the impossibility of closure

Medium: Single-channel video, two-channel sound, 8m
Year: 2021

“It is the fact of spatial juxtaposition which produces the openness, the impossibility of closure into a synchronic totality. Or, to put it the other way around, this element of the chance/openness of space results from the co-existence of structures which are each in themselves by no means chaotic”
Doreen Massey, For Space (2005)

These current times of increased isolation have amplified the role of public green space as a destination for respite from the confines of the home and the congestion of the city. The seam between urban parks and the city, with its busy roadways and bustling commerce, is not merely a juxtaposition of green and gray, but a physically demarcated border cordoned off by fences, walls, and gates to ensure the clear delineation of work and leisure. There is always, however, the persistent superimposition of the urban soundscape, sometimes seeping, sometimes blasting through the porous boundary that separates these neighboring facets of city life. The mind pushes these sounds aside while taking in the heterogeneous multiplicity of the natural landscape, the local soundscape of birds, dogs, and boisterous people at play, but there is a tension and a beauty to each complex of sounds, each eschewing solitude. The constantly shifting roles between nuisance and gift point up what is to be loved and loathed, each in its own time, in its own way.

Exhibited in Dystopia Sound Art at the Arbank Sanat in Istanbul, Turkey