Ande Ömeroğlu completed her bachelor's degree in philosophy at Boğaziçi University with Art and Film Studies Certificates. She had an internship at Mixer Art Gallery in the summer of 2019. She worked as a founding writer in the Close Relationships team between 2018-2019. She played an active role in Boğaziçi University Social Service Club, Boğaziçi University Ayvalık Summer and Winter Schools Projects. Ande Ömeroğlu, who was a participant in the Contemporary Art and Curating Seminar Program in 2019-2020, completed the program in third degree.
While the historical attitude – that is about remembering more and forgetting less – can cause a cognitive blockage or collapse on an individual and cultural level, the unhistorical attitude can go too far in effacing the individual and collective past.
The exhibition takes its name from Nietzsche’s concept of plastic power, which he associates exactly with this balance between being historical and unhistorical, in other words, with remembering and forgetting. To put it briefly, plastic power can be defined as the capacity to transform the past, to incorporate it into oneself, to replace what has been lost, to heal, to use historicality as a means to grow/develop autonomously instead of being seized and suffocated by it, and as the ability to remember at the right time and to forget at the right time. It is worth mentioning that the notion of forgetting here is an active deed of forgetting that goes through the stages of definition, evaluation of the process with the passing of time, of its digestion, its internalization, of its transformation and sublimation, and we should highlight that the process is about transforming that which exists instead of being obliterated by it.
Traumas of a cultural and individual scale often cause breaks and disruptions in the continuity of identity. In order to continue proceeding on its course, the traumatized culture or individual needs to find meaning in what was experienced or reach some sort of closure. Making sense or being able to reach closure is related to the capacity of transforming the past and incorporating it into oneself. Each individual or culture realizes this closure through its own resources, there is no single formula or model of how this is achieved.
The exhibition Plastic Power brings together the works of contemporary artists from a variety of different fields and disciplines, who contemplate on remembering, forgetting, individual/collective memory, post-traumatic recovery and transformation. While inviting people to think about the functional aspects of forgetting in contrast to the human beings’ existential efforts about remembering/not forgetting, it also emphasizes not forgetting what needs to be remembered. How do traumas occupy a place in individual or collective memories? What kind of a healing and transformation process do we experience after a trauma? What do we experience in this process? What do we incorporate into ourselves and what do we leave behind as we move forward?