Silence as a space of being - Before

keywords: silence, temporal space, disruption, being, self, neutral


“...Any fixed claim on realness, especially when it is tied to an identity, also has a finger in psychosis. -Quoting Lacan- ‘If a man who thinks he is a king is mad, a king who is a king is no less so.’” *


There has always been an obsession to define things-but also “selves”. After the rise of identity politics, not anyone excluded by power but some groups discriminated in terms of gender, sexuality, race and class have been trying to find different strategies to fight against the power and injustice and one of them has been gaining “visibility” through representations and claiming new definitions. These are very helpful to the people in the discovery of identity and its expression; however, there is a certain point that visibility and existing representations are restrictive, and further tricky in the aspect of surveillance. Identity itself is structured by power and “self” is categorized in definitive boxes. At this point, “Who am I?” equals “What is my identity?” and somehow it requires articulating.


Constructing the same structure of identity in the name of reversing it, may be problematic. “Being” involves temporality, so it is not something definitive; there is vagueness, fluctuations and deviations in its nature. Among all the noise of identities, it is important to have a break in structured reality to think “self” out of them. More than definitions, we need disruptions. And “silence” could be attempted to be conceptualized as a temporal and neutral space to provide this disruption to just be. Since only clinging to fixed definitions of silence might be problematic, digging aural and visual depictions of this vagueness in silence would be another method to help.


from the series "apaçık saklı" (2020)


“How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake. Let me sit here for ever with bare things, this coffee cup, this knife, this fork, things in themselves, myself being myself.” **


(*) Nelson, M. (2015) The Argonauts. Graywolf Press.

(**) Woolf, V. (1931) The Waves. p.253. Collector’s Library

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