Confessions: Strong from East-EastWest, 2001

Installation with C-Prints, Vinyl Wall Text, 3D VRML Projection (loop)
With Guven Incilioglu (xurban_collective)
Commissioned by the 49th Venice Biennial, Turkish Pavilion, 2001. Curated by Beral Madra
Also presented at Borusan Gallery, Istanbul 2002; Bohn Kunst Museum, 2002

Confessions: Strong from East-EastWest was presented at the 49th Venice Biennale in the Turkish Pavilion whose theme was “The Perfumed Garden” referring to a book by Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Nafzawi, a fifteenth-century Arabic sex manual and work of erotic literature, comparable to Kama Sutra. The idea of Confessions referred to Foucault’s “the history of sexuality” indicating  “knowledge-power” in the construction of Orientalist discourse, but also Foucault’s direct references to Ars Erotica and Scientia Sexualis that belong respectively to East and the West. As a project, xurban_collective’s Confessions started on the internet at the end of March 2001, as a collective pool of imagery and deepest secrets both true and false that Incilioglu and I shared with each other. An interactive “space,” was set up in the Turkish Pavilion with a set of computer-generated VRML images representing the coordinates to work in, around or into. We argued that not only in the order of taboos and sexuality but through game and mockery confessions brought out the most unspeakable, the most violent desire and hatred, possibly the hidden fascist in every man and woman of the East and the West. They say: “After all, if the “network” had replaced God, to whom else would you confess?”

I Confess:

 that I have abandoned the faith;
 that I have punched her abdomen;
 that I have showed signs of abhorrent behaviour;
 that I abhor education;
 that I abide by Satan’s rules;
 that I have abolished prayers for good;
 that I thought love to be abominable;
 that I have slit the aborigines throat;
 that I had an abortion;
 that I experience abrupt changes in my personality;
 that I think that the absence of mind is better;
 that my absolute devotion tickles me;
 that I am absorbed in indulgence;
 that I abstain from doing good;
 that absurd is my love of God;
 that I am easily accesible;
 that I have been an accessory to a murder;
 that my accomplice is a pornographer;
 that I have accused God of my poverty;
 that my acquaintance with cunnilingus is devilish;
 that acrobatics of copulation is my thing;
 that my impotence adds to our racial catastrophe;
 that I adhere to the laws of infidelity;
 that I am addicted to a number of things;
 that I have commited adultery;
 that my adversary is the mosque;
 that I cannot afford to be good;
 that I am afraid of helping someone;
 that afterlife is not what I am aiming at;
 that ageing boosts my desire for perversity;
 that I carry an aggravated assault rifle;
 that I am agitated by the sight of a bull;
 that I think safe sex is allegorical;
 that all things considered, I am still not cured;
 that I have an incurable amnesia for my sins;
 that I am an amoralist: down with amore;
 that I consider prayer to be an anomaly;
 that I have antagonized the ants;
 that I had a chat with Antichrist in the room;
 that I feel apologetic for nothing I did;
 that I swiftly became an apostate;
 that I am an apparatchik of my deviation;
 that arabesque is my relation to the opposite sex;
 that my manners are archaic;
 that my arch enemy is the state;
 that I have an ardent passion for sweets;
 that arid is my taste for wine;
 that I regard the aristocracy to be the source of all evil;
 that I consider nuclear armament to be the solution;
 that I am aroused by the sight of the National Security Council;
 that I was the Kurd’s assassin;
 that I believe the assumption to be a hoax;
 that I think to be rich is atrocious;
 that I don’t believe in God;
 that I, for once, thought that blowing up Buddhas is not so bad after all;
 that I don’t go to the mosque;
 that I have consumed excessively;
 that I have a disregard for the elders;
 that I have a disregard for ten commandments;
 that I totally dislike the Pope;
 that I drink too much;
 that the East is East and the West is West and never the twain shall meet;
 that I have fucked a donkey;
 that I sometimes think gays and lesbians deserve to die;
 that I have performed sodomy;
 that I think being politically right is bullshit;
 that I have sinned;
 that I sometimes eat at McDonald’s;
 that I smell my mom's underwear.
 that I fucked my sister.
 that I sucked my boss to get an increase.
 that I am fucked by a horse.
 that I rape four woman, one of them really enjoyed.
 that I am an engineer.
 that I am a corporate web designer;
 that I am an artist;
 that I enjoy to make women suffer;
 that I am masturbating while I am driving fast;
 that I have a collection of guns and I enjoy using them;
 that I listened to my parents bedrooms, my mom groaned all night long;
 that I masturbate at "l'institue d'etude francaise" exhibition bathroom;
 that I fucked a girl at pope's room;
 that I like poetry;
 that I hate kurdish people;
 that I hate turkish people;
 that I like germans and scandaniavians;
 that I find arab men really seductive;
 that I adore black men's penis;
 that I can only fuck ass, tight one;
 that I applied for a job in a corporation;