Ilgın Hancıoğlu

2022- Concrete, Synthetic Fiber, Luminous Paint, and Aluminum Foil

Underneath the pavement tiles

There’s an omnipresent being

Gazing through the shadows

Lurking still in the alleys

An urban body that

Nobody knows

Where it first

Hatched

Out

.

A system rules over the city life, accustomed, and not recognized anymore.

Underneath the pavement tiles (we don’t need reality) is a work for coping with a kind of mundanity that is understood as both a result and an indicator of authority.

The work hints a point of resistance by suggesting an element of fantasy co-existing with the rest of the city.

Fantasy makes the possibility of the other conceivable and creates immunity to facing the world’s reality and its figures of dominance.

The work suggests a great body rooted under the city, especially the stairs of İstanbul, which have their own ecosystems. The elevation of the urban stairs creates a slower pace within the city, which allows cat communities and street plants to grow sturdy, suspend the pedestrians’ footsteps, taking smokers’ breaths away. Imagining an exceptional body living besides the everyday urban elements, hints at a yet unimagined environment enduring the never-ending constructions and demolitions of İstanbul’s capital politics. As Ancet writes, each being only looks “normal” in their own habitat, and if one comes across a figure that is “alien” or “monstrous” to them, that might be because they cannot imagine that body’s native atmosphere[1].

This body, whose scope is limited only by one’s imagination, nestles deep down, stretches out through the cracks of the pavement tiles, spreads into the voids of the urban surface, and gleams at nightfall. Where and when it will be visible again is unknown, it doesn’t have a map to locate its emergences. The city walker must come across the scales by change, and even then, the traces may remain unnoticed. Noticing the scales is a quest of tracing. First, a set catches an eye, then another bulk is recognized. This kind of act encourages the walker to find new traces in order to verify their suspicions.

Even if the scales get detected, their interpretation is still obscure. One might feel afraid facing this massive body lurking under the ground they’re standing on; they might pin-point a simple point of acquaintance on their way back home – or as this work suggests – find an ally to face their own kind of usual. If they become friends with this seldomly seen imaginary figure, such a bond can live on for a lifetime. Manguel writes, “biology tells us that we descend from creatures of flesh and blood, but intimately we know that we are the sons and daughters of ghosts of ink and paper.[2]” Solidarity with fantastic creatures is as real as imagination.

Fantasy leaking into everyday life is not just an escape plan but a method of resistance.

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[1] Ancet, Phénoménologie des corps monstrueux, chap. Introduction à l’étude de la perception des monstres.

[2] Manguel, Fabulous Monsters, 8.

The work is installed in several urban stairs of İstanbul since July 2022.

Some of the scales were also installed and exhibited in BAK Utrecht between September and November, 2022.

You can find the exhibition link and guide here: https://www.bakonline.org/program-item/the-hauntologists/