Seçil Yaylalı

Future has Desires

initiated with Zeynep Okyay (PASAJ)
with the support of PASAJ Team, İpek Altun, Leila Haghighat, Nil Mutluer

2020-on going

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Future has Desires is a research-based project initiated by PASAJ that investigates the nature and structure of being a collective. The project consists of five different stages: literature review, survey, online lectures, online meetings, and the e-publication. It is desired to develop the project’s concept and materials in collaboration with other collectives as well as social scientists and thinkers. 

What are the nature and conditions of the collectivity today?
What are the ways of organizing new associations, setting collective decision-making processes, and acting together?
How does collective work continue in the long run?

While there were lockdowns in only a few countries in the world, Bruno Latour wrote in an article for AOC at the end of March, "If everything is stopped, everything can be questioned, inflected, selected, sorted, interrupted for good or cut back. The last thing to do should be to go back to business as usual." 

This period with the pandemic seems to be an opportunity to question the current contemporary art scene, and even the perfect time to express our common desire to change it and to unite around this desire.

Today, the contemporary art scene continues to exist intertwined with the neoliberal system that competes instead of cooperation, stares, and isolates instead of togetherness. However, with the pandemic, the importance of acting together was emphasized more than ever: We can re-discuss the need and condition of collectivity in the culture and art environment, while a new understanding of living together emerges, based on the fact that we are responsible not only for our own life but also for the life of those next to us.



This one-year research project consists of four chapters: Literature review focusing not only on art writings but also those from the fields of philosophy, sociology, and psychology; Survey created for collective working groups to fill in; Online meetings with the matched groups and specified contents as a result of the survey, and finally, Book consisting of the transcription of the meetings from audio to text that would be pieced together as a final product.

Each step is complementary: the previous step will add elements to the content of the next step. 

The program will be developed together with participants from Turkey and nearby geography. It is desired to bring together structures that are similar in social, economic, and political tensions, that can mutually try the methods they apply and the solutions they reach, and that can adapt to their conditions.

Nil Mutluer in the field of sociology, İpek Altun in the field of psychology, and Leila Haghighat in the field of philosophy support the research.