Lapse Tag

Curator Başak Şenova’s project, “Lapses,” which is going to be showcased in the Turkish Pavilion during this year’s Venice Biennial, was introduced to the press this week by Şenova and artists of the exhibition Ahmet Öğüt and Banu Cennetoğlu. Şenova explained that the word “lapse” connotes numerous verbs and nouns in English, yet there is no one word that corresponds to it in Turkish. “A lapse in the linear and continuous flow of time implies either a sense of disorientation or a disconnection with our personal surroundings. Only by recognizing such a lapse do we realize our ability to restructure memory in the space and time continuum through an uninterrupted flow, with afterimages that recur by narrations and our senses,” she said, adding that the whole project is based on reconstructing the memory again and again by remembering the past.The project will be realized through Cennetoğlu’s “Catalog,” and Ögüt’s “Exploded City.” “Both shows reveal the possibility for diverse memory formations -- or diverse narratives -- conceivable through lapses,” the curator elaborated. Cennetoğlu’s photographs are presented in the form of a performative “mail order catalog,” where hundreds of photographs are classified under subjective categories. All of the photographs from the mailing catalog can be downloaded for free exclusively during the duration of the Venice Biennial. “Rather than selling my works for higher amounts, I chose to give them away for free, so, in a way, the audience will be rewarded when they go home,” she said, explaining the reasoning behind her work.