Presentation: Yelta Köm
A story from an Arkitera traveler
How and where did I find myself?
I found myself in search of production
Salt Beyoğlu
October 4, 2011 19.00
Once you get going, you cannot stop - it feels good to go from one place to another, to be always on the move. You want to get into other stories, and to add new actors to your own story. You wish your journey will never end, and that the tension between the beginning and the end will always remain.
Recipient of an Arkitera travel grant presented in celebration of Arkitera’s 10th anniversary, in one month Yelta Köm traveled to Mumbai, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Beijing, New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and São Paolo. During this tour, entitled “In Search of Production,” he stayed in each mega-city for two or three days, attempting to grasp and convey a sense of each place. He talked with people, visited slums, recorded voices and took videos and photographs. For his presentation in SALT Beyoğlu’s Walk-in Cinema, Köm will focus on the intensity of travel and being on the road. According to Köm: “Traveling is full of tension: getting carried away, losing one’s sense of place, disregarding time – these are all part of it.”
Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and the thing you search for devours you; you become one with it, and you may even lose it.
Köm’s trip was structured on cities of production. All of a sudden, however, this idea of a search began to function both ways. While Köm posted his experiences on the road with social media, a virtual cloud of production began to gather around him, growing bigger as he approached his final destination. During his presentation, which will describe the last leg of his journey, Köm will share photographs, videos and voices that have never before emerged from this cloud. He will talk about whether one feels lonely, and what it’s like to share one’s experiences in real time using social media. In this context, Köm will touch on various topics including how to get a grasp of a city in a short time; how to read the relationships these mega-cities have with production; what traveling makes you produce; the feeling of being on the road and being tossed from one place to the next, without belonging anywhere; how production turns from subject to object; and the potential of travel to transform.
The presentation will be held in Turkish.
Recipient of an Arkitera travel grant presented in celebration of Arkitera’s 10th anniversary, in one month Yelta Köm traveled to Mumbai, Jakarta, Guangzhou, Beijing, New York, San Francisco, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and São Paolo. During this tour, entitled “In Search of Production,” he stayed in each mega-city for two or three days, attempting to grasp and convey a sense of each place. He talked with people, visited slums, recorded voices and took videos and photographs. For his presentation in SALT Beyoğlu’s Walk-in Cinema, Köm will focus on the intensity of travel and being on the road. According to Köm: “Traveling is full of tension: getting carried away, losing one’s sense of place, disregarding time – these are all part of it.”
Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and the thing you search for devours you; you become one with it, and you may even lose it.
Köm’s trip was structured on cities of production. All of a sudden, however, this idea of a search began to function both ways. While Köm posted his experiences on the road with social media, a virtual cloud of production began to gather around him, growing bigger as he approached his final destination. During his presentation, which will describe the last leg of his journey, Köm will share photographs, videos and voices that have never before emerged from this cloud. He will talk about whether one feels lonely, and what it’s like to share one’s experiences in real time using social media. In this context, Köm will touch on various topics including how to get a grasp of a city in a short time; how to read the relationships these mega-cities have with production; what traveling makes you produce; the feeling of being on the road and being tossed from one place to the next, without belonging anywhere; how production turns from subject to object; and the potential of travel to transform.
The presentation will be held in Turkish.
