Using the Turkish word for cow – inek – as a case study, “How to Deal With Growing Up & Forgetting Things” explores the formation of an enemy, a nemesis, or a bully (depending on the context) through the embodiment of violence in language. The slang meaning of inek as a hard-working student emerged during the 1930s by university students organizing a politically critical spring festival. The term became popular through a fictional character, İnek Şaban (Şaban the cow), in a young adult fiction series Hababam Sınıfı (The Chaos Class). The author Rıfat Ilgaz intended it to be a satire of the Turkish educational system at the time; however, the intense bullying disguised as teenage male mischief was interpreted as comedy by the public when the books were adapted into film. The investigation focuses on the traces of “bullying disguised as teenage male mischief” in various contexts outside the academic institutions such as celestial counterparts with apparitions of Halley’s Comet, friendly and wise humanoid extraterrestrial Klaatu, hierarchy created between animal and human individuals by the construction of the category of farm animals as well as personal histories by owning an uncalled for nickname given to me by my own teenage male mischievous bully, “the mustache.” The installation consists of a pamphlet, several objects and images, drawings of animals and aliens, a sculpture made of feed bags, and a big mustache.
How to Deal With Growing Up & Forgetting Things was produced with the support of Alex Brown Foundation at Mainframe Studios #455 between April and June 2024.
fatma belkıs 