Below the Radar Transcript
Episode 258: Art Mamas 鈥� with Damla Tamer
Speakers: Joey Malbon, Am Johal, Damla Tamer
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Joey Malbon 00:02
Hello listeners! I鈥檓 Joey Malbon with Below the Radar, a knowledge democracy podcast. Below the Radar is recorded on the territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. On this episode of Below the Radar, our host Am Johal is joined by Damla Tamer, a visual artist and sessional lecturer at UBC whose work explores the affective conditions of labour under late capitalism, and the evolution of forms of civil protest within the contemporary political history of Turkey. Damla is also a founding member of the artist collective, which aims to create support networks for artist caregivers, while critically exploring the place of motherhood and care work within the dominant culture of art production. Am and Damla discusses her recent exhibition at Access gallery which explored the aftermath of the Gezi protests in Turkey through textile works, her work with housing co-ops in False Creek South, and why she thinks it鈥檚 ok for students to express love for a work of art. Enjoy the episode!
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Am Johal 01:15
Hello, welcome to Below the Radar, delighted that you could join us again this week. We're here with a special guest at our offices at 312 Main. I would call it a recording studio, but that would be a bit of a stretch, but it works. We're here with Damla Tamer, who is with us. Welcome, Damla!
Damla Tamer 01:33
Thank you. I'm very happy to be here.
Am Johal 01:35
Damla, maybe we can begin with you introducing yourself a little bit?
Damla Tamer 01:40
For sure. I'm a visual artist and educator. I was born in Istanbul, Turkey, and came to these territories 15 years ago, and since then I've been practicing art and teaching at various universities, including the University of British Columbia, 丁香园AV and Emily Carr.
Am Johal 02:01
How old were you when you started getting involved in art, or knowing that you wanted to pursue work and life in the arts? Was it since you were really young, or did you in university [get] more involved?
Damla Tamer 02:13
I was pretty young. I did know, I wanted to do arts, and I got enrolled in an undergraduate degree in Fine Arts in Istanbul. After that, I took a two year break from university, and I did various jobs and a residency in Istanbul as well. That was a year long. That's when I decided to apply to Master's degrees abroad, and that brought me to Canada
Am Johal 02:39
In your undergraduate degree, was it at 鈥� which university did you go to?
Damla Tamer 02:43
It was in in Istanbul.
Am Johal 02:45
Oh, yeah. Okay, great. And in terms of your arrival to Vancouver, what were some of your earliest experiences or thoughts as you arrived here, in terms of conversations with the art community here?
Damla Tamer 03:00
I came here with a spirit of adventure. I guess at that age, I thought that I was going to spend my life, or my twenties, at least, living in various different cities across the world, traveling. And I've been in Vancouver ever since (laughs). I can't complain, that was my choice when I came to do my degree, my MFA at UBC. I can say that overall, I had a very good experience. But something I remember, and something that we're probably going to discuss a little bit as content of this podcast, I remember one day, the professor assigned people texts in different groups to present, and I remember not knowing what that meant, because before, I'd never actually done a presentation on a text as part of my education. I just didn't have that kind of relationship with texts as something to be presented. So I remember being confused, and kind of like highlighting every sentence on the text, and like trying to kind of break it down and analyze it and trying to find kind of faults with it or incongruences in the argument. And then came to class with a very different kind of presentation than what everybody else expected. And that was, I guess, like the first time that I started thinking about what theory means to me, especially in the context of art.
Am Johal 04:24
I wonder if you can describe your art practice a little bit for our listeners who might not be familiar with your work.
Damla Tamer 05:32
Yeah, for sure. So I actually just finished ,curated by , which showed a body of textile works from the last three years. So by textile 鈥� I use the term very loosely, although I do focus on weaving in my practice quite a bit. So all the works were done using weaving paper, making some basket weaving in there as well. And the works were pretty much a response to the last 10 years of the period in Turkey. Gezi protests happened in 2013 and by the time I finished the works for the exhibition, it had already been a decade, and the works were dealing with the feelings that emerged of kind of something like that, something really quite tremendous like that, being behind now, and what is happening now? What are the feelings that emerge out of that? And where are we now, and what happens now? So all those things are part of the works.
