Kasa Gallery hosted the exhibition titled ‘User’s Manual for Anew Beginners’, curated by Uras Kızıl, featuring the works of Kıymet Daştan and Başak Kaptan, from 22 November 2023 to 5 January 2024.
The exhibition focuses on artists’ practices of valuing, object-oriented thinking, and memory. It brings together works of video, installation, printing, and object-oriented art that problematize the non-human other and open up to thought practices. The productions of the duo aim to centralize the relationship established with non-human entities in thought, emphasizing co-production within the framework of the inherent qualities and new meanings of objects instrumentalized for a purpose. They embrace the tension between the new and the anew. The post-human turn has revealed that humans are not the sole species capable of producing knowledge on Earth. In this post-human era where the privileged position of humans is shaken, new possibilities and diversities have opened up: There is a more pronounced need for a new grammar, imagery, terms, methodology, objects, material layers, cartographies, relationships, and co-production. It is evident that all these needs are related to (re)starting things anew. However, thought frameworks like new materialism, which can be considered under the post-human umbrella, remind us that embracing the new does not mean excluding the past; rather, the new is filled with recalls and returns, drawing lessons from the past. These days, it has been realized that the other is not exclusively the other as a human; the non-human other is inherently marginalized as well. Being together doesn't just mean the unity of the same species; it implies coexistence and action with all non-humans (objects, materials, plants, organisms, imperceptible life forms).
The collaborative thinking practices of Kıymet Daştan and Başak Kaptan dates back to 2022. The duo's fluid and spontaneously evolving collaborative thinking is palpable in their artistic productions. The emphasis they place on the (re)new becomes tangible as artists give a fresh direction to their previous works. Existing artworks transformed for the exhibition evolve in form through the (re)configuration of thought and object. The exhibition ‘User’s Manual for Anew Beginners’ embraces the tension between the new and the anew. The exhibition seeks to define the meaning of the new and, at the same time, establish the position of the anew. By emphasizing co-production, the exhibition opens up the non-human other to thought practices.
