Landscape and Character

Nowadays, I’m reading another book by Lawrence Durrell that fascinates me: Spirit of Place. It consists of letters, essays and travel articles. The editor Alan G. Thomas has turned the intellectual material that Durrell has created during his years in Corfu, Egypt, Cyprus, Rhodes, Yugoslavia and Southern France into a delicious book. Since it is currently out of print in Turkish, I’ve gotten myself a second hand copy, and have immediately dived into the chapter called ‘Peyzaj ve Kişi’. On the other, hand I have also taken action to get its original English version. If all goes well, the book will be in Istanbul until July 22nd.

Because of my personal background, language and translation have always been very important to me. Reading the Turkish version of this chapter, one of the first things that I have wondered was how has Durrell originally expressed the word “peyzaj” in the title? More accurately, I should say, to express which word, did Ülker İnce who translated the book chose this Turkish counterpart? After a short research I have reached the answer. The original title of the chapter was ‘Landscape and Character’. And it leads one’s thoughts to more interesting places because now one thinks not only on the word ‘landscape’ but also on the possible connotations of the word ‘character’ as well. Has Durrell referred to a person or a space, a geographical place, or even maybe to the personas of a novel? I will reconsider this while reading the piece for a second time. The essay starts as follows:

‘You write’ says a friendly critic in Ohio, ‘as if the landscape were more important than the character.’ If not exactly true, this is near enough to mark, for I have evolved a private notion about the importance of landscape, and I willingly admit to seeing ‘character’ almost as functions of a landscape. This has only come about in recent years after a good deal of travel –though here again I doubt if this is quite the word, for I am not really a ‘travel-writer’ so much as a ‘residence-writer’. My books are always about living in places, not just rushing through them. But as you get to know Europe slowly, tasting the wines, cheeses and characters of the different countries you begin to realize that the important determinant of any culture is after all –the spirit of place. Just as one particular vineyard will always give you a special wine, with discernible characteristics so a Spain, an Italy, a Greece will always give you the same type of culture – will express itself through the human being just as it does through its wild flowers.

This long paragraph has reminded me again of an idea that I occasionally think in recent years, and yet could not clearly put into words. It has not just reminded me of it, but also made a crystal clear. In fact, it is a more avant-garde thought than mine, and it is extremely impressive. I believe it is true that spaces are essential and shape one’s soul and practices. Despite the fact that humans seem to be the constitutional element of things – perhaps due to the human arrogance – it is not the case. Human being is a medium; a tool of self-expression of Nature, geography and the earth. Spirit of place is somehow reflected in all of our practices. That is why one is more productive in some places, or on the contrary feels exhausted in others so much so that cannot drip an ink on paper (or in broader terms, performing one’s craft becomes impossible). Being inspired or losing one’s muses is perhaps caused by the ‘binding’ of place. And in fact, what we produce is the self-reflection of the landscape’s character through us.

In addition to its influence on productivity, landscape has an element that infuses into the subsequent production. Landscape, which I believe to be the sum of the place + nature + habitat, and history that incorporates them all, change and shape the colour, texture, subject and even the smell of what is produced.

Something I often hear from my friends it that how Doğu’s paintings have changed colour and content after we are settled in Bodrum. I may say the same thing for his sculptures. He began making them more brut (raw), of pure material, as if dug and recovered centuries later from beneath the earth, or on the contrary just made a day before, using the left outs of the nearest contraction site. They seem timeless in that sense, which can equally be dated to both yesterday and today. And these qualities that I have just used to describe his work are like Bodrum kind of qualities that I can use in describing Bodrum as well.

And there is the idea of living grounded in a place; the writer’s defining himself as a ‘residence-writer’, instead of being a ‘travel-writer’. I believe that is extremely important in the continuity and of course in the quality of practice. Being in constant change of environment does not extend a person. I –as someone who has been experiencing the process for almost ten years now – can tell it out of experience. Although it feels enthusiastic, cheerful and multi-tasking, it actually diminishes one’s concentration. I, personally do my best work for halka sanat projesi, İstanbul, in my office in Art Halicarnassus in Bodrum. My dual life between Istanbul and Bodrum from 2010 to 2016-2017 has become more unclouded after this period when I have concluded my responsibilities –except halka – in Istanbul and moved my centre to Bodrum. Being grounded in this landscape and its spirit that feeds me allowed me to commit more to halka and lean on my other intellectual practices; and perhaps most importantly it positively affects the content of the projects that I create.

The emergence of Art Halicarnassus as a space has put the process on a trail that follows a certain path. Writing, thinking, researching, planning, monitoring the daily routine and diverting it if necessary become more efficient and comprehensive when I’m bound up in a single place than during my back and forth trips to Istanbul. I am not in a distance or in vacation, I am in it, at its centre. At the same time, I am in this ancient yet contemporary landscape that deeply inspires me or expresses itself through me. And it connect me to Bodrum, the history of civilization, nature, creative practice and to halka. Or, I feel that they all become connected to each other in this place, in Art Halicarnassus.

Art and life come in different forms

“Although we are not in the picture in person, Doğu and I stand in there as the expression of the landscape in its chaotic and unpretenscious substance. The same corner will look different in time as we change, the landscape changes too. That’s the dynamism of life.”

İpek