INTRODUCTION

Under the umbrella of Art-ist publication, we are continuing to support the Art-ist Contemporary Art Series of Artist Books on young Turkish artists. The series was unitiated in 2008 with a publication on Ahmet Ogut and this, the second edition, is devoted to Bashir Borlakov. Art-ist contemporary Art Series is one of the few publishing initiatives helping to supply a serious deficiency of print opportunities for young, contemporary artists in Turkey

 

Although the contemporary art scene in Turkey experienced growth, heightened activity and extended opportunities after 2000 with the emergence of new museums, art galleries, artist initiatives and collectors, we can not say the same for the areas of publishing, literary creation and critical thinking. Therefore with tis publication series, which only focuses on the production of young artists, we intend to provide the beginnings of a support structure for  ‘literary production’ and ‘memory creation’

 

Bashir and I have know each other since our student years at the Marmara University an the Faculty of Fine Arts. While Bashir was an undergraduate, I was a graduate student in the same department. We were going to the same studio and attending the same lectures as given by professors such as Balkan Naci islimyeli an Bulent Sangar. Since our firs acquaintance I have been following Bashir’s practice with great curiosity. We have gone on to work together or many occasions and I have included Bashir’s work in my curatorial projects: ‘kotuyum ve gurur duyuyorum!’ (2002), ‘ Seni oldurecegim icin gurur duyuyorum/I am too Sad to Kill You (2003), ‘Serbest Vurus/ Free Kick (2005) and ‘Gercekci ol imkansizi talep et’ (2007). I am therefor extremely excited to be preparing the first book of Bashir Borlakov’s work, and to share with our readers one of the most productive and authentic artists of this generation.

 

Bashir came to Istanbul  to satudy after high school education in a small city of Russia called Karachevsk, since then he has always maintained an active role in Istanbul art scene. He was one of participants of the Istanbul Contemporary Art Project (ICAP) meetings, seminars and discussions held from 1998 during and after the lectures of Vasif Kortun and has gone on to participate in numerous exhibitions, developing his work during a period of time which saw the local market in Turkey undergo a major change at the and of 90s.

 

Bashir has worked with photography since the beginning of his practice, constantly pushing the limits of this medium. The perfomative fictional photograph he takes are composed of occasionally autobiographic and absurd synergies, witch are in fact mostly inspired by daily life. He has in the new capitalist life format. He creates photographic fictional compositions originating from the new capitalist life formed in his ex-socialist country in 1991. The firs of these is the ‘Panoramas’ series which he produced in his hometown Karachevsk. And the more recent, is a collection of fiction-assemblage panoramas that he displayed in his firs solo exhibition in Gallery Nev, Istanbul in April 2009. This new group of eight photographs reflects a period when he went back to his hometown in Russia, after ten years to the place where he spent his childhood and early adolescence years. The discursive, linguistic and aesthetic differences found within these photographs have drawn much attention to Bashir’s work.

 

Art- Ist’s second artist book is the firs comprehensive publication to look at the practice of Bashir Borlakov. However, I’m sure that for this very talented artist, who is an experet in evaluating the issues of his age, many judgments will be made, debates will be held and futher books will be prepared.

 

In his artistic adventure, which he embarked upon at the end of nineties and pursued until today, Bashir always produces very silent but profound works with a piercing awareness of  society and the captivating attractions of the fictive. He manages to capture the little moments of corruption that no one has noticed, as well as the hidden, hopeful moments that lurk around us. I guess the reason why he is so indispensable and necessary is that while he lives in such a large space, with his eyes and soul opening the doors of this world for us, he knows how to see and show the normalized queerness’s and fascinating little blisses that are not normally noticed in reality that goes beyond time and space.

 

HALIL ALTINDERE

 

 

 

AN INDIFFERENT DOG AND BORLAKOV MELANCHOLIA

 

Bashir Borlakov’s solo exhibition, ‘Mexican dreams’, opened at the Pilot Gallery on 22 November. If we cast our minds back to when Bashir Borlakov’s art first came to the fore, we recall that it relied very much on the absurd. Borlakov’s technique, also commonly used within the culture of Turkish humour, combines the symbolic details of Turkish culture with what can be termed as western culture, in such a way as to present a scene of complete absurdity. This is exemplified in one of Borlakov’s best known images, ‘Nameless’, from  2001 in which he juxtaposes a  ballerina, a delicate Turkish tea glass, a man dressed in tights, a moustachioed Anatolian man and the blue evil eye talisman.

