Confrontation

GAA Foundation organized Venice Design 2017 between May,13- Nov, 26 2017 in tandem with the 57th edition of the Biennale. Venice Design 2017 showcases works of designers from around the world, among which the True Treu collective took part. True Treu is composed of Ali Bakova, Argun Dağçınar, Aykut Erol, Can Yalman, Demirden Design, İzlem Akman, Neslihan Işık, Serhan Gürkan and Yiğit Yazıcı.

Demirden’s product design office ilio took place in the exhibition with a product design project named “Confrontation”.

Just as we were growing hopeful that the significance of borders was diminishing with the emphasis on an integrated world, we now find ourselves faced with many more boundaries and divisions that continue to grow unconstrained. We are not only referring to the physical international boundaries here, but also to the ideological, socio-cultural, political and economic lines of demarcation. We have grown ever more intolerant of the ‘other’, while drawing these lines that divide us. With our potency and all of our strength, we do not recognize those that set out on this path by compulsion, we ignore and reject the ‘other’.

As we stand so unilaterally focused on the exclusive capacity of the frontier, are we able to observe where the boundaries of identity, memory and life pass? Are we then capable of distinguishing who it is that the frontier excludes, labels, or leaves behind?

As geographies are melded into one, giving birth to new colours and textures, or as this is just about to happen, a division emerges, bringing an end to this movement. Cold, mechanical and industrial, this is the same wall that makes everywhere appear the same, that which we encounter even in the farthest corners of the world.

Sometimes there is a door that opens in only one direction. For those at the frontier, each of these elements constitute a memory space. Yet the meaning of the emotions that this memory space harbours is one and the same the world over!

While it is at the focal point of the issues that are brought about by physical boundaries, imagining and striving towards a boundless world is not simply a utopian dream, but it can be a means by which we may instill more hope in the future. 

Through the removal of the boundary between two opposing poles, the distinction between that which is inside and that which is outside fades into oblivion. With this distinction removed from the picture, there can also be no intrusion. Those who are left behind, those for whom we yearn, cease to be part of a scene devoured by flames to which we may only hope to return and look upon once more.

This installation reveals the harmony which would emerge if we were to simply leave nature to itself. It flattens the obstacles on the desired path to a peaceful, shared life with the concept of aborder-free world. It brings that which belongs to the earth to the forefront and places that which remains in the memory at the starting point, structured as an arrangement to which we will turn and look at our own reflection when we wish to remember