[-empyre-] Starting the First Week / Valente and Ziyalan

[Murat Nemet-Nejat]

Let us open the November, 2016 discussions focusing on images. Outside dreams, the creation of images always involves a tool—a finger, chalk, a pencil, a camera, a computer, etc.—i.e. technology. Creating an image (or copying), what is a human being trying to do? Is he or she trying to recapture the purity of dreams—as the herds of animals inside a cave's walls—or is he or she trying to turn the image itself into a weapon of suppression, convention and control.


Our two guests this week, MUSTAFA ZIYALAN and PETER VALENTE, are poets, science fiction writers, critics, translators, photographers, film makers. IThey are friends whom I have known for year. As a Turkish poet, Ziyalan had significant input in my developing a new poetics, Eda, while preparing Eda: An Anthology of Contemporary Turkish Poetry. In the late 1990's in my essay The Peripheral Space of Photography, I state that the invention of the camera obscura lens in the 19th century has revolutionized the nature of art ever since because what is in front of the lens is never under the total control of the lens (or the photographer). The subject (the mother lode of image dreams) is liberated, that the photograph(er) must somehow fail to create a true image. Valente knows this fact about the camera lens in his bones.

This week Ziyalan and Valente will discuss their struggles with their cameras creating their images. I invite everyone on the list to join the discussions.

 

 
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