These types of composition came into common use in Turkish humour with the cognizance of a similar outcome to the shock effect anticipated by surrealists with their gatherings of unrelated objects. Within all this, an important role is played by the assumption that there is an essence of modernity and that this is different from ‘our’ essence; as a result of this difference, when the expressions of modernity are placed over our essence, they always appear makeshift and comic, and the unfolding of this comedy gives a hint of satire whilst at the same time containing the criticism of discordance. Of course, the biggest problem with such a view is that it internalises the Eurocentric side of the modernity discourse, and the idea of the essence of modernism is so deeply entrenched that it is blind to the fact that it is a western construct.

For a short while maintaining his connection with humour, Borlakov seemed to be criticising the Financial System by displaying its inherent primitiveness (especially in his 2001 series entitled ‘Business Man’ in which he shows suited businessmen pushing one another onto the ground rather like Conan the Barbarian, or businessmen lunging at each other). It seems as if Borlakov presents these businessmen as charlatans in suits who consume each other out of greed; or who are, perhaps, incapable of moving from the confines of banality and make up the constituent components of the skyscrapers in the background. On the other hand, it could be interpreted as showing the appointment of a new generation of white collar workers, employed lower down the scale in insecure positions, as the gladiators of today.

Borlakov always worked with conceptual photographs. However, the highly humorous Istanbul period referred to was followed by the fruits of his ‘return home’, in a completely different exhibition in his own country, the Karachay–Circassian Republic. Borlakov had come back with a series of panoramas in which he moved on from his strategy of juxtaposition of strangeness, seeking out scenes of failure brought about by the mimicry contained in Turkish Modernisation and the simplification of criticism for the sake of being anti-system; instead, he dedicated himself to a powerful, drawn-out system of narrative containing multi-referenced, emotional and intellectual compositions. Borlakov’s post 2005 panoramas carried him to a new place; a place envisioning the past and the future in a small, mountainous post-Soviet country that is trying to find solutions to its own hopelessness in mythology, religious narratives and official Soviet narratives. Taking a hard look at human baseness, gushing with ethnicity, ideology and sporadic states of being under the dark skies of horrifying humanity, the compositions encompass history, the future, and stories in panoramic style. In plain terms, they represent an omnipresence with a multitude of views.

In his current ‘Mexican Dreams’ exhibition at the Pilot Gallery we see that Borlakov has fully immersed himself in this style and that he attempts to create subheadings within it. On one hand Borlakov places the Karachay–Circassian Republic on the world art map, and on the other establishes himself as the creator of these panoramic views that flow on from each other. In his desire to break free of the absoluteness in which conceptual photography creates definitions with deific control rather than looking at events with multiple perspectives, we can see that Borlakov assigns the fluidity of dream as his core point in the works of the ‘Mexican Dreams’ exhibition.

‘Mexican Dreams’ seems to revolve around a distinctive tale and with this series of eight photographs it seems as if the artist is providing us with a concrete historical context. He invites us to the Mexico of the 1940’s. This move represents a series of two postures; firstly, he avoids the risk of playing up to the exoticism of the act of putting the Karachay–Circassian Republic on the map, by making a connection with the distant geography of Mexico, famous for its cacti; secondly, instead of presenting a mixed bag of nostalgia and the post-Soviet era pain and anger generated by the disappointment of the period, he uses the flirtation of dreams and nightmares to disseminate the historical context of melancholy.

Borlakov uses hooks that make this adventure accessible to us and facilitate our closeness to it.  Essentially, two-and-a-half hooks are used which have resonance in Turkey: Frieda Kahlo, Leon Trotsky and (half) Diego Rivera. As we browse the exhibition, these famous names and their equally famous images are thrown to us as a hook and we experience being drawn into a set of dreams. For Borlakov to complete the story of these names, it is requisite to add three more characters to the plot: Sylvia Agaloff, Ramon Mercader, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Ramon Mercader was the assassin sent by Stalin to kill Trotsky. Trotsky’s temporary stay in Istanbul is another connection for Borlakov, who attaches great importance to the city in his artistic life. Of course, if we ask ourselves why Trotsky’s potential ‘Istanbul Dreams’ does not exist, it would be because there was no life on the island of Buyukada where he stayed - no Breton, no Kahlo nor any of the others. Trotsky scarcely stays afloat there and his life picks up again whenever he arrives in Mexico (as shown in Borlakov’s piece, ‘Trotsky’s Second Dream’, where Trotsky embraces Kahlo). After all, Borlakov does not seek Trotsky on the ground but in the sky, not in theory but in practice, not in books but in dreams...

