100 Marbles

It can be said that every work of art emerges playing with this or that idea or material. Nowadays we call this act of “playing” rather “experimenting”. Well, in my case, one day, I was playing, enjoying a conscious regression sitting on the floor, exploring the objects surrounding me; in this case, my marbles. Rolling them on the wooden pavement of the room seemed enough of what has to be done. There was a spectacle worth to watch and listen. After several times of bending down on my knees to roll the marbles with my fingers, this action became difficult for me to do. So, I started sweeping the marbles with a broom in a square course where I can control many, many of the marbles, visually creating an elegant flow and acoustically a sound varying in color, sequence and loudness. The act of sweeping marbles, in its nature, simulates the act of a housewife sweeping or washing the floor with water. It comes up as an irony to associate the ”woman artist” and the “housewife”, pointing at two different identities a woman may have -the same polarity among the venues of “art gallery” and “house” may be mentioned as well. During the day, the housewife is creating great visions and sounds with her sweeping act and other domestic actions. She lives the act of sweeping the floor with water as purification, a way of cleansing her soul and a way of chasing away her troubles. Within the frame of all these, the performance “100 Marbles” has an acoustic, almost-concertante aspect to high-light. In fact, the act and the sound of the performance came up all together. I wanted to create a sound that had an authentic performance. Here, the sound and the performance become inseparable. The very humble, modest, elementary sounds of the rolling marbles matched perfectly the context of womanly actions, ascending the viewer a level of elegance and meditation, as a tribute to all domestic work considerable as a womanly expression, springing throughout millenniums.

Deniz Aygün