Dichotomies like reality/fiction and nature/culture are major concepts in Öner’s artwork and research towards their visual language. Focusing the themes of self-perception and unwritten history, Öner uses the potential of the unconscious to research the unspoken in her artworks. Since 2018, Öner has been working with Evrim Kavcar, collaborating on a long-term project called Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds, a polyphonic, multiform, participatory process that traces the subjective, social and cultural layers of sound in multiple formats.
DICTIONARY OF SENSITIVE SOUNDS - Elif Öner & Evrim Kavcar, Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds, video, 43'', 1920 × 1080, 2019- continue
This is a text based video that lists a selection of sensitive descriptions of sounds. With the word “sensitive” the artists aim to draw attention to the “in-between”, “unnoticed”, “subtle” etc. qualities. The tangible quality of sound comes across. The experience of the moment is recalled through the memory of a specific sound. https://vimeo.com/388373339
SILENT MIGRATION - 8 different dimensions site-specific video installation for the play // The theater play titled “Silent Migration” by Emre Koyuncuoglu produced by Freiburg Theater. I had the chance as video artist to participate in Koyuncuoglu's project and work actively for a year upon her invitation. Working on the subject for a year in both Thessaloniki and Turkey, we produced eight original video works that involves this process of preliminary work as well.
A DICTIONARY OF SENSITIVE SOUNDS - (Book by Elif Öner & Evrim Kavcar) A polyphonic, multiform, participatory artist book that traces the subjective, social and cultural layers of sound, carried out collaboratively by Elif Öner and Evrim Kavcar. Sounds, sounds that we en counter in our daily life, sounds that we point at with words yet the sounds that resist being worded. Not sounds that overpower, but the sounds that escape our attention. Sounds that belong to different bodies. Animals, plants, microcosmos within and outside of us… Not the sounds that are imposed on us, but the sounds that we pay no attention to. A sound transports us to different experiences, different times and places. That's because we have a problem with linearity. We have trouble listening to one another. We don't want to call it pitter patter and brush it off. We don't want to generalize. We are on the side of the sensitive. As sounds accumulate, a fraction of the collective memory becomes apparent. Both similarities and differences are revealed. Does a dictionary present opportunities to listen to them? Can it invigorate both the memory and the relationship with the present? Description as a form of art, description as an expression of wit nessing. Sound is both a supply and an emotional state. Sound is both itself and its own metaphor. It is the trace of the untamed within a tame practice of life. The sound heard inside the mind, that sound… Is the sound I hear the same as the one they do?”
GESTURES AND SOUNDS - Performans video, 8"17, 1920X1080, Elif Öner and Evrim Kavcar in collaboration with Süleyman Kun // “Within our artistic practice, but outside of language, somewhere without any words. In an effort to designate with words that which cannot be spoken, in pursuit of the layers of sound. Not sounds that overpower, but the sounds that escape our attention. Sounds that belong to different bodies. Animals, plants, microcosms within and outside of us…” https://youtu.be/M3Cs5NvwjwA
Nesin Art Village-Together at Threshold: Curators & Artists // Bige Örer, Çelenk Bafra, Elif Öner, Evrim Kavcar, Işın Önol, Kevser Güler ve Öykü Özsoy - ”The sound of a spider suddenly falling on paper and walking away"
In this workshop that will attempt to evaluate the place of listening in artistic production and exhibition practices through a series of exercises, lasting three days, we will have a space to discuss states of making sound or remaining silent, listening or failing to listen. Does focusing on sound strengthen the theme?