Ramon Mercader is one of the main heroes of the exhibition; both as a hit-man killer and like all hit-men, a hero in the eyes of those who sent him to murder - maybe the Ogün Samast of the USSR and Cuba. However, the major distinction that adds ample fluidity to the semantic layers is that Trotsky was not Hrant Dink. Borlakov’s reference to the famous Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magon is extremely significant because whilst the whole story seems to be construed around the sacrifice of Trotsky, Magon reminds us that Trotsky was himself a killer and the commander who signed the death warrant of the anarchist revolutionaries at Kronstadt. The constant switching between victim and murderer creates the overriding eerie atmosphere of the exhibition. It seems as if the modernist image of Stalin ’the instigator’ with a zeppelin permeates the whole exhibition.

Borlakov skips between different contexts but these contexts are not coincidental. He seeks out the feeling created by the collapse of the USSR at the time when it was still functioning and with its unfolding breakdown. He follows the traces of this breakdown through the revolution’s destruction of its own children. Both the leader who killed the commander who killed the revolutionaries of the USSR and the spy assassin, sway in Mexico’s chaotic amalgam of art, artists, love and treachery. Borlakov takes on Frieda Kahlo, who we might say is the ‘star’ name of the series, in two dreams although it could be said that her presence in Mexico was bound up with Trotsky and the trail she left was actually that of Trotsky. In some way, it resembles the tracing of the story of the USSR by bringing together its torrent of problems. It is not Kahlo or Rivera in the spotlight but Trotsky, with the colourful life of exile he led after fleeing from the USSR and the brutal ending of his life hatched by a Soviet plot. Kahlo, Rivera and the others are important in so much as they relate to this story.

The famous Manifesto for an Independent Revolutionary Art which carried the hallmark of collaboration between Trotsky, Breton and Rivera was one of the interesting by-products which sought a libertarian alternative to the Stalinist perspective of art, and the shadow of which is still manifest in Turkey today. In fact, the influence of the manifesto is thought to have triggered the avant-garde movement after World War II.

It is the dream of Frieda Kahlo that brings the protagonists of the exhibition onto one swing and ensures we don’t forget that all the characters were brought together on a fluctuating stage. The foggy Mexican context is the backdrop for the world of extremely rational, harsh Soviet logic based on social engineering, suddenly finding itself in the middle of the vitality of life in exile; and even if not specifically mentioned by Borlakov, it takes new forms with the addition of Kahlo, Rivera and Andre Breton to the scene. The mega-plans and restrictive apprehensions of modern rationality, are tested in the midst of the uncontrollable, the subconscious, dreams and boisterous love stories. In order to kill Trotsky, Stalin chose a path wrapped within the folds of this context, by sending the murderer dressed up as a ‘faithful admirer’. Thus, Ramon Mercader is turned into a figure that represents the terror of the appearance of the modernist viewpoint, behaving like a state and wearing the mask of the admirer. 

Against a background fictionalised with stylised figures set against cacti, desolation, black clouds and epic fog, Borlakov builds a melancholy out of this terror. Put crudely, Borlakov sets out the melancholy of an idealist trying to hang onto his ideas after the collapse of idealism. It is no surprise to discover similarities with another artist who powerfully expresses this same theme - Lars Von Trier. The atmosphere of Trier’s ‘Melancholia’ is approached from a completely different angle. The eight photographs present a dark exhibition in which Borlakov’s own ‘melancholia’ is built from imaginary dreams, and summons us to picture our own end. Foreboding disasters hang over the skies with similar images, so that both melancholies speak out in frozen scenes with a striking, deliberate aestheticism which is dreamy, unashamed and deliberately poetic (particularly in Trier’s  scene where  Justine, stretched out naked, gives herself to melancholy, and in Berlakov’s ‘Sylvia Agaloff’s Dream’).

Both in Trier and Borlakov, the end of the world means the end of the ideal and the one who first betrays idealist life (in Trier, the early suicide of John the scientist and in Borlakov, Trotksy as the first to die and the first to kill). For this reason the weakest work of Borlakov’s series is the humorous scene showing Mercader, murder weapon in hand, hacking open the melons – as if to laugh while relating a tragic event. The salient points of the exhibition are in the places where melancholy is the most depressing, where bitterness rises and affection falls, in the flight of a betrayed lover fleeing to his snooping admirer on an epic horse, in the duped cacti and the indifferent dog in Mercader’s dream, but certainly not in the scene where Mercader pokes his head out from behind the tree as if he is making a joke…

 

Our Art world / January 2012 / Süreyyya Evren 

 

 

 

IN PLAY IN A PANORAMA

 

 

The scenery is magnificent. The scale and drama that make up the vistas of crags, crevices and clouds, breathtaking. In the midst of this, while nature timelessly endures, Bashir Borlakov stages momentary acts, or as he describes them ‘sentences’ in history that are then forever locked into the memory of an otherwise perfect landscape.

