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Ahmet Öğüt
Born in 1981 in Diyarbakır, Turkey / Lives in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Adriano Pedrosa (AP): What were your intentions with your piece Perfect Lovers (2008)? How can  Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s original “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers) (1991), which consisted of two circular clocks juxtaposed and ticking in sync, be reworked and brought closer to Turkish themes?

Ahmet Öğüt (AÖ): In the original, Gonzalez-Torres placed two synchronized industrial clocks side by side. The idea was that in the beginning, the clocks should run in perfect sync, but because batteries gradually fail over time, they would slowly become out of sync. In my Perfect  Lovers this process is reversed.  Although a 1 YTL (New Turkish Lira) coin is not a perfect replica of  a 2 EUR coin and does not correspond to the same value, the coins are aesthetically alike, and have  the same dimensions and weight. 1 YTL is worth approximately half of its European counterpart. By tricking coin machines in Europe and using the 1 YTL instead of the 2 EUR coin, some people transformed this design coincidence into a strategic potential. I assume that the Turkish government eventually noticed this potential, which is why in the beginning of 2010 it slightly changed the design of the 1 YTL coins. Gonzalez-Torres gave social contexts to industrial readymades. Following in his footsteps, I often use social readymades, meaning that they represent already-existing domains of sociopolitical reality.

AP: What is evoked in the pairing of these two coins that are so similar yet come from very different contexts? How are we to consider the relationship between these two “lovers”—the European community and Turkey? As an artist from Turkey who has been living in Amsterdam since 2007, what are your thoughts on this uneasy relationship?

AÖ: I started out as an artist from Diyarbakır, Turkey. Then I began to be considered an artist from Ankara. After a while I was called an artist from Istanbul. This was the story inside Turkey. Later I was invited to some group shows as a Mediterranean artist, as an artist from the Middle East, as an Asian artist, as an artist from Eastern Europe, and as an artist from the Netherlands. Even though I now live in Europe, how to position me on the map is a fantastic confusion for many people, which I like. This confusion comes from Turkey’s geographic and logistical position, and from me being a nomad. We can imagine the European community and Turkey as a couple, but one of them is getting older (the European community) and one seems to be getting younger (Turkey)—kind of a Benjamin Button case. That is why I don’t know how long the European community can continue its “not inclusion / not exclusion” tactics. And the most important question is that even if it happens, is it going to be the inclusion of the exclusion?