Open Works Proposal- Idil Diniz

What is the subject of your project? In other words, what is it about?

As a final project I want to analyze and go deeper on an experience that everyone goes through within a time period however, no one has a memory of. I want to explore the time that has been spent as a fetus in mother’s stomach and their point of view to the world. By researching more on it I want to create an environment where one can find a chance to experience such thing again. I want my installation to be a little show in an interior space. I visualize the room to be two circular sculptures inside one in another and in between I want to place some water. By using light and water I want to create effects that will help one to visualize mothers stomach. I also want the interior circle to be something that can be inflated and through controlling the air I want the room to itself to change some shape since our stomach is flexible. Finally, by using sound effects and with the support of light I want to prepare a show for audience to experience gaining senses of being human one by one. Like feeling something first, then hearing something and at the end actually seeing it.

How does the project propose to explore time? How is time a critical part of it? How is it meant to be experienced — Who is the project for? How does the context for the piece help to give it meaning?

I believe that this project relates to time in two ways. One way it relates to time is in meaning. The time period that each individual spends in mother’s stomach about nine months is one of the unknown periods of time in our life. Experienced by everyone but not remembered. It is something that we can see through technology yet not remembered as experience. Since it is a blank in a time period I find it related to time. The second relation of this project to time is as the artwork itself being able to exist within time only. Since it will be a little show for each individual and it can be only experienced cannot be explained I find this project related to time.

Why have you chosen this particular idea to pursue?

This project has a very personal meaning to me. My dad has a manic depression. He was in manic stage of his illness last year. After his illness turned to the depression stage, we figured that he had another baby from another women. When I learned such thing I was very mad at him, mad at the women and mad at the situation. Yet, there was a reality that I needed to face and it was the baby. Even though, I really didn’t want her at all , she existed and she had no fault than coming to life. When I felt all these confusing feelings, there was only one thing I wish I could do. It was being able to look at the world from that baby’s point of view so I could forgive everyone. I could understand people. That was when the first idea came up to my mind and even then I always wondered what it is to be in mother’s stomach and are they also capable of feeling what’s outside.

Ernest Neto and Fuerza Bruta will be some of the inspirations for my project.

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1 Comment

  1. John Roach · April 22, 2014 Reply

    This is an amazing description of the project and somehow manages to bring together the personal and the universal in such a convincing way. The thought that this return can somehow bring people to a kind of acceptance or empathy is pretty powerful.

    It is probably worth looking into imagery around this topic of wholeness and birth and unity. there are certainly some spiritual connections here. I think it is a fascinating connection that you make between this state that none of us remember but that we can now see via technology. It is visible but not something we can actually re-experience.

    Are you familiar with isolation tanks?
    https://www.google.com/search?q=isolation+tanks&client=firefox-a&hs=Fj8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&channel=sb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=zBxXU7WnKZTKsQTS2IGwBw&ved=0CAgQ_AUoAQ&biw=1420&bih=711

    What are other experiences that try to simulate this idea of closeness, womb-like comfort? It might be worth looking into how children who have extreme sensory issues are treated. Often they are given very encompassing soft objects to hold or wrap around themselves.

    I think the trick here is how to move forward. You have a very enticing idea but I am afraid that it will be difficult to realize or to communicate. Please work on a plan so we can understand how it can be accomplished.

    I think it is really important here too that you firmly establish that this is about that no-time that exists in the womb, I think the project can easily become about other things (materials, objects, comfort, etc) so you’ll want to make that aspect very clear.

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