Personal Research

After reading Alberto Manguel’s books called “Library At Night” and “The History of Reading” , the meaning of library for me evolved in another direction. The keywords are that Manguel were keen on in both books are eternity, labyrinth order and disorder. Unintentionally, my works began to shape around these notions. During my regular visits to libraries while reading these ideas, I started to experiment with my camera on how to look at the library in different ways. My attitude towards libraries became mysterious, distant and frightened as I started to see them as infinite labyrinth where I can get lost or never get out again. So my images resulted from a gaze of a voyeuristic person who is holding back from losing him/herself in and investigating the library as its an eternal labyrinth and a frightening place where anything weird can happen. Because it contains many words, images stories and knowledge, the library is a powerful formation which can hunt down my imaginary curious person. 

Besides, while reading Dreaming by the Book by Elaine Scarry, I came across another  idea from J.J. Gibson’s “kinetic depth effect” which means using layer on layer method in literature to make the reader picture the scene which is described. As I have always been interested in and admirer of layered images and installations, I developed ideas around using transparent layers to give depth and eternity to an image or a sentence.  This made me think of the order of library and how it goes eternal and becomes a disordered formation by adding more knowledge- and obviously more books- as Jorge Luis Borges mentions in his short story called “The Library of Babel”. The last sentence of this story which is The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order). has triggered me to try a layered exhibition system with words. Dividing the sentence into sections and printing on transparent papers, I arranged them back to back to give a feeling of order -but on the other hand disorder -by a proper typography and make the spectator feel that the sentence goes infinite. With the sentence’s meaning and the exhibition method, the result is an ironic work.

From these experiences and sketches of ideas, I will concentrate on using transparency and layer on layer methods by combining the voyeuristic gaze and the infiniteness of the library after reading and taking references from Trial by Franz Kafka.

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