Artistic journey as a Turkish artist, writer, and filmmaker.
Childhood alienation from school and mainstream education.
First encounter with the idea of “the artist” as a life path.
The detour years following a struggle with the father: philosophy, literature, making art, searching for a path.
Discovering Kathmandu through Elif Köksal’s book Katmandu’da Ev Hali, meeting Ganesha through the book.
The story of Ganesha breaking his tusk in order to keep writing.
Magical alignments on the way to art school.
Arriving in Amsterdam without housing; surviving through cleaning, birth chart readings, and selling collages at the art market.
Receiving unexpected housing through Rebecca’s generosity, and seeing Ganesha in the house.
Humour as a filmmaking language.
Art school is not the only route to becoming an artist, even though academia has value when it offers mentorship, feedback, and community.
Boredom as useful information.
Eros as a guide toward what feels alive.
Self-honesty in building a practice, the importance of pivoting, leaving behind what is not right; listening for what genuinely calls you.
Studying film language independently, building cinematic language outside formal training.
Delays can carry meaning.
bell hooks and going to theory because of pain; research as embodied and emotional practice.
The devaluation of joyful or embodied learning in academia.
Grief as a teacher. Grief as a thesis supervisor.
Mortality as a force in artistic and intellectual life.
Radical pedagogies.
Child Woven: Tracing Liberated Futures of Learning.
Baldwin’s ties to Turkey and the south of France.
The research process for Movement Song.
Ethics in making work. The values at the core of a project. Histories and entanglements that shape the maker and the work.
Responsibility toward documentary subjects.
Dignity as a visual language. How framing, sound, angle, and editing can dignify someone.
Archive as a living being.
Touching Baldwin’s typewriter.
Confidence rooted in hard work.
Audiences who are generous, audiences who are hostile.
Discerning useful feedback from bad intentions.
Being selective about where work is shown.
Protecting the preciousness of the work.
The question of reason: why make art, tell stories, or do this work at all?
Artists remaining alive through transmission.
Turning one’s life into an offering; packed with values, guidance, inspiration.
Finding the reason that resonates most deeply and trusting it.