Am Johal 05:40
So maybe we'll speak about the aftermath of Gezi Park and the political intensities and all of the folding, social, political, artistic otherwise that have happened. And one of the ways that you described it when we spoke earlier was this sort of relationship to temporality, where nothing seemed to happen, and at the same time something was possible, and this kind of sense of disorientation that that entails.
Damla Tamer 06:12
Yes, and in fact, one. And my friend and colleague, , and I had a conversation as part of the exhibition. I surprised myself by starting to talk about a certain moment in Gezi. I didn't realize until that moment that that was such an important part of kind of the works. And that moment was when in the middle of the occupation one day, I left kind of where I was sitting at, and I tried making my way to the communal kitchen, where there was a communal tea pot boiling, and I helped myself to a glass of tea. And I was walking back, and, you know, I'm surrounded by hundreds of bodies in a very kind of packed kind of environment. And suddenly a protest started, or an action, I should say. And it was a very popular action at the time, where people chant 鈥淶谋pla, z谋pla, z谋plamazsan Tayyip'sin!鈥�, which means 鈥淛ump, jump. If you don't jump, then you're Tayyip鈥� referring to Tayyip Erdo臒an. And everybody started jumping up and down, up and down, up and down at the same time, and I had this hot glass of tea in my hand, and I had no choice but to keep jumping with it. There was really no other choice but to join the crowd. And yeah, about the temporality that I felt, and many people have felt the same way. It really felt like anything was possible after that, and there was this horizon of hope that opened up that felt incredibly authentic. And I think it was authentic just because the occupation didn't last, or just because nothing that we experience now is kind of like what the experience then was doesn't mean that it wasn't authentic, and I think it stayed with us. So the horizon of hope, that was very much real. There was a sense of present that was kind of a collision of past and future. It was a very exaggerated, intense type of relating to the present.
Am Johal 08:16
Think about Badiou鈥檚 work around the creation of a subject, this kind of thing that separates one from just simply being to becoming a subject, or the way that one's body gets marked in these moments. And, you know, at the same time, this question of how to show solidarity, this question of being there in a particular moment in time, but also in a diasporic sense, how to be in solidarity, what that distance does. It can give one a sense of freedom, of being away without suffering the political consequences in a sense, but also the retributions cross borders. There's other ways of coercion that happens through nationstates and how one thinks of that as you know, be it an academic and intellectual and activist 鈥� and these questions that you think about in your work, like solidarity, hospitality, these kinds of aspects that have theoretical ways into them. I'm wondering how you think that through your own work,
Damla Tamer 09:19
I should mention that just yesterday, I was at UBC solidarity encampment, People鈥檚 University for Gaza, and it felt, in some ways, very similar to Gezi. And I think it is criticized or this movement across campuses in North America is kind of criticized by some people as students playing home. And I don't see what's wrong with that. What's wrong with playing home. And I think the question that we should ask is, why do people who are exhausted of playing home all day, of going to work or going to school and coming home and cooking and cleaning and doing chores, still want to do it in a different place and in a different context. Why do they want to create a home? Why do they want to build a kitchen, clinic, a library? What is lacking in our day to day life? What kind of experience of perhaps self governance or agencies lacking so that we want to do that in a different type of place. And I think if we can answer that question, we will see that these actions are not disparate or disparate to utopian, that they are very real, and they're very rooted in a perceived lack in my work, I would say, with my material work. I kind of deal with these feelings that I personally have, or maybe they're remnants and traces in my social work, or collaborative and collective work, I try to perhaps deal with them in more direct ways.
