The word criticism is derived from the word , kritikos (κριτικός) in Ancient Greece. Although it connects with the critic of Kant and tied with to make a judgement, adjudication and judgement, criticism is related to use the ability to be aware of, distinguish, percept and apprehend something. It is something to do with the possibilities of a creative transformation, which is not destructive, but affirmative.
According to the Philosophy and Grammar Glossary of Terms of Türk Dil Kurumu (Turkish Language Association) published in 1942, criticism in Turkey is being understood as 'stricture'. According to the Etymology Dictionary of Modern Turkish by Nişanyan, it is explained as "Kant's way of censure" in the Glossary of Academic Terminology by Tıngır & Sinapyan. So, the root of the word criticism that we use today has been derived towards the end of 19th century and added to New Ottoman language, is tanḳīd تنقيد) and naḳada (نقد)in Arabic, which goes all the way to highly disturbing and death treating acts such as pecking, sarcasm and allude as well as "nakd", which means cash, money. This maybe the reason why criticism is percepted in Turkey as pecking, being sarcastic and discomforting money and the ones, who has money. Criticism can be counted as a death treat and considered as non-existent.
I presume, it has been dictated today that politics should be done by 'politicians', art by 'artist', critic by 'critics', journalism by 'journalist' due to criticism and this inconvenience perception of critics. Yet this expired understanding and a world connected to this understanding are left behind. On the other hand, opening up to contemporary art criticism is not a death from political and economical point of view, but goes in the direction that is connecting vital and friendly power with potential. It keeps on having friendly conversation.
Destruction of criticism together with the critic by getting ripped off from its content and the area/time it exists actually forms a patriarchal struggle for power, which is made for statement, archive, people who will archive and how the history would be written. This needs to be clarified.
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Criticism is a power that is forming curves towards the transformation of knowledge-power production. I discussed this last year in my article called "My Complaint is to the Creator: Why Criticism and Critic in Contemporary Art is a Question of Knowledge?( Şikayetim Yaratana:
Çağdaş Sanatta Eleştiri ve Eleştirmenlik Neden Bir Bilgi Sorunudur?)" I would like to continue with Nusret Polat's answer with his article "The Critic is Dead, Long Live The Critic (Eleştirmen Öldü, Yaşasın Eleştirmen)" to my article mentioned above. Polat has shared the discussion I proceeded on how the contemporary art criticism and critic have been disabled, with one of its vital points. According to Polat:
"The matter of question now is a kind of a non-critical art criticism, which doesn't see the potential of art providing critical thinking, putting art into the direction of art market."
The main point that Polat is stressing is to do with the necessity for not placing criticism and critic to an exceeding plane and not including them to an operation of sublimation with avant-garde roles.
It is not possible not to agree with him and here is the conundrum in this: Although I have emphasized that "the real issue today is not what criticism and to criticise mean, using the power of judging and even if the artefact is liked or not", a big load has been put on my shoulders as "to do a non realistic and wrong sociological reading" by Polat. It has also been emphasized that I have reasoned as if there is no relationship in between art criticism and capital due to this jobbery. So be it...
From this claim forth, Polat can refer to the necessity of taking the connections of criticism and critic with art and capital also into consideration by underlining the fact that criticism is not an independent power.
Yet, when it is read with articles named "Contemporary State of Exploitation in Contemporary Art (Çağdaş Sanatta Sömürünün Güncel Hali) " and " Cacophony (Kakafoni)", which form the source of the article Polat was criticising and the basic texts of the exhibition in Açıkekran New Media Arts Gallery, of which I was the curator, done in collaboration with Candaş Şişman, Ozan Türkkan, Pınar Yoldaş and Ayşe Gül Süter, then some points intersecting with the criticism of Polat - as a matter of fact- do offer a link and meeting opportunity:
"Transforming gradually into a profiting investment tool today in the guidance of foreign capital, art as work and the function of art critic seems to transform as well."
