Nineteen Eighty-Four and Turkey have a certain affinity to each other as Turkey slides into the grasp of governmental madness. The artist Asli Cavusoglu, in the context of an exhibition in Istanbul named “Doublethink: Double Vision“, has an interesting comment as well as a work, as noted in AL Monitor by Nazlan Ertan:
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Cavusoglu’s NewspaperFor Cavusoglu, the silver lining of “1984” is the possibility of an erring totalitarian regime. Describing her recent work, which opened simultaneously with the Biennale in Venice, she told Al-Monitor that the Turkish regime’s “moment of error” came during last year’s attempted military coup. “What we saw in the July 15 attempted coup was the realization that Turkey’s institutions had become an empty shell,” she told Al-Monitor.
Her recent project in Venice wanted to outline uncertainty, unpredictability and polarization. The project, called “Future Tense,” is a newspaper where the day’s news is interpreted by fortunetellers, astrologers and clairvoyants. “Parallel to the increasing censorship and move away from being a state of law, a number of fortunetellers and astrologers emerged. Astrologers and clairvoyants were getting invited to newscasts, warning us about bombs by looking at the angles of the stars in the skies, providing us with a date for a rebellion depending on the position of Mars. The way they play with the language helps them avoid any censorship. I found 50 soothsayers of different political orientation and ethnicity and asked them what they thought would happen. They replied in their own way — and a very pluralistic paper [which Cavusoglu distributed in Venice] was published,” she said.
“The different clairvoyants have found a way to escape censorship in a totalitarian regime. I aim to show both with my made-up newspaper and with my work in the Pera Exhibition that censorship creates a new language,” Cavusoglu said, echoing Pepperstein’s statement that doublethink is just a beginning, in art as in politics.
Her work, which I did not read thoroughly, has a certain taste of Nostradamus to it. Take that as you will.