Am Johal 10:53
I want to speak a little bit to another project of yours that you've been involved with, called Art Mamas. Learn if you can talk sort of where that started from and the different modes of work within that project.
Damla Tamer 11:05
Yes, of course. started in 2015 and it is the nine of us now, who are artists, who all identify as mothers, and we got together back then. A lot of us had very small children. My son was eight months old at the time, and we all felt a certain type of isolation, I would say. And we all had a certain double anxiety. I mean, it came very apparent in our conversations that we all had a certain double anxiety, where we felt anxious not exhibiting enough, not being in the studio enough, or not showing up to events enough. But also, if we did those things, we felt anxious about neglecting child care. So that paradoxical situation, I think, brought us together, where we tried to create a space for each other that was guilt free, but also perhaps like, replace the social capital that we experienced as having lost by not being able to go out as much by just being with each other.
Am Johal 12:14
It's a fascinating project, because it is within the art communities. There's a lot of 鈥� it is showing up and being there, and the ways that it can be exclusive in so many ways, and opening up new kinds of spaces in context. Also talk about that. And what were some of the activities that you took up as a collective?
Damla Tamer 12:36
So, yeah, I mean, our kind of gatherings evolved into different formats and became more public. We had different programs and different gatherings. Me and two other people, Matilda, as Lazare and Marianna Palin, worked on a few gatherings centering on or it was titled sessional teaching and motherhood. I believe I might be butchering the title, but it was looking at how people in academia who are in caregiving roles, not necessarily mothers, but parents or in caregiving roles, are experiencing precarious contract work. So that was part of it.
Am Johal 13:17
I wanted to speak a little bit, I know that you've been involved with housing co-ops and some organizing there. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to the work that you've been doing there.
Damla Tamer 13:27
After moving from apartment to apartment, my family was lucky to be accepted to a housing co-op in False Creek south where there are a whole bunch of housing co-ops right next to each other. And it was around the same time that a few other families who happened to be bipoc and queer were also accepted. Later on, I learned that was an attempt to satisfy some city requirements. And when we got in, we realized that we were in a very normative place. There was a little bit of a disillusionment, to be honest, because I do believe in the housing co-op model as a incredibly successful and beautiful model for self governance and for honestly addressing the housing crisis, and just idea of collaborating with our neighbors and becoming friends and allies for just making a building live, basically, is a beautiful idea for me, and yet, there are a lot of things missing. Unfortunately, in False Creek South, in terms of the demographics, we have tried to create streams for bipoc and queer applicants, and we're still in the process of trying to have that happen, despite some resistance from some of their members.
Am Johal 14:46
Now I know there's, you know, many issues with the leases coming up, and city and provincial governments having different agendas around density and those types of things, but also in opening up, you know, who's there, who's benefiting those kinds of things. I imagine these are very active conversations.
Damla Tamer 15:02
Definitely, and yes, I mean, I think that the leases should be extended and the housing co-ops should be allowed to thrive, and the city should actively support the building of more co-ops. It's a model that has been proven to be successful, and to be honest, if it wasn't for the housing co-op that I'm in right now, I wouldn't be in Vancouver. However, yes, I do understand the concerns about the demographics, but there are also a lot of people who are passionate 鈥� I have a lot of friends and neighbors who are very passionate about this cause and trying very actively to create a sense of diversity and belonging.
Am Johal 15:45
Damla, you've been teaching at UBC and 丁香园AV as well, and you have a strong theoretical kind of aspect as well in terms of teaching, and that informs your own art practice. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to how your teaching or research informs your practice. Now, like in terms of your teaching, how does it affect your other work?
