İrem Günaydın

İrem Günaydın (b. 1989, Istanbul) lives and works in Istanbul, Turkey. Irem holds a Foundation diploma from Chelsea College of Art and Design (2011) and her BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, London (2014). Her recent solo exhibitions include “Scripted Expanded Molded I” and “Salad Cake” at THE PILL (Istanbul, 2022 & 2020) as well as “Entrée,” March Studio (Ayvalik, 2021), “From A Tummy To The Sky Via A Mouth,” Ark Kultur (Istanbul, 2017) and “Ænd,” Torna (Istanbul, 2016).

Recipient of a fellowship residency at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart, Germany in 2023, İrem Günaydın’s practice revolves around her interest in being an artist in an ontological sense. Her work seeks to perforate the tightly knit textures of art history, the autonomy of the self, and the fetish of authenticity and originality. This attitude allows the artist to think without establishing a new center, an original, or a singular truth. She explores the relationship between text and image and the ways in which words and images circulate between discursive and pictorial realms, investigating the objecthood of language and the grammar of images. Günaydin’s practice is often generated through writing and unfolds in the form of installations gathering moving images, objects, prints, and sculptural elements while writing functions as a fulcrum. She draws inspiration from art history, literature, film, and music, deconstructing the canon with minor narratives and elements from contemporary popular media.

In her written works, she sheds light on the diagnosis of the "I" and its implications for artistic expression. In her abstract narrative writing, Gunaydin splits herself into multiples that become spectators of one another and engage in conversations, addressing the economic realities of life as an artist and issues surrounding the recognition of artmaking as labor. Using scriptwriting and translation as generative tools, her work often leads to collaborative iterations encompassing film, performance, and public installations. 

OPUS: A PARA-OPERA STRUCTURE

TABLE
1.KONVOLUT
1.1 MUSAKHAN
2.THE WORLD COURT 

Perhaps,

OPUS: A Para-Opera Structure is a long-term research-based foundation free of walls incorporating text, design, and performing arts. I see OPUS as a scaffold to co-construct, support, and maintain relationships with people I collaborate with as it progresses. It will also provide on-site access to heights and areas that would otherwise be hard for an artist to reach. It represents research I will carry out over time on the intersection and interweaving of the following bodies: support, structure, justice, protest, resistance, truth, their connotation, event, as the text, and text as all. OPUS attempts to contextualize a living structure that seeks ways to draw the line, withdraw, diverge, and rupture between these bodies and put the distinction between them under erasure. It is an attempt to engender a table of contents, which need not be rigid but should be seen continuously evolving through research and collaborations.

OPUS as a practice.
OPUS as a process.
OPUS as an approach.

One must glimpse what “para-” means to imagine what a para-opera could be. It is a prefix to many root words. It conveys the idea of “on the margin of,” “next to,” “outside,” or “against.” For instance, “paranoia” originates from “para-” meaning beyond or besides, suggesting a condition of being “beyond the mind.” Likewise, a “parasite” implies an organism against or outside its host's food. This prefix indicates a spatial or conceptual relationship denoting proximity, adjacency, or contrast in various contexts. It provides important contextual clues to understanding the relationship between the prefixed term and its referent. Departing from the “para-” I will use the concept tool, parafiction, to construct OPUS. Parafiction raises awareness that truth and knowledge cannot be reduced to the medium they are presented in. In other words, instead of unquestioningly accepting the truth and authenticity of things, parafiction draws attention to the institutional and discursive structures that govern these media. This is not a way to dismiss truth but to highlight its connection with politics, which is the defining characteristic of the post-truth era. OPUS will attempt to blur the distinction between fact and fiction as a parafictional strategy through make-believe. It attempts to look for models for connecting the presentation of facts and forms of intelligibility that blur the border between the logic of facts and the logic of fiction. After all, as Jacques Rancière once said, “Writing history and writing stories come under the same regime of truth.” Another concept tool to shape OPUS, para-literary discourse, invites a nuanced exploration of artistic expression and bridges the gap between literary sensibilities and critical theory. It challenges conventional narratives and invites viewers to engage with textuality on multifaceted levels beyond mere critique. Art critic Rosalind Krauss introduced the term through her text, Poststructuralism and the Paraliterary. Krauss argues, “The paraliterary is the space of debate, quotation, partisanship, betrayal, and reconciliation, but it is not the space of unity, coherence, or resolution.” 

Opus translates to work in English. It can also refer to a composer's composition; the Latin plural word for opus is opera. OPUS is structured into contents. The first content I am currently working on is Konvolut. This term is used for grouping sections of Walter Benjamin's Das Passagen-Werk manuscript (English translation; The Arcades Project). In Germany, konvolut has a common philological application: it refers to a larger or smaller assemblage—literally, a bundle of manuscripts or printed materials that belong together.

I pen passages that will gradually constitute the Konvolut. Each passage I write will be sent to the invited collaborator; in return, they will rewrite it in their handwriting. The letters O, P, U, and S in their sentences will be digitally drawn and incorporated into the rest of the passage. The very first passage of the Konvolut is called Musakhan, a national Palestinian dish. 

“ON THE EASTERN COAST OF THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA, EXPLOSIONS LIGHT UP THE NIGHT SKY AS THE MOTHER PREPARES A SUMAC SPICED MUSAKHAN DISH WITH SWEET ONIONS, PINE NUTS, AND TABOON BREAD.”

Passages will be written using a bespoke typeface titled Hamaset. It is designed exclusively for OPUS and, as a conceptual gesture, is intended to evoke the grandeur of opera. Hamaset is a loanword from Arabic that means “enthusiasm, excessive courage, heroism.” In Arabic literature, it refers to an artificial epic. It is also an exaggerated expression made to impress or excite the listeners. In contemporary Turkish, politicians have turned the term Hamaset into a verb and frequently replaced it with populism and demagogy. As OPUS progresses, the font family of Hamaset will expand with bespoke versions that conceptually fit each content. Hamaset is monumental, sharp, and prickly on the outside but soft and round on the inside to create dialectical tension. Additionally, it has only uppercase letters. 

The birth of the system- the iteration of the letters of OPUS and the creation of the bespoke typeface Hamaset- is inspired by a typographic system called “Kraliçe,” which was used for a decade at SALT. The institution invited designers to interpret the letters S, A, L, and T, which were integrated into a custom typeface. SALT used “Kraliçe” as an institution's communication tool for their online and printed matter. I wrote an analogy in 2022 between “Kraliçe” and the Greek god Dionysus, the son of Zeus, the god of metamorphosis, highlighting their disruptive and transformative natures. Like Dionysus, “Kraliçe” challenges traditional norms and structures, blurring the lines between brand and institution with the experimental approach. Dionysus, known for his fluidity and rejection of conventional gender roles, symbolizes rebellion against the status quo and patriarchal order. Similarly, “Kraliçe’s” existence represents a threat to rigid identities and the entrenched systems they uphold. Like Dionysus and “Kraliçe,” the Konvolut is a wandering god without a fixed place, traveling around the world to create scenarios that rely on existing social realities or actively entering a social realm to generate passages. Through an iteration of letters of O,P,U,S in different handwriting for each passage, the ontology of the work will be put into effect, not merely described or denoted. 

I cannot provide much information as I am still working on the conceptual framework for The World Court. It attempts to investigate the relationship between performativity, law, and theatre and their connotation of truth and justice through the courtroom setting metaphor, which has an inherently theatrical nature in history. I want to design a new family member of the “Hamaset” typeface to use exclusively for The World Court.

To be continued…