 

In Panorama 7, seven man, mare dots in vast mountainous range, pull determinedly on a rope. Whether they are rescuing someone, lowering one of their number, or pulling and hidden loads in nuclear. This could easily be a scene from a film, in which the result of the seven men’s endeavors might appear in the next frame, but Borlakov captures them still in their act and so the sentence they begin to write remains open.

 

There are six other images in Borlakov’s Panorama series. Although they are all shot in the Caucasus Mountain Range, in Russia close to the Georgian border, the composition of the land is strikingly different in each photograph, as are the human acts these backdrops both conceal and reveal. In the furthermost left corner of the firs images is a scene so small that it can be easily overlooked, but when noticed, it evokes a pang of concern as two men are seen bending down in meadow battering something with a heavy rock. In another, a body appears to have been taken from the trunk of a care and is being held in an odd position dangerously close to the edge of a rock face. In the blue sky hanging from the legs of two flying white geese; eight women in traditional dress walk in line across a plateau; a unformed man, assisted by another undresses, while behind him a third crouches naked in the grass; finally a group of boys stand tentatively looking over a cliff edge as if about to dive.

 

Photographed in a place of Greek legend-the mountains where Prometheus was chained to a rock with an eagle eating away at his liver as penance for giving man the gift of fire – myths are easily born and tales of the immortal, heroes and tortured soles infinitely cited. The panorama is taken from the Greak Pan horama, meaning the all-viewing, which is a perspective that it is already impossible for mere mortals to see fully unless via a constructed and often artistic creation. Adding to this lineage to of spiritual observations Borlakov seems to include in his works clear references to Biblical imagery – the eight woman from a line of pilgrimage, the man lifted by white birds hangs in the shape of a crucifixion and at the same time, along with the de-robing and hence metamorphosis of the uniformed guard, his freedom via flight refers to potential resurrection. The implication of these symbolic gestures can in our present day be taken to cite issues of political turmoil, corruption and racial hatred, but in the end, Borlakov’s works pertain to all and none of these sources. Instead he does no more that imply at what these narratives might entail and by using the form of the panorama cleverly implicates the viewer within his composed environments. Humbled by the power of nature and unnerved and what will happen after these events, we are forced to acknowledge our suspicions and to battle with the natural urge to make judgments based on nothing more than a still image.

 

And so we ponder. Are these events connected? Is the body taken from the car-boot the same one that was being beaten by rock and is later seen being pulled back from the valley by the seven boys and their rope? Should we imagine that these are horror stories of torture and murder, or are they harmless gestures that simply arose suspicion? The tension within these images is further magnified by the Jurassic sense of time and scale mankind. And yet, even amidst these awesome sweeps of nature, the most microscopic human presence and action demands explanation. While the drama of the activities going on is somewhat belittled in the face of the much larger force of nature, the implied issue of morality in these acts is so controversial that man maintains his position as the other most dominant and erratic power to exist on earth. 

 

NOVEMEBER PAYNTER

 

 

 

 

PARANOIA OF 360 DEGREES

 

I first encountered Bashir Borlakov’s work when he was producing images of burning

Images as seen in the 3rd issue of Guncel Sanat Dergisi (Contemporary Art Magazine)

(Art Work, Bashir Borlakov, p. 128-133, December 1999). Borlakov’s more recent photographs confront the audience from an even more uncanny distance and include indicators that disrupt existing panoramas of nature in favor of paranoia. As soon as the viewer understands that “something is happening in these images”, it becomes a fact that “what is happening is happening” in the ceaseless poem of fresh green hills, deep blue sky gauzy clouds and proud mountains. This realization makes the viewer’s ears twitch to try and make out what is revolving around them at 360 degrees, and to try and find the direction from which this situation of fait accompli, this supposed threat- is threat an irony? – is coming from.

 

The threat is so close at hand, in the bottom of the brushwood, or wherever Borlakov chooses to bring the scene together; on the edge of cliff on a hilltop, on a brae or on a foothill, amongst the creepy crawlies, flowers and weeds, sometimes at the rear of a car with an open trunk, sometimes in the direction stared et by a chain of half-naked children, or in the hopeless ascent of an adolescent who tries to fly with his gees in reference to Icarus, and then in women, the women of the village and the country, in mothers and rituals, all in Borlakov’s poetic rampancy  which marks a tangent to Marina Abramovich’s naturalist Balkan eroticism… In the paranoia of 360 degrees the viewer is left alone with a “sequel” syndrome which stipulates that we (we have to because, we do not know anything about what is going to happen there) contemplate each point, each cleft. Each barrow, in short, each hastily imagined detail of the view with full attention.

