İrem Sezer – Özge Kantar
Last month a gate was open beyond the imitation, called mimesis. This sophistical word has a fascinating history; it always took different meanings, brought about striking analysis. However, this time the word was scrutinized with a short movie, shot by Irem Sezer and Ozge Kantar.
Castillo: what is the “mimesis”?
İrem: If you expect a philosophical description, I could say according to Plato,
mimesis is a nascency of nature in art. Actually a reinterpretation of nature inside the human life by imitation. For instance, a flyaway of a branch is not imitated by human, except metaphorical imitation, especially in artworks. Nonetheless, I cannot say “mimesis is that or this” because it does not seem right for me. Consequently, millions of subtopics might be coming from one topic, mimesis is in the same way. It is not a bounded term, there is not exist a complete definition or explanation sentences according to its relativity situation. Besides, Mimesis is an inherit from the ancient era, and while it was taking its journey to the modern world, several times, it was changed its meaning by gaining new contents; sometimes it released its burden and started from the beginning. As I said before, mimesis is a term that you can never turn to it a stereotype.
Castillo: Exact boundaries of mimesis can not be drawn as you mentioned, but how can we understand such a thing like that? Also, it is necessary that turning back to its essence. For example, a drop that falling into water, and like a reflection of the drop; can we assume that mimesis is an essence of reflection?
İrem: of course, when we though with a phenomenological approach. Also, during the conceptualism process, there were always been contradictions such as reflection is an essence of mimesis or vice versa. All in all, in practice mimesis appears from different districts, but we predominantly discussed it in the art field. With a basic though, mimesis, like phenomenon which drops into a mirror, reflects everything; however, it is just a display, not a reality. Besides, what we have done problematic took its place in “mimesis of a mimesis” sentence.
Castillo: what was the point in the film, in The Mimesis?
Özge: actually The Mimesis was a representation of our feelings. It did not flash through our mind, we tried to understand the notion with our motions, and our inspiration was an effort of comprehension.
İrem: For instance, in the echo scene we tried to clarify that humans involuntarily imitate the mimics and actions of each other as well. Sometimes two human may become their mimesis.
Castillo: well, according to İrem, what is mimesis?
İrem: It is the whole of metaphors. Neither it exists in ideas’ world just as Plato’s, nor as realistic as Aristo; somewhere in between these two.
Castillo: can you expand Plato’s and Aristo’s mimesis?
İrem: Plato separates the world into two parts as the real and the sensorial world. The intention of this separation the real world refers to ideas world while the sensorial world is a reflection and imitation of idea’s universe. In consequence, artwork which is an echo of a sensorial universe is an imitation of an imitation. Briefly the art theory of Plato blossoms out around his idea’s theory.
Özge: According to Aristo, humans has talent and pleasure of imitation, and artists imitate the core idea of case’s and being’s essence. According to him, artists tries to complete the deficient parts which were not completed by nature. To him, mimesis is artist’s creative activity which carries artists’ subjectivities.
Castillo: what about Özge’s mimesis?
Özge: I guess it is a loop of reactions, turning back to the essence again and again, and kinda cumulative: just like an evaporating and raining.
İrem: in a manner, it is a circle of life and emotions.
Castillo: Speaking of emotions, for example, can sorrow be a reflection of nature?
İrem: We have a seasonal cycle that we are all familiar with. the sorrow of nature starts with the fall and ends with the spring. In other words, nature is some kind of manic-depressive just like all the illnesses which are made-up names by human, oscillations of sensations, and all of the emotions are stolen from nature.
Castillo: in the final stage, there were individual words which were passing through the screen. When we are put them all together there is no meaning unity that we can see, yet we can also perceive a fiction among them. What was that fiction?
Özge: think our words as globes which are revolving around an essence. Now visualize the scene which was the scarf’s rippling, and imagine the scarf as a leaf in the wind. Frankly, we did not create a specific fiction among the words, words are put themselves inside of it. We can define mimesis as living as well, as an essence of it. in that point, we can consider the movie as an improvisation. Intrinsically, mimesis is a birth. It was an interesting loop indeed, concepts generated the movie and the movie give birth to new concepts.
Castillo: at that point, can we say, your questions that you asked yourselves are highly important in editing stage?
İrem: Of course, asking questions is a basis of philosophy and it is a way that never ends. As Kant puts, philosophy is being on the road. For us, mimesis is the road.
Castillo: Is there any difference between the notions which were stated in the beginning and the finalized forms of them?
Özge: Of course there is, the maturity. The row thoughts found themselves in the matter.
However, even after a movie mimesis is not a seated notion. In fact, it is such a thing that
you cannot ever be seated it in one place, because it changes, evolves and lives all the time. I
must admit, in my perception before the film mimesis is like sleeping in my mind.
With this movie, the thing that I evolved is the idea of the freedom. While we are
producing the movie with irem, I frequently tried to encourage her by saying ‘be free’.
However, when the roles changed I had to ask myself ‘what do free people do?’ irem gave
her answer, ‘they dance’. And this lead us to mimos which is the early usage of mimesis term.
Castillo: If we consider the full movie as a whole, how did the last sentence come to that stage?How did that sentence evolve to there?
Özge: like the philosophy, mimesis is a peregrination. It was started with that chair’s rotate, and
during its journey mimesis is evolved with those loops which generate sequences of births.
Like the echo; while lighting cigarettes, or while guests of streets are passing through with their reflections. In the end, we realized even the reflection is an imitation of itself. And from here our last sentence ‘imitation of an imitation’ was came out.
In the light of all these conversations above, The Mimesis is a syntheses of Plato’s ideas world and Aristo’s rationalistic one according to Irem’s and Ozge’s perspective. Consequently, mimesis is not only a technical word but also an ethic concept and an imitation. What they have done is totally a mimesis of a mimesis.