Damla Tamer 16:08
Yeah, I'm very inspired by my students. I love the energy of the classroom. I think the classroom is the most political place that you can be in in the world, or one of them, because learning is all about how to connect the old with the new, and the way that you do that is political. So I get a lot of energy from teaching. I've been teaching textiles at 丁香园AV for the last three years, which has been kind of an interesting experience for me, just because textiles does have a lot of 鈥� they take a lot of time to produce, and they are very much kind of against the grain of expecting the students to kind of deliver projects or assignments, I would say. So I'm thinking of better ways or different ways of being able to teach textiles or craft based Arts where we don't actually ask students to finish a work in, let's say, six weeks or even 12 weeks. And how to measure success in relation to that? Yeah, I have taught a course called studio theory, interiority complex at UBC for a couple of years, which was probably, yeah, it was kind of a life changing course for me, because it did allow me to think about certain things that I was interested in from a teacher's perspective. And I also got to work with amazing TAs, and I was, you know, collaborating and teaching someone to teach [which] is also a very satisfactory experience for me. In that course, we were talking about studio work and theory, and I was trying to find an approach which didn't kind of put them on opposite ends, but at the same time, didn't conflate them either, and just trying to kind of constantly produce dynamic relationships between the two. I am constantly kind of revisiting my relationship with how we talk about artworks. So for example, the quote, unquote 鈥渃ritique sessions鈥�, where, when you complete an assignment, or when a student completes the assignment, they bring it, and everybody brings their assignment, and we hang them up or install them, and we all collectively look at them and discuss them. And I think there are certain problems sometimes in the ways that we do that or that is expected to be done. I think in the traditional crit structure, there's a kind of expectation that what the artist says aligns with what the audience understands from the work. And if there is a gap, and there will always be a gap, that gap is either taken as a negative thing or is completely fetishized as a positive thing. So for example, if the audience understands something different from what the artist means, then it can either be celebrated, as, you know, like a different type of interpretation, or multiple subjectivities, and that kind of gets a sort of classical Western art analysis based on, or like in very much relation to Roland Barthes, or when that interpretation of the audience doesn't kind of match the student's intention, then the student hasn't done a good job delivering their message or their concepts. I think these two extremes are not very healthy, and I think we should not be really obsessing about that gap too much when we're doing critiques. I think there are different ways to be in proximity to the works and to talk about the works without kind of expecting the work to unload everything into language, something that sometimes kind of comes up during critique sessions that I've experienced with other professors in my education is the student is asked not to take their work to seriously, or to avoid being precious, or to, for example, not use the words like love or like. So, for example, students are told not to say, I like your work or I love your work. And I think there are very fair reasons for that. I think professors don't necessarily want the students to be jumping to that really simple way of interacting with the work by saying I like your work and then saying nothing else. But at the same time, I really generally don't understand what's wrong with liking someone else's work and loving someone else's work, I think it's really important that we have these feelings for each other's work, and we express them, and then maybe, if we start analyzing why we love a work, why we have such a strong reaction to that work, maybe we can actually get it somewhere that is very authentic. The same with this idea of preciousness, I think is a fair request to a student to not maybe like be too absorbed in their work, or too absorbed in that version of the work, so as not to try anything else. But at the same time, I do disagree that a student shouldn't be so precious about their work, I think it's okay to like your work, or to love your work, or be attached to your work. And I think these attitudes that are very ingrained in our kind of normative pedagogical approaches really kind of show a certain relationship to the value of our labor, but also to what we think of as care, how we approach care? Yeah, that is鈥�
(laughs)
Am Johal 21:45
That was beautifully articulated. I wanted to ask you as well, I know that you've been working with a number of friends, colleagues around the From the River to the Sea Collective, and doing screenings at . I went to the one at 丁香园AV, Emily Carr last night, at Cinematheque, but I鈥檓 wondering if you could share a little bit about that project that you've been collectively organizing.