 

Borlakov, by saying “oh, those good and bad, those real days”, “did it now?”, shift the indiscipline, nonsense, insanity, hysteria and other extensions created in Russian society by the liberal economy of nowadays or – with an expressions I like – “wild capitalism” he transfers it to the mountains, braes in summits of terrorized an  mafia-ked equipments and carries it to new Narodnic  transferences that put forward the individual terror for the nostalgic sighs of the minor peasantry. These horizontal photographs are also the culmination of the vertical and of course victorious anxiety, horror, tension and terror (he knows that this would not be enough), but he also continues magnificently to carry anxiety to a reasonable “area” so in his art he has pulled it to acceptable levels. This point is quite important in the sense that it agitates the reliability of this beautiful view. The artist leaves reliability (in this case security of life and possessions) defenseless and naked in a way which offers no doubt. He does not appeal to optimistic extremities which would re-establish a conceptual angle, neither in his photograph work Untitled shown in the exhibition “ I’m too sad to kill you” (2007), nor his work Untitled in the exhibition “Freekick” (2005) in which he gave away the clues of panoramic tendency. Again this time in the left corner of the photograph “something is happening” we see it… in the shadow of the August mountains, we know that the meadow which barely fits the frame will be ensanguined. The discontent of never encountering a final act is most prevalent in the artist’s work Car (2006).  Here we witness the story, which will probably and the edge of a cliff, of the debt-installment-credit dilemma of an old painter who was stripped to the skin and thoroughly beaten up by his claimants. Should we ruminate that tremendous nature, or should we wash our hands?

 

While Borlakov invites us to a paranoia of 360 degrees, the day is dawning in Karachayevsk. However the way is open for the violence which collars the mountains, the hills, the meadows….

 

SENER OZMEN

 

 

 

REVERSE

 

Bashir Borlakov’s video performance “Coca-Collah” is replace with a number of interconnected interpretations and a set of additional readings that are directly linked to original readings. We see the artist performing the act of prayer, in reverse. The prayer, repeated five times a day, is the second of the unalterable and indisputable main duties of a Muslim, with prayer hat and rug.

 

While in this act of backwards prayer, to the artist’s right, the “Coca-Collah” picture on the wall presents us with a string of understanding of both the artist and the distorted scenes we follow appalled. This seems to be a hint that gives meaning to what happened there, and frankly, was highly useful with regard to demonstrating where a reference starts and ends. It was a meaning crisis occurring through the reversed writing of Coca-Cola’s famous logo – a holy drink, the taste of which is quite well known around the world. Coca-Cola could have been produced as a rival to “Zemsem” (holy water), which is accepted as sacred and known as cure for famine and drought in Islam. Coca Cola could have been the reversely distilled one of Zemzem water.

 

When the front becomes the reverse, when things are inverted, when texts are read reversely, when the sacred rewinds as in Borlakov’s video performance – doomsday would be near in a world where the banned, the forbidden, sin, and evil are prevalent.

 

 

SENER OZMEN, DIARBAKIR, APRIL 2003.

 

 

 

 

EXISTENT AND NON-EXSISTEN AMBIGUITES OF BASHIR BORLAKOV

 

 

Bashir Borlakov’s work of art can be analyzed from many perspectives, but my main objective in this text is to show the ambiguity and indistinct quality found in almost all of his works which makes it impossible for the viewer to remain indifferent to the content.

 

This ambiguity can probably be applied to the overall situation of artistic practice today,

But for now, what concerns us is not the meaning fullness on this ambiguity, but rather the opportunity to bring it to light via the analysis of a visual language.

 We must be cautious about the fact that Borlakov’s prolific visuality and imagination, which is rich in its inclusion of signs, may easily shift towards a psychoanalytic semiotic, or on the contrary, bring psychoanalytic traps that are likely to disrupt a clear interpretation of the content because they uncover those signs with all their simple, bare and arbitrary states. The methodology of analysis I suggest here will be more explicit towards the end of the text and will endeavor to introduce an agnostic rather than a psychoanalytic response.

