We are very pleased to announce the third installment of our Open Letters series. This month’s letter is “Fantasies of a Living Product” by Doğa Çakmakçı. Come by Page Not Found to read his letter!
Çakmakçı’s letter explores the current state of ‘desire’ and its functional role in a capitalist world order revolving around hyper-consumerism supported by the mass production of desire.
Influenced by Slavoj Žižek’s “The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology”, the letter focuses on the fact that what is on sale is never the object, but the fantasy of our own visibility and desirability. By consuming the endless scroll of commodities, we trap ourselves in a narcissistic loop: being the subject of our desire while simultaneously, in reflection, appearing as the object of someone else’s. The more we consume, the more the line between subject and object blurs, making our own desires ever more incomprehensible.
The Open Letter draws on the Rorschach Inkblot Test to invite visitors to trace back the origins of their desires and uncover subconscious thoughts, emotions, and conflicts they may not otherwise share or realise.
Doğa Çakmakçı (1997) is an Istanbul-trained architect and a graduate of the MA Industrial Design program at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK).
His work treats the HUMAN as a biologically and socially engineered product, examining how heteropatriarchal norms and capitalist systems shape bodies, minds and behaviors.
Through a research-based practice, he exposes and destabilizes these mechanisms with interventions that play between provocation and disarming cute ambiguity, informed by queer perspectives.
The letter will be on view until Saturday 4 July. The finissage will take place on Wednesday 24 June. More info about the finissage will follow soon!
Open Letters is an annual project offering artists and writers in The Hague a platform to share urgent and vulnerable messages.
This project is made possible with support from the Mondriaan Fund and the Municipality of The Hague.
Image: excerpt from Doğa Çakmakçı’s Open Letter “Fantasies of a Living Product”