What is a revolution? Does revolution has to be a violent overthrow of the current? Or can it mean overcoming structural questions and moving forward, free of preconceptions? How does revolution feel? What can be its forms? How can we express our wish to change in a time when it is more needed than ever?
The increasing injustice in our social and political systems, a nearing climate collapse, the influence of misinformation, and the impact of social media on the individual perception urge us to rethink, challenge and propose a better future, calling us to revolutionize the way we think and act.
In this complex confluence, “Relational Terms” want to offer new points of view through artistic expression and mediate, challenge, and display the current while providing a look into a better tomorrow. Looking from the individual level, up into significant societal structures, revolution happens every day - just as the earth moves around the sun.
“What is Revolution ? ”
The definition of a revolution is the movement of one object around a center or another object, a forceful overthrow of a government by the people or any sudden or grand change.
For our second term, we want to explore the notions of “revolution” with our participating artists. Driven by the question of what “revolution” actually means in our difficult times, we want to investigate what the term “revolution” sparks in the minds of artists, thinkers, and makers from different fields. Thus, finding out what they think and how they reflect on it in their work.
“What is Relational Terms?”
edited by Zeynep Yilmaz
is an online exhibition series that exposes the layers upon which we play with our meaning-making mechanisms by means of providing a space for artists to relate with a given term. It is a showcase of subjectivities, multiplicities, overlaps, and contrasts. It is a celebration of diverse conceptual and material inquiries. As a result, the spectrum.space and the collaborating artists aim to co-materialize and co-author new translations.
Our communication through written and spoken language, as well as all other means at our disposal, is the primary tool we use to make sense of our experiences and surroundings. This exchange is more than often vulnerable to assumptions, projections, and different interpretations. The more we (try to) tell our tales, perhaps the more obvious the question becomes: is it even, ever possible to speak the same language?
There might be two different approaches in the search for an answer, the first one entailing the language we construct with words and sentences; and the other indicating a language expressed and understood on a deeper level, beyond imposed structures.
“Relational Terms” inquires, expands, and learns over time. Each week during the exhibition, a new artist and their work get introduced into this gathering of diverse artistic languages. From hereon, the context and the meaning unfolds.
While each artist’s individual contribution stands on its own; the totality forms a dictionary that mimics the values of a Gesamtkunstwerk. The exhibiting methods adopted by “Relational Terms” enables a continuously evolving and growing exhibition, through which our collectively preconceived notions are challenged, reassured and re-related.