 

We cannot see the politico-economic ambiguity in Borlakov’s art which is one of basic artistic ambiguities. This generally forces art critics to critics to work harder. However, it’s a frequently sighted situation. The main reason for this is that the artistic mentality provides a conformism of thought beyond the dichotomy that the artistic mentality provides a conformism of thought beyond the dichotomy that puts the artist between the ‘sold’ and the ‘unsold’. Although the non-existence of a politico-economics, which shapes up the whole substructure of society and culture leads to a conformism which is inevitably obscurantist, the reason why this state of non-existents is not obscurant in Borlakov’s work is that his art still depends on the platform of modern art history- autonomy. To avoid a cacophony of comments, I want to make this more simple for the reader: Borlakov is tied to politico-economics in terms of his self-history and creative process. Every nail he drives into the wall or every picture he takes is the representation  of political-economical situation, but what rescues us from a political-economical commentary is the fact that he proceeds with is own rules. The questions then are; how can this autonomy and the irresponsibility that accompanies it, be saved from bourgeois conservatism? And, what distinguishes Borlakov from countless other conservative ‘’autonomous’  artists? It is that his personal autonomy (or let’s say self-government) works like a water-well and an aforethought to visual mechanism and system and this has nothing to do with the comfort of being an  ‘irresponsible’ artist.

 

If we can succeed to show this autonomous art mechanism together with the ambiguities that are present in Borlakov’s works, we’ll be able to make a comment about his art and still be friends. We still couldn’t finish the analysis of the non-existent ambiguities of  Borlakov. Until now, we’ve paid attention to the economical part of the politico-economical, ignoring where and under which conditions he exhibited his works of art. We are ignoring the fact that Borlaov is coming from a poor country and living a modest life is well. For once, being aware of all the risks I take, I will comment without attaching importance to the ‘economy’ factor*.

 

Politics, the firs part of the politico-economical, along with nationalism, ideology, localness and historical consciousness, which come bagged together, cannot frequently be  seen in Borlakov’s works. At least not in his photographs.

 

Borlakov is Caucasian artist who spend much time in Istanbul, but who carries a Russian passport and represents Turkey in various exhibitions. When we express it Like that, searching for nationalism in Borlakov’s work of art is a useless struggle. But still, Borlakov’s case is more likely to be verified by the nationalistic discourse. The reason behind this should be that Borlakov can be defined in the category called Turkic. But Borlakov reacted to this negatively as well: he didin’t allow the national and historical circumstances to have an effect an his art.*.

 

Like in the case of economic incompetence, Borlakov’s art doesn’t turn out to be conservative in the case of political incompetence. Let’s art doesn’t turn out to be conservative in the case of political incompetence. Let’s consider  what renders this  possible once more?

 

As we mentioned above, Borlakov is not only releasing himself from being nationalist because he doesn’t let the Turkic imagery shut him in, but he also being nationalist because he doesn’t let he Turkic imagery shut him in, but he also escapes from being regional and ideological because he escapes from the historical burden of the imagery of the places he has been in.

 

While Borlakov creates an art without time and space, he actually implies that his work can be produced anywhere, and at the same time with or without his intention, whith emphasizes the critical potential of this getaway. For instance, like the case of the nations who are only involved in independence and nationalism, or like the punk songs about youth raves in 70s Ireland by The Undertones, or Jakup Ferri’s recent video about Yoko Ono, his brings the critical opportunity of  lines of escape to mind.

 

But of course defining Borlakov’s artworks with the momentum of negativity, ar rather with non-existent things would be wrong. What makes his work interesting and special is in fact their deficiency, which ‘s existent and is seen at firs sight; we just have to analyze this deficient quality before it  comes into possession of a psychoanalyst. I will start by proposing that: Bashir Borlakv’s art is not about changing the world, but it is about trying to better understand it. And, it can be said Borlakov cares to understand this within the ambiguity of the photograph (the ambiguity in photograph in also the ambiguity of Borakov). This ambiguity asserts itself in there ways:

• Ambıguıty of advertisement and art

• Ambiguity of  photo montage and reality

• Ambiguity of metaphor and denotation

The firs of these examples is a trouble shared by many artists and is caused by the question of how different the works are from the simple advertisement and design world. Since we usually interpret art a system of profound indictments and rich interpretations, we are always careful not to confuse it with commercial visuality which directly takes place using the tools of marketing and propaganda. As the world of advertising becomes more sophisticated and well adjusted visually visuality, in many cases it may become interpretable as art. Furthermore, it is also true that the shape of Postmodern art, where high and low cultural indicators are intertwined, expresses  itself with an easily readable, rapidly consumable, simple and populist language. For instance, while the situation of the visual art being explained via text becomes ever more sparse, this implies that conceptuality diminishes and it also shows that it eases. *

 

When we look at Borlakov’s panoramas, we can suppose that they could also be located on a calendar or on the wall of a cool travel agency.  This is a nightmare for an artist such as Borlakov who takes himself seriously and ruminates on his work. At the same time that he himself knows that the work he crates is no different from the banal language used by advertisement and mass culture, h is also aware that the transformation of his work into advertisement is only a mater of time.