" The contemporary state of exploitation in contemporary art appears through instrumentalization of critic's mental (physical) efforts, commodifying cultural knowledge-power and circulation of ideas over exclusion. One of the troubles reading how this occurs is related to cacophony."
Serving for the function of hiding and exculpating the implicit and hideous face of violence, cacophony provides the "concern formed by loud noise" to get unnoticed. Therefore, I broach the subject matter we are discussing that Polat emphasizes at the end of his article and I also shared, on criticism and critic by emphasizing an issue:
Increasing the production and expression ways of critical thought is fundamentally related to regard passion and faith for transformation by opening him/herself to differences and diversity. Polat is placing this approach on affirmation rather than taste and judgement into a its proper place with the reference he makes to Nietsche.
"Exposition of a person's (in this context this is the artist and critic) own power, the potential and possibilities that he/she has, mean that they do not close themselves to other possibilities and differences."
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Today we continue to research for the ways to work together with ties of contradiction. We are experiencing that critical actions related to demand for transformation and change which can not be disciplined, are percepted as a threat to the existence and authority of dominating one from political and economical perspective
We are experiencing the ones, who are screaming narcissistic existence with passion and faith to own absolute power and right, talk only with the claim of representing the approved ones and approved mass, how they only want their voice to be hear and not hearing anything else as well as not wanting to hear anything else.
This is a negligent economy... Therefore the criticism and the function of critic in Turkey should be evaluated with this negligent economy conditions.
Today we see that sometimes all the voices rather than the ones of their own whispers death to the criticised and the critic. Yet wouldn't the one, who is scared of death, be also scared of the creator's power of containing differences? And deny our own creative power?
This is not capable or powerful; contrary this is to see a power in dedication to a grotesque helplessness, to find value in carrying faith with the passion to have that power and to be connected to a power based on this value. I think this is one of the problems standing in front of criticism in Turkey.
The trouble is that being carried away with a conservative and destructive paranoia, this power connections rooted also in art are trying to hide and exculpate this dedication to the grotesque helplessness. If perchance it hears a voice rather his own and come across with these voices, it startles, gets scared, gets worried, rejects, underestimates, devaluates, ignores and becomes violent. On top of all, it performs this by claiming that it listens through ravelling itself to new, contemporary, critical and different. Just because of this contemporary critical thinking has to work with conflicting ties.
Besides all this, there is another line that is spreading through repetition, imitated as it spreads and becoming a part of a society as it gets imitated: Trying to erase other voices within the critical and adversary differences by saying "the members of the same mentality" and trying to cut down the means of access to do criticism are producing racism and belligerence again. Racism and belligerence are realized, get natural and normal through re-presentation of means of "discord" and "intrigue" written with familiar codes. Therefore, racism and belligerence that are serving the continuity of oppressor's existence and its authority, can hide within the loud noise
"Discord" that is related to sustentation (expenditure, cost) means tumour in the body, while "intrigue" means deterioration, decay. In that case, the one that is critical and opponent can turn into a state which can be directly linked to death, which threatens life. In other words removing different voices by saying "the members of the same mentality" is connected to consumption, expensing, wasting, compensation and annihilation through decay. To death and to kill... Therefore current critic and criticism can be percepted as a death threat, causing sustentation, -in other words- expenditure and compensation.
This perception of current criticism and critic intertwines with the monopoly of imperialist political-economical capital. Thus, an expenditure without his control and a deterioration caused by this compensation are considered as a death threat against dominating capital owner's monopoly and "network of making propertyless". Therefore, quieting criticism down, ignoring or not listening to the critic link to passion for monopolist, racist and warrior like domination to intersect with absolute passion and belief for power, to get intense in this channel and to direct towards dictation.
Problem to read and write on the issues in Turkey are based on the normalization, naturalising and justification of dictation and conditions of being imposed to be dependent, and it developed together with the censorship and annihilation of critical thought's expression areas.
Restraining critical thought by censorship functions as enhancement of occupation, abuse and dominance with the help of local source or trackers of imperialist. Therefore censoring local power and its self-appointed trackers form the imperialist jobbery connections in contemporary art.
