INTER CAETERA DIVINAE

(Among other…to the Divine)

Engraving and painting on aluminum board

36 x 38 cm

The title to a papal bull from 1493 issued by Pope Alexander VI Inter caetera (“Among other”) was a papal bull issued by Pope Alexander VI on4 May 1493, which granted to Spain (the Crowns of Castile and Aragon) all lands to the “west and south” of a pole-to-pole line 100 leagues west and south of any of the islands of the Azores or the Cape Verde islands. This piece is refered directly to the book “Nomos of the earth” written by Carl Schmitt. Schmitt analysis of Nomos of the earth, argues that lines drawn between European soil and the so-calls “free space” of non-European soil, were “the facilitation of the colonial (political, military and economic) land appropriation of this New World. Drawing lines, which divided and distributed the entire earth, was made possible by what Schmitt called «global linear thinking», an integral part of the emerging spatial consciousness of modernity. (in The International Political Thought of Carl Schmitt, edited by Louiza Odysseos and Fabio Petito.)

KILL BOX

Installation with 4000 B&W photocopies of the US ARMY publication about FM 3-09.34 Kill Box Tactics and Multiservice Prosedures, Two Neon Lights

You can find more on kill-boxes and their operationalisation here. link: http://info.publicintelligence.net/MTTP-KillBox.pdf

As defined in the U.S. Department of Defense Dictionary, the kill box is “a three-dimensional area reference that enables timely, effective coordination and control and facilitates rapid attacks. »Types«The Departement of Defense uses these to target people whose “pattern of life” fit the parameters of an algorithm, rather than specific individuals. For example: Say someone who owns a cellphone has been calling numbers that trigger a response from a computer at the Pentagon. Analysts will triangulate the cellphone’s whereabouts, and military leaders might initiate a “kill box” at that location, authorizing soldiers to kill everyone within the “box. http:/www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/the-cost-ofthe- kill-box/470751/

During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, MULTI-SERVICE TACTICS, TECHNIQUES, AND PROCEDURES FOR KILL BOX EMPLOYMENT was once again used with devastating effect to prosecute the air war in support of the initial invasion. Use of Kill Boxes is now part of Joint U.S. Doctrine and is vused by many of the U.S.’s allies. Gregoire Chamayou in his book Drone theory, said: ‘Temporary microcubes of lethal exception can be opened anywhere in the world, according to the contingencies of the moment, once an individual who qualifies as a legitimate target has been located.’ Thus, even as the target becomes ever more individuated – so precisely specified that air strikes no longer take the form of the area bombing of cities in World War II or the carpet bombing of the rainforest of Vietnam – the hunting ground becomes, by virtue of the nature of the pursuit and the remote technology that activates the strike, global.The zone of armed conflict, fragmented into micro-scale kill boxes, reduces itself in the ideal-typical case to the single body of the enemyprey: the body as the field of battle.’ Yet on the other side, a principle of globalisation or homogenisation: ‘Because we can target our quarry with precision, the military and the CIA say in effect, we can strike them wherever we see fit, even outside a war zone.’

TIBETAN LAKES 1

Engraving and painting on alumium board, 140 x 50 cm

LEVIATHAN - MATTER, FORME AND POWER

Engraving and painting on aluminum board, 48 x 48 cm

This piece is refered directly to the book Leviathan written by Thomas Hobbes and published in 1651.

THE DORMANT COLONY 1 & 2

Text in 41 A4 pockets and 4 neon lights, 530 cm X 480 cm

In this world, the artist was the product of a collective representation caught up in the game of individuality. As always when waking up, he would enter the ideological realm of art to occupy its space convinced he would exit empowered. His movements were those of a ghost haunted by the  virtual nature of that space. The realm did not submit to his spectral nature; he, himself, however, was positively inhabited by the dematerialization of the habitat. He did not travel through the walls: the walls travelled through him. His steps would glide above the floor; every movement his feet made seemed to last a thousand years; his hands were grazing the walls so surely the sensation felt peculiar; the works of art on the walls were flashing by at uncontrollable speed though his body had not moved an inch since entering the gallery. The architectural components were breaking away in modules. They pierced through the artist’s ethereal matter by opening up their structure.

Suddenly, a crack started running along the gallery ceiling creating a gap that broke open its surface. Pieces of concrete began to fall as flakes until the whole ceiling collapsed with a thud in the midst of a suffocating cloud of dust. The works of art, buried under a mass of rubble, merged with the ruins. The artist, now transformed into a warlord, ordered his subordinates to take the situation in hand. In an atmosphere fitting a downpour, he led the operations coldly and minutely. All admitted to belonging to the world of art. The artist did not feel intimidated. Eventually, after a long while (whole years had gone by), he lost the round and another take his place to reconstruct the realm. To do so he organized a gigantic dormitory where a thousand settlers would be left to sleep to wake up when the time would be right. A colony of souls laid dormant waiting their turn.

Photos : Ridvan Bayrakoğlu.