SAUNA AS A TECHNO-QUEER PLACE

İlker Cihan Biner

 

" In my secret garden, I'm looking for the perfect flower"

 Secret Garden/Erotica

 

 1.

Going away, leaving and escaping does not actually supposed to mean giving up from this world. It does not correspond to mean in quest of a shelter as well.

Sometimes want to get away from everything that makes you rooted, isolated and immobilized without a backward glance. Although this situation is not facile, it also contains a lot of troubles.

The question of " Where will I go?" is sorrowful. But as the heteronormative shells surround your body intensify, and suddenly it becomes inevitable to escape from the dark pit called patriarchal society. Intension of sexual desires and desire to touch others begin to fray out the shell.

Escaping opens doors. It impowers your breath. However, the way is long, struggle is multi-layered. Where and how to escape is vital.

2.

Some saunas hide in various places of city can be called escaping locations.  These locations where bodies are coalesced into another and physical contacts are intensified turn into spaces which go beyond binary gender domination, rooting and becoming immobilized breakable.

The fact that Ahmet Rüstem Ekici continued with the Sauna after Hammam exhibition points to the possibility that these places can build queer worlds.

The concept of mystery shine out in the space that the artist has digitally created. But this concept does not always mean blurry, vision-based, exotic forms.

There are many sections such as Locker Room, Steam Room, Wet areas in the digital space. The concept of mystery highlights integrity/collectivity. In this respect, Sauna is an interaction location. Contact in a dark room, sexual desires that appear on wet surfaces? Body fancies in the steam room make the experience of many queers visible.

This digital work by Ahmet Rüstem Ekici has another meaning.

When you physically enter a Sauna, you can touch the walls, smell the air of atmosphere or abandon yourself to many more experiences.

Unfortunately, there is no such feasibility in digital platform. Then why does the artist engage in this fiction?

The Sauna exhibition meets at the intersection of what is material and what is not. So, in a sense, we have the opportunity to fully examine and analyze this digital space, while at the same time witnessing queer sexual experiences. As a matter of fact, the artist creates a new form of memory by recording the traces of many sexual practices that have been ignored, ejected, tried to be suppressed in this space. The field, with paintings/drawings and photographs from eight different artists on the walls, marks a completely fluctuating, non-linear art democracy. This democratic form opens the door to the emergence of Sauna work in the line of queer being a concept that sheers away and going beyond the ordinary concept… Along with this method developed by the artist, we can always talk about crossing the border for places that open the door to Lgbtiq+ individuals that do not consist only of sexual experiences of cis-gays. In this way, Ahmet Rustem Ekici's effort to stay away from representation while creating a place of memory shows a struggle, but carries the power to be inclusive.

 

 

 

Finally, after hammam exhibition, The Artist's visual storytelling continues with the Sauna. Now let's end with a poem by Lale Müldür about the impact of these works;

 

 "Oh I’m going to somewhere I don't know

 Somewhere you never know

 

 Am I going there willingly?

You are tracing me or not?

 

My makeup is flying out of my eyes

 A strong wind blows

 

 My dresses are flying

 The snow begins to falling

 

 Oh, I’m going to somewhere I don't know

 Somewhere you never know."

 

Magnetic excitation

Yapı Kredi Yayınları

Lale Müldür