What do "Sensitive Sounds" correspond to in Nesin Village in terms of sounds, spaces, and experiences? Focusing on "sensitive sounds" that go unnoticed in a visually oriented world, describing the sounds in our memory in writing, sharing experiences after a silent walk in Nesin Village, and translating the sounds we will hear with our eyes closed (the sounds of gestures, touching objects, the sounds of everyday life in the background) into a visual representation will be the exercises of this workshop
THE OTHER (ongoing series) - Different Sizes for Painting, soil and pigment on paper, ongoing series. // As long as we ignore our dark side, the shadow gets stronger and affects our life down than before. When ignored and repressed feelings and thoughts are not transformed creatively, being kept in the shadow, in the background, they are projected to the outside world using their destructive power. This stage in denial transforms to personal and social blind an destruction in years. With these projections, my personal experiences and encounters shaped my painting with "light" and "shadow". As a result of these encounters, on my painting invites to follow inner voice and inner wild.
SKETCHES FOR PLACED THE SOUND IN PUBLIC SPACE; WHICH SOUNDS? WHERE TO PLACE? // 17th ISTANBUL BIENNIAL - Installation, objects, maps, drawing, sketches, books, 102x210. // “Dictionary of Sensitive Sounds” unfolds through different scopes during the 17th Istanbul Biennial. “Where to place which sound description” stands out on our evolving installation at Performistanbul. This specific part of our installation is a low platform, “a thinking table” where Elif Öner and Evrim Kavcar have placed sketches, found objects, notes and little hand-made sculptures. Taking the evolving archive of sound descriptions as their basis, they have returned to where these sounds originate from, or how these sounds might connect to different spots in the city. This is an installation where they start to imagine some public interventions; or rather artistic interventions in public space. Sometimes a description calls for a space, and sometimes a space calls for a specific sound. Under a specific tree in Gezi Park, in between the biennial venues around Istanbul, they follow memories of these places and link them with the memory of the sounds present in the dictionary. The entries in the dictionary had started with Elif and Evrim describing “sensitive” sounds to each other, yet in time the work opened up and expanded to the public, to many participants who contributed their own sound descriptions. Our prospective installation of these texts in public spaces is also an expression of our gratitude for our participants. Many people living in different places have shared their “sensitive sound” with us, and now the idea of them meeting these sounds in different forms in the public space is a meaningful and exciting thought.And now we work on: Which sound description ? Where to place? Which material? Scale? Which font? The installation can be visited at the 17th Istanbul Biennial until 20th November work of Elif Öner & Evrim Kavcar.
RECORDING - 2"55, Video mapping on collage,115x235 // I began this project following the coup attempt in 2016, a time when Turkey was already in the midst of political difficulties. In the face of social or personal traumas, breaking the connection to our own emotions manifests itself as a coping mechanism. In this case, we can no longer talk about a linear perception of time. worldview that is built through past and future falls down at such moments. At moments of vital threat, our physical and mental reality is fundamentally shaken as well as our positioning in the world. At the time when I started with this project, I was also working on writing a thesis about Walter Benjamin's concept of history. It is widely known that Benjamin himself faced a vital threat and unable to endure the pressure, he ended his life on his own. Consisted of pieces, or of montages, speaking in Benj amin's terms, The Arcades Project is his most remarkable effort to denounce the whole system of so- called history and reality, and a work that unfolds this effort technically as well. This mapping I carried out in my work with inspiration from Benjamin's comments on Angelus Novus, invites to read the history and reality through the technique of collage, which technically represents the disintegration of reality.
BALLAD - Video art, 7"56, 7 Channels Full HD 1920×1080 video // In these seven videos complementing each other and I named ”Ballad”, I start out from the tradition of ashik and created videos about ashık Veysel. I brings together the search for the truth as a traveler, and reading poems on truth, with the art of miniature. ”The art of miniature purposefully does not use perspective in order to underline the ephemerality of the world, it remains on the surface. From this point of view, due to Ashik Veysel's affinity to Sufism, the images in this video stands as an emulation of miniature. It is the portrayal of Ashik Veysel's life story influenced by the way miniature portrays a story. In addition, as the past is being told, the whole story is delivered on the same surface at once, so the 'past time' is perceived within the 'present time.' After all, there is no time notion into the truth and all happens within a single 'moment'.
