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Exhibiton text for:
Plug’n’Play
Onur Tayranoğlu
MUU Helsinki Contemporary Art Centre
03-2023
This is Plug’n’Play, a physical site where digital formulations of desire are performed.
Basing itself on the understanding “plugging precedes play”,
a seductive sequence of installations negotiates layers of visibility and privacy.
Unpacking the different degrees of that which is private, semi-private or public
in regards to the physical and conceptual organizations of intimacy;
the work is an ongoing performative inquiry envisioned through cyber-sexual practices
being taken out of their context and presented elsewhere, translated elsehow.
Plug’n’Play puts into question how in either cases materiality and virtuality
relate to having access to desire, and to be desired.
Onur Tayranoğlu derives from personal experiences of digital cruising, cam sex,
sexting, creating and consuming textual and visual pornographic content.
Cyber-sexuality holds a potential to allow for diversified and deviated kinds of
expansion with queer visibility processes. In this regard, the digital space
might precede the physical space, and thus acts as a reflective layer for the self
to experience visibility for the screen, for the other, and in turn for the self.
The artistic collaborators have formed a working group for five months,
together walking and moaning towards a perhaps nonexistent climax.
In reenacting the dynamics of seeking partners for sexual desires and forming
encrypted communities, Onur has invited their co-performer, whom they have met on
Grindr. During the rehearsals, they sought ways of rendering the political and poetic
qualities to cyber-sexual practices. They ask, a big, vague, What If?
Working with techniques of virtual realities such as 3D scanning, motion capture
and animation, Onur investigates the digital reconfigurations of performing sexual
desire, alongside the surrounding economy and politics. The multichannel face maps
are abstracted out of their bodies into stock images, commodified as masks in
the gallery space. They ask, to what extent can we reclaim authorship over the
many traces our bodies leave?
The physical execution of Plug’n’Play grows upon the transparency and the opacity
of identity; the latex-covered structure hosts a transitory performance and the pixels
pretend to cover that which should not be looked at.
The power of invisibility gets rearranged.
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WORKING GROUP___
CONCEPT, RESEARCH AND EXECUTION: ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
PERFORMERS: LEMPI KOPONEN, ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
SOUND DESIGN: JON PETTERSSON
SPATIAL DESIGN: ANNA PIETILÄ
VISUALS: ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
SPECIAL THANKS TO___
JULIUS ELO AND TERO NAUHA FOR SUPERVISION, KALLE RASINKANGAS FOR TECHNICAL MENTORING,
MARJA ZILCHER AND THE TECHNICAL TEAM IN THEATRE ACADEMY AND FINE ARTS ACADEMY OF UNIARTS HELSINKI,
AALTO STUDIOS AND THEIR TEAM FOR SHARING THEIR TECHNOLOGIES AND SKILLS,
URBANAPA TEAM FOR SUPPORTING THE EARLY PROCESS OF THE WORK WITH THE MINI-RESIDENCY IN FORUM BOX,
ZEYNEP YILMAZ FOR THE CURATORIAL/EDITORIAL SUPPORT,
ARTISTS WITHIN LIVE ART PERFORMANCE STUDIES FOR WITNESSING THE PROCESS,
ALL THE CYBER-SEXUAL PARTNERS AND DIGITAL INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS WE HAVE HAD THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS.
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Basing itself on the understanding “plugging precedes play”,
a seductive sequence of installations negotiates layers of visibility and privacy.
Unpacking the different degrees of that which is private, semi-private or public
in regards to the physical and conceptual organizations of intimacy;
the work is an ongoing performative inquiry envisioned through cyber-sexual practices
being taken out of their context and presented elsewhere, translated elsehow.
Plug’n’Play puts into question how in either cases materiality and virtuality
relate to having access to desire, and to be desired.
Onur Tayranoğlu derives from personal experiences of digital cruising, cam sex,
sexting, creating and consuming textual and visual pornographic content.
Cyber-sexuality holds a potential to allow for diversified and deviated kinds of
expansion with queer visibility processes. In this regard, the digital space
might precede the physical space, and thus acts as a reflective layer for the self
to experience visibility for the screen, for the other, and in turn for the self.
The artistic collaborators have formed a working group for five months,
together walking and moaning towards a perhaps nonexistent climax.
In reenacting the dynamics of seeking partners for sexual desires and forming
encrypted communities, Onur has invited their co-performer, whom they have met on
Grindr. During the rehearsals, they sought ways of rendering the political and poetic
qualities to cyber-sexual practices. They ask, a big, vague, What If?
Working with techniques of virtual realities such as 3D scanning, motion capture
and animation, Onur investigates the digital reconfigurations of performing sexual
desire, alongside the surrounding economy and politics. The multichannel face maps
are abstracted out of their bodies into stock images, commodified as masks in
the gallery space. They ask, to what extent can we reclaim authorship over the
many traces our bodies leave?
The physical execution of Plug’n’Play grows upon the transparency and the opacity
of identity; the latex-covered structure hosts a transitory performance and the pixels
pretend to cover that which should not be looked at.
The power of invisibility gets rearranged.
WORKING GROUP___
CONCEPT, RESEARCH AND EXECUTION: ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
PERFORMERS: LEMPI KOPONEN, ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
SOUND DESIGN: JON PETTERSSON
SPATIAL DESIGN: ANNA PIETILÄ
VISUALS: ONUR TAYRANOĞLU
SPECIAL THANKS TO___
JULIUS ELO AND TERO NAUHA FOR SUPERVISION, KALLE RASINKANGAS FOR TECHNICAL MENTORING,
MARJA ZILCHER AND THE TECHNICAL TEAM IN THEATRE ACADEMY AND FINE ARTS ACADEMY OF UNIARTS HELSINKI,
AALTO STUDIOS AND THEIR TEAM FOR SHARING THEIR TECHNOLOGIES AND SKILLS,
URBANAPA TEAM FOR SUPPORTING THE EARLY PROCESS OF THE WORK WITH THE MINI-RESIDENCY IN FORUM BOX,
ZEYNEP YILMAZ FOR THE CURATORIAL/EDITORIAL SUPPORT,
ARTISTS WITHIN LIVE ART PERFORMANCE STUDIES FOR WITNESSING THE PROCESS,
ALL THE CYBER-SEXUAL PARTNERS AND DIGITAL INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS WE HAVE HAD THROUGHOUT THE PROCESS.
documentation & images courtesy of the artist & gallery