Our visiting resident, Sedef Karayel (based in Berlin) presented her artistic and research work to the group, sharing her thoughts and theory around ruins, which gave rise to a discussion around these topics:

It started with making things with clay, things that were small and weird..things that I was not able to identify at the beginning. but I left them on my desk, on the kitchen table. I holded them while talking on the phone. I took photos of them, I made drawings, paintings from these photos. then, they were not weird for me anymore. It was like an endless process that I was making something, then breaking, spoiling it, then constructing something else with remainders, then deconstructing again and again. They were like on the horizon of becoming something, but this becoming would not be completed.

I thought they were similar to ruins that remain after, but also changing in a way. I am interested in this process of (de/re)construction. I am interested in the horizon of
becoming of things/beings.

Sedef Karayel (1991, Cyprus) graduated from Molecular Biology and Genetics Department of Bilkent University in Turkey and got her MA degree in Neurosciences program of VU, Amsterdam. Currently, she is a PhD scholar in Einstein Center of Neurosciences, Berlin. In her research, she focuses on perception and decision-making processes in an ambiguous environment.

She has taken independent courses from contemporary artist Sevil Tunaboylu between 2017-2024. She joined the workshop, Emotions, Cities and Bodies (2018) at Nesin Art Village, Şirince, Turkey. She has been co-running a Phenomenology Reading Group with a psychiatrist, researcher friend Enise Incesoy since 2020.