 

But then, do we have a method of interpretation that can save Borlakov’s or his other artist friends’ (the names that first come to mind are Halil Altindere, Ahmet Ogut, Burak Delier… etc.) art works from the banality of mass culture? Can we come up with a technique that will allow us differentiate this photograph as art and that photograph as advertisement?

 

Because we approached Borlakov’s pictures with good faith from the start, we did not deal with bad faith: “Borlakovs’s visuality which constructs itself in an history less and apolitical environment, actually reconfirms a cynical business man’s  ego and machismo (pictures of oppressed business man and business man’s ball grabble), the rudeness of retugess and the militarism of Russians. “But this is wrong. Of course Borlakovs’s art  is not a hammer, nor does it even contain the antagonism of a hammer and mirror, and neither is it bad intention where politics (actually since we eliminate the political from the interpretation, we can mention ‘social’)  is aestheticized.

 

Let’s go back to our question then, what is the thing that saves Borlakov’s art from being an advertisement? Nor only is there no single and sound escape button, but it seems that we can also not develop a consistent theory. Yet, by using deduction in the direction of our proposal, we can assert this: Since Borlakov’s photographs are about process of understanding life they contain many contradictions, that are not brought out by a petty instinct and for this reason they are not at all similar to the language of advertising.

 

Now our priority should be to prove the proposal,  for this we will also have to take a look at other ambiguities of Borlakov, such as the appearance of his works as photo montages. However all his works are real time photographs and the artist usually cannot desist from indicating this.

 

His photograph not being photo montage and obstinate expression of this may be an emaciated method of Borlakov to show that he is not an advertisement artist. But there is a non-emaciated side to the ‘reality’ of the images he creates. These images are staggering.

 

Like everyone who is more or less informed about the history of art of photography knows, photography has never reflected reality as it is. Since its discovery, the art of photography has always been undertaken in a rationality of collage or in this case photomontage. What integrates Daguerre’s first archaic photography experimentations and Cartier-Bresson’s modern photo-realism is their depiction of the photographs reality in the fashion of collage/photo montage. Or rather, the historical subject of photography is its ability of picturing reality as non-historical and as collage. This historical subject, emerges. According to Rice, is related to with the momentum with which the photograph emerges. According to Rice, when photography was invented in the middle of 19th century and started to becoming a famous medium, Paris was going through a major transformation. While this change, which was initiated by Baron Hausmann, rearranged the city in its entirety, it was also about paving the way for a new spatial awareness of the capital. Paris, whit this transformation, would become entirely capitalistic. In all probability because the moment of photography’s birth (and the moment when Baudelaire deeply felt vthe contradictions of modernism) coincident with the moment when Paris was being upside down, the photographic medium became the most suitable method to reflect this transformation. The city and modern living have already morphed into a montage, the only thing that cloud be done was to visualize this montage*.

 

In this way, since the moment of photography’s births, after it proved that it was about representing reality by montage, we can think about how this may provide a clue for understanding Borlakov’s art. First of all, since he is not committed to a clear distinction between photography,  photomontage and reality is always identified with an ambiguity, we have relieved Borlakov from this headache about ambiguity. Secondly, and more importantly, by easing this headache, establish that this art’s foundation can still abide to a modern experience and a modern subject at the same time. We will step by step understand why this experience, which promotes a great problem in its proximity to reality, is of such great importance, but for now what is important is the fact that this experience is serious and that it draws a line to the attenuative side of irony.

 

We want to persuade the readers and art lovers of this: that Borlakov’s admiration-evoking ambiguity is at the same time modernity’s historical ambiguity. Since we still live in the age of modern ambiguity, we should better grasp the ambiguities of Borlakov.

 

The third of these ambiguities, the last and the most important is the one between metaphor and detonation. Because there are too many indicants, or rather too many weird, unusual indicants in Borlakov’s works, we immediately think that these indicants are about metaphors.  Alien materials that look like montages, the noise created in the pastoral, high culture symbols which are macho and in their monotony make us think about whether or not they want to express more than what  they seem to be. Yes these indicators want to mean a lot and some already do, but they certainly do not do this by using metaphors.

 

Artists and art lovers who studied painting in Turkey and especially Borlakov, have many reasons to avoid using metaphors. In Soviet Russia, because academic art was subject to regulation an control, to express their disidentisms in their own art, artists were setting a secret arrangement whit a language intelligible only to their own milieu. While artists gained this secret contract with metaphors, at the same time they were both successful in developing their creative language and a political consciousness which would let  them escape from the system.

