Caner Turan
Caner Turan graduated from Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Art History with his thesis titled “Representations of Confronting Traumas in the Context of Relational Aesthetics in Contemporary Art”. He completed his master’s degree at Boğaziçi University, Department of Philosophy. He is currently pursuing his PhD at Istanbul Technical University, Institute of Social Sciences, Department of Art History as a TÜBİTAK scholar.
He attended various seminars and summer schools in countries such as Denmark, India, Portugal, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Czech Republic. He completed the “Contemporary Art and Curatorship” training program organized in cooperation with Open Dialogue Istanbul and Akbank Sanat in the 2022-2023 period with the exhibition project “The Dictatorship of the They”. In 2022, he was one of the 6 writers accepted to the Yazıhane 2022 Art Writing project, which was organized jointly by Narmanlı Sanat and the Consulate of Japan and received applications through an open call. His articles in the field of art history were published in some refereed journals and his art writings were published on some platforms. He continues his literary productions by writing stories. His stories have appeared in various magazines, fanzines and selections. He is the author of the story book Akordiyoncu, published by Edebiyatist Publisher in 2021.
Collective Dictatorship
This exhibition invites contemplation on the possibilities of resistance against mechanisms of domination that homogenize and expose the fragility of the individual.
“We are social creatures driven to anxiety by our uniqueness. Society offers us false and easy ways to address this concern through sameness. It invites us to consume the same products, to work in the same jobs, to adopt the same goals, and to define ourselves by conformity and the insignificant nuances of difference.” (Fromm, The Art of Loving, 1985, Preface)
In the modern and globalizing world, authority and the instruments of authority hegemonize the human body and the human spirit. Both real and virtual life are dominated by security policies, CCTV cameras, digital coding, banking systems, identity numbers, address registration systems, geographical information systems, borders, biopolitical and economic approaches, super-modern strategies where everything is transformed into statistics and numerical values at the expense of freedom. The tools of the super-modern world separate and atomize individuals from each other and drive them towards the anxiety of loneliness, which is one of the vital anxieties such as death and meaninglessness, and then reunite the atomized individuals through habits, technological and ideological devices, fashions, trends, etc. and provide them with relief. This leads to the reproduction of domination and hegemony. Based on Heidegger's concept of “everyone” (the they), it can be said that hegemony makes us nothing in a sense and causes us to live our lives in a way that is exempt from differences and innovations in the daily life established with all these habits, routines and repetitions. Within such a framework, as a public and anonymous being, we move away from being authentic and from our own singularity. We rarely experience authentic moments where we feel that we are ourselves. In the network of spaces, actions, relations and numerical values created by the instruments of domination, the individual is reduced to a status that can be replaced by the they and is distanced from his/her uniqueness. In such a world, which Heidegger calls the dictatorship of the they (Being and Time, p. 189), super-modernity suppresses our selfhood and authenticity with all its tools. In the dictatorship of all, the dominance of the ordinary, the commonplace and the habitual becomes present. Where individuals who retreat into their own shells experience the illusion of authenticity and freedom, mediocrity permeate emotions, thoughts, feelings, preferences, decisions and actions. The oppressed individual becomes hyper-individualized and more self-protective, while becoming more and more singularized and more and more fragile. The loneliness concerns that arise with this fragility make him/her a willing thing to live under the dictatorship of the they.
Should the individual who loses his/her authenticity in the cycle of hegemony, loneliness anxiety, vulnerability and re-hegemony perceive his/her stuckness in this meaningless cycle as a herald of rebellion and victory, like Sisyphus, or should he/she seek another way of salvation by uncovering the means to destroy this evil cycle from within? Where and how should one position oneself in such a situation? What role can art play here?