Büşra Kaya
2021 She graduated from Yıldız Technical University, Department of Art and Culture Management. During her student years; she worked as a volunteer in the Education Department at Istanbul Modern, as an Exhibition Assistant at Evliyagil Dolapdere, as a Board Member and Social Media Coordinator at YTÜ HAYHAK. She completed her undergraduate graduation project by curating the exhibition “Türler Arası” at Müze Evliyagil ArtOda. After working as a designer at Yeşilist, she continues to work as a Gallery Assistant at EArt Gallery and as a freelance designer. She is a student of Yıldız Technical University Museology graduate program.
How Many Legs?
"Perhaps one day the rest of the animal world will also have the rights that were denied to them only through tyranny. The French have realized that just because a human being has black skin, he cannot be left unconditionally to the pleasure of a tyrant. Perhaps one day it will be understood that the number of legs, the amount of hair on the skin, or where the rump ends are equally insufficient reasons to abandon sentient beings to the same fate."
(Kemer, 2016, 22).
Jeremy Bentham
In a potential encounter, does the number of legs an animal has affect our attitude towards it? But it may be possible for a relational encounter with non-human animals to turn into a practice of empathy. We can realize an inter-body dialog with our bodies and perhaps establish a collective practice of empathy.
How possible is it to question our contradictory relationship with animals and to do so without reducing it to a nature-culture dichotomy? It is possible to observe the traces of domination over the life of different species. Since this domination is presented to us in various traditionalized patterns, it can also be seen as containing questioning permeability. Perhaps this is because ongoing intellectual configurations make it difficult to break away from an anthropocentric point of view due to their interlocking and intricate common movements. As in Uexküll's soap bubble metaphor, we can discern the bubble that closes us in our perceived worlds. Since there are no worlds independent of subjects, our ability to do this becomes the intersection of worlds and we can eliminate instrumentalization by getting rid of the perspective that reduces us to objects.
The loss of habitats, the gaze into the unknown and the gradual blurring of boundaries lead to a recalculation of the anthropomorphic projection. Perhaps the unwritten hierarchy also cracks when looking at the non-human animal. And how many legs are there navigating the landslide of cracks?