towards a rather fertile border, and sometimes urge them to go beyond. This research grounds the concept of the uncanny within the framework of Freud’s thoughts, and examines the ingredients of that concept –“the sudden appearance of something not existing or the disappearance of something existent; feelings of insecurity, unrecognizability and the complication of rational comprehension”– within the framework of our age’s political discourse. The concept, therefore, is rid of its appealing uses (mysterious, haunted, creepy), and discussed specifically in the context of power-subject relations and their implications on art. The uncanny feeling, which is the starting point of practical work, is studied through artistic applications based on the phenomenon of surveillance and how it makes the subject feel. In this process the uncanny feeling, along with subconscious elements from which it feeds, has created similar metaphors, which have been analyzed at times with an expressive, and at other times with a conceptual approach.