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The ways to do current ecological politics based on openly sharing the sources are blocked by the censor and EMERGENCY STATEs based on violence as well as the guns, media and provocative acts forming the EMERGENCY STATEs. Yet opposing censor and make critical thought live should be read as a daily life resistance or even curl.
Today daily resistance is the resistance to have right to live. Here we are talking about the acts of -as Hardt states- horizontal resistance of majority, which prioritizes communal rather that its own existence. According to this, right to live of a person today is the same with the struggle of a tree, animal, art work, criticism and word's right to live. Yet, a patriarchal politic economic paradigm from an analogue ages that promotes only human and humanity, dominating the general mentality.
Today,we experience an intervene to the criticism and the critic that is trying to transform the regime connected to patriarchal politic economic paradigm mentality. Interferences such as ignoring, censoring, being idle, popularization and restriction, are repeated and imitated with an intensive frequency by the local power trackers, who wish to have the power of authority. Unavoidably, this functions to increase and spread of passion and belief towards keeping the authority of the existing one and its oppressive existence.
Here the connections creating contradictions are formed by a daily and momentarily slipping and disengagement in between action and word. In other words, the one, who is claiming to be "in good faith", "opponent", "contemporary" and "critical", is not knowing that they are helping the reproduction of authority's patriarchal existence by being an agent, carrier and narrator -in other words "media"- On top of that a negligence towards the production of knowledge and criticism with regard to this is in question. A negligent economy... Editors, who do not read, curators, who have forgotten to have a conversation, artists, who are detached from thought producing, art writers, who are not curious, galleries, which turned into a shopping mall, gallerists, who are
This is also closely related to the state of being under a dent of debt at the same time. The journalist asksafter the tragedy in Soma: "Would you go into the mine again?" Miner answers: "I have to; I have got a credit debt" This is just like and artist rushing into a work, getting him/herself in debt, for his name to be heard with a prestigious curator, gallery or museum. It is like feeling himself obligated to spend his own credit in order to get credit...
Or like a last minute editorial interference by titling an interview in the May issue of Istanbul Art News as "We are Unemployed Curators and We are Trying to Stay Alive" (!!) Titled without the consent of the interviewer or the interviewed ones, this editorial approach, which turns the whole content in an opposite direction, shows us the ties of criticism in Turkey to stricture and cash.
Being added to the provocation of dominant power and taught us the rules of journalism, the editor can not hide or clear his dictation with the concerns for popularity and sales even though he disguises himself in irony. The editor, who devaluates the criticism and refutation requests from the interviewees as far-fetched reasons and try to quiet the criticism by not publishing these, also continues to search for his rights by requesting "respect for effort". So be it...
In fact it should be emphasized that: Even if only the conditions, proceedings and processes forming the occurrence of this event, are taken into consideration, then the connection of criticism with stricture and cash in Turkey can be observed.
As it can be seen that the ones, who have been forced to consent in order to live their life, which are in debt and based on existence anxiety, and learned to repeat violence by being exposed to obligatory violence, are waiting to reach the right of an order that is separated from the basis of friendship and conversation, destructive and exploitative. They become the dogmatic and conservative actors of contemporary art in Turkey.
On top of that they are doing this by reclining against definitions such as "contemporary art", "young artist", "female curator". This devaluates and empties as well as causing the faith and passion for the power of art and art criticism that is opening to a dissimilitude, to get weak.
These micro symptoms are important since it reveals issues blocking the spreading of critical thinking in Turkey. These actors are only trying to make their own dominating existence and authority by means of negligent debt economy and psychology. It dictates. It spends "good will" credits as well; it disregards and consumes the creativity opening to difference...
As a result we can say that we are trying to trace the struggle and action trail, which are run dynamically by the ones, who are concerned by contemporary art criticism and reading the criticism concern together withcurrent states, and the ones, whose connection both to the authority and the cultural, economical and political production lines are cut, by opening the connections in between criticism > stricture > cash
