Karapus - ATLAS OF THE SLEEPLESS

Atlas Of The Sleepless
@Halka Art Project

Conceptualized by İpek Çankaya from halka sanat projesi, Atlas of the Sleepless investigates if the sleep or its deprivation prevent us from other emotional states, meetings and spiritual or intellectual searches. It also tries to answer the question “what occupations are the sleepless engaged with so that they resist to sleep?”
Painting, photography, video, installation and sculpture are among the media chosen to reply to the concept. Niyazi Selçuk, Neriman Polat, Orhan Cem Çetin, Seçil Yersel, Doğu Çankaya, Sezgi Abalı, Şafak Şule Kemancı, İskender Giray, Mert Öztekin, Sevil Tunaboylu, Nalan Yırtmaç, Fulya Çetin, Gümüş Özdeş, Yasemin Nur Erkalır, Ekin İdiman and Neşe Şahin are the exhibiting artists.


Karapus, ink on paper, for each page 15x21 cm










For days, I have been dreaming of taking my clothes off one by one, as if I were acting out a dance move, and then, jumping into the cool waters of the Bosporus. Thankfully, sweet but strong winds blow in this new room I have moved into, this room to which I have only just managed to surrender my soul. The truth is; the melancholy winds that have lately been prowling inside of me, in my bones, are colder than the wind brushing upon my neck.

That morning I got up, as usual, around half-past-eight. I was quite tired, worn out under the influence of the dreams I had. I washed my face, lit the cooker; the coffee is brewing. Then I switched on the radio, and lifted up the screen of the laptop. It made that switching-on-sound that both the cat and I found amusing: “Whew-whew-whehehey!” Like a robot, I once again mimicked the sound. Karakız responded: “Mew-ew-aye!”. The coffee was ready. I picked up a cup, although it had a thick edge that I wasn’t happy with, and poured my coffee. I was fascinated by the sound of the hot liquid pouring in. I am at the computer.
“Breaking news: Traffic accident in Çanakkale, 5 dead!” A woman I don’t know has shared the news on Facebook with the heading, “Ah Boysan!”. Thinking it was a similarity of names, I calmly clicked on the link. I turned off the adverts one by one, patiently, but I was slowly losing my nerve. Finally, I got to a video. A solitary, mangled car on a green, windy piece of land.


 

To tell the truth, I did not have much of a rapport with him other than an exhibition we both took part in. We were just two people who knew and greeted each other. But as part of a common sentiment, a common mood, we had danced together in the streets. I always was curious about what he would wear before every LGBTI march. He was a very hard-working activist who had no other option but to win.

I cancelled my program for the day and decided to go to my mom’s. There, I slept for hours in the warmth of my father’s work-hardened hands, and the breeze of the smell of my mother’s cookies. By the time I woke up, the football had begun on TV. The national team of Turkey, while I downed a glass of cold water, had scored in the eighth minute. I looked at the screen, the puppetesque prime minister of the country was standing to applause with the child of a martyred soldier. I only found out when I got back home that two hours before the game, 16 soldiers had been massacred in an ambush in Dağlıca. As I write these words, a friend on WhatsApp is warning friends that ultra-nationalist youth groups will take to the streets tonight at 7 pm.
A small girl whose body was kept in a freezer after she was murdered in an area under curfew, a young man of 21 who was murdered for speaking Kurdish, Kurdish workers trapped in a factory, a truck blocked from leaving, an arson attack on a bookshop, the Biennial at the Splendid Hotel, a hero that made flower tattoos on women’s birthmarks, the flickering heat of the gas lamp, “should I take a photograph of it?”, the politically-correct radio programmer who talks too much, the dilemma suffered by the pseudo-melancholic writer.

No, I am not melancholic. Besides, I want to escape that imputation. Montaigne confirms me. Not only do I think melancholy is a truly pusillanimous mood, but also, it reminds me of a pervert my dad’s age who loved to see me as a melancholic and fragile lady when I was only fifteen. Yet I am of a much too turbulent temper to be melancholic, and besides, my love is far too savage to be a lady. They saw me as they wished to see me. They see me as they wish to see me. 

Now my feelings fall in precisely with Virginia Woolf’s words:
“As a woman I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As a woman, my country is the whole world.”