When I entered the art tent set up in the centre of Zeytinlik, my attention was immediately drawn to high activity around a long table where a man with a long beard and in a red shirt was showing and assisting children to work with clay. Clay - his material, an artist from Izmir. He had come here with his exhibition “980 Degrees”. He invited me to enter his own small tent where some twenty differently shaped ceramic flower pots were hanging upside down like bells and he handed me a drum stick to go and try my musical hand on them.

He has produced the pots and fired them at 980° and they give off a different tone depending on the shape and the size of the pot. Firing them at another temperature it would result in different tones. Ekin Erman combines a special philosophy with his work. All the events such as births, deaths, wars that have happened on the soil he is using to make pots are incorporated in the process and when asked how one can recognize the different events he answers: By listening to the sound of the soil and I tried to visualize a different level of time with its events incorporated.

Fascinating!

Copyright Heidi Trautmann 2009