Damla Tamer 22:05
Absolutely, yes. So From the River to The Sea is a global collective, a branch of which is a local group in Vancouver, and it consists of displaced artists, mostly media artists, who really care about and are worried about the genocide that is going on in Palestine at the moment, and we have been doing screenings followed by discussions in several places that have offered to host us. So last night, we had a screening at The Cinematheque and it was supported by Cinema Workers for Palestine. And I think that the discussions that have been happening after the films have been very valuable, at least for me, we all share the feeling that the authentic discussions are not happening in a lot of spaces, and unfortunately they're not happening in universities. And we want to create a space where people can share their anxieties, their grief, their worries, their concern, discuss their ambivalence, discuss their helplessness, discuss ways to organize, discuss ways to mobilize and just to be in solidarity with each other and with Palestine.
Am Johal 23:28
Last night's screening was beautiful, as well as the one particular film that I saw at 丁香园AV as well was really beautiful.
Damla Tamer 23:34
That was my favorite as well. Yeah.
Am Johal 23:39
I know in a number of other areas you've spoken about the precarity of art workers, and particularly, you see it through some of your projects, like Art Mamas and others, but you worked as a sessional instructor 鈥� just particular social conditions in Vancouver, your housing work as well. It's a particularly difficult time, given the expense of the city, and wondering if you could speak just a little bit to you know, the particular conditions of Vancouver, of what keeps you here, given the challenging stakes that there's a lot of things that work against you as an artist, as well as you know, all the beautiful things that keep you here, in terms of communities that also provide solidarity and other types of sustenance.
Damla Tamer 24:19
Yeah, it's people who keep me here. There is a really big artist-run culture in Vancouver that I think is a really valid reason to stay and something to support, especially for emerging artists to get involved with the art scene. I would say an artist run is kind of a really good place to start. Yes, it is a hard place to be an artist. Studios are very hard to come by. I think that would be kind of my first suggestion for a solution. If ever someone asked me, What do you think could make it better having accessible studio spaces that are created in consultation with artists that would be definitely a huge one.
Am Johal 25:00
I was going to also ask you, are there new projects you're working on now, or you're hoping to do in the future that you haven't realized just yet?
Damla Tamer 25:10
Yeah. So as I was finishing up my exhibition at Access, I decided to finish it with a talk that was not necessarily like, directly related to the works in there, but something that was happening in parallel, and that's going to extend into the future. So last summer, I was in Turkey, in Istanbul for a couple of months, and I was doing a research project on the 脟a臒layan courthouse of Istanbul. I'm really interested in the aesthetics of law, how law manifests in architecture, but also through rituals. What kind of temporalities does the law create? Or what kind of temporalities do responses or reactions to the way that law operates creates? So, yeah, I was just in 脟a臒layan, like going through its vast courtrooms, attending trials and passing through multiple security checkpoints, just experiencing the space and collecting materials. And, yeah, that culminated in a kind of a talk lecture, and I'm hoping to write more and make more works about that. I'm also starting doing some large scale mosaics, which is a very new medium for me, but I see it as very much a textile medium as it's repetitive and it's based on craft. And I'm really enjoying the process so far.
Am Johal 26:35
It's amazing how many doors you can get opened up. You say you're an artist, all of a sudden, these places that are prohibited, you can't get behind secondary you're all of a sudden there. There's something to artistic license that has you know, you get, you get more access than if you were to, you know, identify yourself as an activist. First, you know, wondering if there's anything you'd like to add?
Damla Tamer 27:01
I think I'm good. I thank you very much for hosting me here. It was a pleasure.
Am Johal 27:07
Yeah, thank you so much for joining us on Below the Radar.
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Joey Malbon 27:11
Below the Radar is a knowledge democracy podcast created by 丁香园AV鈥檚 Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks for listening to our conversation with Damla Tamer. Head to the show notes to learn more about Damla鈥檚 work. If you would like to support our podcast, you can donate at the link in the description below. Your generous donation will help support the podcast's activities and associated public events with 丁香园AV's Vancity Office of Community Engagement. Thanks again for listening, and we鈥檒l catch you next time on Below the Radar.
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