 

Almost all East West Sos-realist art is full of these metaphors, and when we take a fresh look at this history, we can see that actually everyone is pointing at something else, everyone is saying something different. Probably because Borlakov knows this metaphor game very well and as a ‘Turkic student” he has experienced this also in Turkey quite a lot, he always avoids it, because it is something eating away within him. And for his reason Borlakov, definitely does not want to be ambiguous n this matter. But he is aware that an art lover who meditates before his works is looking for metaphors.

 

If we claim that none of the indicators in Borlakov’s works are metaphors, then how can we interpret this art? How can we lighten the anxiety of the art lover? We can say that:

 

• These signifiers have non meaning. They just exists because they are absurd. The artist has let them free. They are the brutish, bestial simple and unrectified signifiers which haven’t learnt from the normalized filter of super-ego. They just float recklessly and can be corned by all meanings.

• Can we corner these signifiers like this, for example Borlakov’s most popular image, the ballerina and the indifferent ‘public’ representative? The relationship of a ballerina who represents high culture and the inclusion of a man who is presented as if he would have nothing to do with this culture, is impossible. Do the images and signifiers in Borlakov’s art corner his mood with an indirect political economics? Since we’ve proved the non-existence of the politico-economical in Borlakov’s art previously, it would be nonsense to sacrifice the autonomy of art. So, we are giving up.

• Perhaps Borlakov is trying to give meaning to global issues in his ‘panoramas’ more so then in his other works. General social facts like violence and community, or universal myths like Sysyphos or Godot. These degenerate metaphors may diminish the art lover’s anxiety of interpretation because they require some kind of  intellectual mental exercise. Because the confused art lover knows s/he can turn to encyclopedia when she is trouble.

• Can the town-bred and sophisticated art lover who gets both anxious and excited by Borlakov’s ambiguity see the hidden pastoral violence here which s/he  sees in David Linch’s movies as well?

As we know from many Linch movies, there have always been some dark and hidden tricks in the heterotopias of the kitschly, pure and clean places. For instance, in “Blue Velevet”, while he was wandering on sunny day in the forest, the protagonist finds a human ear, which in turn causes dark things to disturb his suburban life and cuts his ordinary lifeline for a while. Or again in the same movie the camera moves into a kitschydescription of nature in the scene where the protagonist’s father has heart attack and shows the do or die bug fight and dark life at the deep end of the colorful beautiful garden. The life in Lynch movies is divided into two parts and when thy meet a big crisis occurs. That’s why slavoj Zizek read this meeting as an impossibility in his book on lynch.

 

Or while he rather interprets it as the emerging of ‘id’ with all its reality, he emphasizes the catastrophic side of this confrontation with the truth. All of Zizek’s writings are actually about the impossibility of the reality and Lynch is one of the best cinematic examples of this agnostic psychoanalysis. *

 

Like many Turkish artists, Borlakov is a Lynch fan as well. What I want to suggest is that the images of Borlakov’s panoramas can be read as the reconstruction of Lynch’s ear in the pastoral. After giving a clue to an urban, anxious art lover, we leave his pleasure to a crude visual delight and reduce his intellectual ability to a fifth class detective’s world view. From now on we are talking about a caricature and we left this bourgeois caricature in such a position: The ear present in Lynch is a signifier left from the murder we saw in Borlakov’s

 

The reason why this incident concluded with such a caricature is the impossibility of degrading Borlakov’s images to a simple metaphor. But the main confusion will appear when we attempt to comment on these ambiguous images with psychoanalysis. Because at that point Borlakov’s images will transform into something about understanding oneself and not the world. It seems like this has nothing to do with Borlakov and everything to do with the viewer.

 

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1 Even if they are properly Marxists, I owe a lot to Volosiniv and Medvedev’s theories in his respect as they developed the best autonomous art theory without crowning the economy doctrine.

2 In one of Borlakov’s photographs we can see how a businessman dominates another with a manner of victory in Levent (the area wher the capital flows in Istanbul) In my opinion, it will be wrong trying to explain this photograph with just class distinction or ‘exploitation’ which is the basic motive of capitalism. I defend the fact that since it is such a clear image, it resists these kinds of comments.

3 It was very help helpful to talk with Halil Altindere & Bashir Borlakov for my thesis.

4 Just as Adorno’s elitist and aristocratic art theory does not help us, Benjamin’s “the potential revolutionary aura of art created in the mechanical age” cannot either.

5 Shelly Rice, Parisian View, MIT Press, 1999

6 Slavoj Zizek, art of the ridiculous sublime, Encore, 2008