Mothers on the line: the [maternal] allure of Julianne Moore

This audiovisual essay explores Julianne Moore’s on-screen image as an unconventional maternal embodiment. Throughout her career, what has considerably marked Moore’s star image is, I contend, not a particularly authentic signature in her acting style but the thematic and erotic investment in her appearances cast as maternal women of grief, ambivalence, transgression and detachment. My exploration in this video capitalizes upon this maternal erotic and treats it as the core component of Moore’s persona. Through expressive use of editing and sound, the video operates within an expository poetic mode that appropriates the tribute/compilation format and tackles different analytical scales of sampling and audiovisual interpretation in star studies. The piece attempts to articulate a performative approach to expose the thematic continuities in Moore’s performances of mothers (or mother-substitutes) and to queer the on-screen operation of her maternal image

The non-ameliorative art: Erinç Seymen's unsettled scenes of cruel optimism

This article was commissioned, by Zilberman Gallery (Istanbul, Turkey & Berlin, Germany) and the artist Erinç Seymen, for his solo show Homo Fragilis which had been on display during 13/9/2017-4/11/2017. Reviewed by the artist, the gallery curators and the editors of the exhibition monograph, this essay was originally written in English. Both the English original and the Turkish translation was published in this monograph. In line with the commissioning brief, the article provides a critical analysis of Seymen's artworks in Homo Fragilis while also locating the artist's practice within an original theoretical framework informed by the contemporary fields of queer studies and critical affect theory

Introduction to queer/ing regions

Contemporary scholarship on queer globalizations and transnational sexuality studies is increasingly attending to identities and assemblages that transcend or dislocate national identification, as a way of engaging with the partialities, the intersections, and the imbalances that inform lived sexualities. At the same time, these studies have challenged exclusively national and nationalist deployments of homonormativity, opening the way for narratives and analyses that not merely unsettle the normative/national nexus (e.g. Haritaworn, Kuntsman and Posocco 2014; Kulpa 2014; Puar 2007) but also the politics of ‘value extraction’ inciting sexual subjects to enact the ‘drama of queer lovers and hateful others’ in contemporary wars on terror (Haritaworn 2015). Drawing on Gayatri Gopinath’s (2008: 343) theorization of ‘queer regions,’ this themed section questions how useful regionality is as ‘a concept through which to explore the particularities of gender and sexual logics in spaces that exist in tangential relation to the nation but that are simultaneously and irreducibly marked by complex national and global processes.’ Having been launched at a symposium at Nottingham Trent University in February 2013, Queer/ing Regions addresses the potentials of a non-hegemonic ‘critical (self-)regioning’ in queer studies (Çakırlar 2015). The themed section explores the ways in which the complex regional/local formations of sexual dissidence emerges, if not being instrumentalized, as objects of theoretical inquiry when addressed within a global context by means of transnational formations of academic and activist practice

Mobilising queer practice: enabling cross-cultural dialogues with Turkey [Impact report]

Çakırlar’s research practice (2012-2020) has challenged cultural stereotypes, promoted intercultural dialogue and supported international circulation of cultural forms and practices. The impact builds organically on Dr. Çakırlar’s research in global queer theory and the transnational mobility of contemporary arts, as expressed in publications and deployed in pedagogic contexts, and collaborative work with international art practitioners and institutions. The research demonstrates impact achieved through cross-cultural dialogue between the West and Turkey in four key areas: shaping the HE curriculum and broadening understandings of LGBTQ issues in Turkey; mentoring Turkish students inspired by LGBTQ practice by supporting their development as academics, activists and policy makers; enabling and promoting international mobility of Turkey-based art practitioners’ work; and facilitating cross-cultural exchange and international collaboration between UK-based cultural practitioners and Turkey-based artists through UK-based projects

Pembe yanaklar, kahverengi tonlar: Soufiane Ababri'nin Queer erotizmi

Abrari's practice is a quest for queer commons in the field of the (homo)erotic. The artist discovers new answers to the question who counts entitled to desire or eroticise whom or what, and who is entitled to make that desire visible if not legitimate. This piece is commissioned for Ababri's solo show which took place at the gallery The PILL in Istanbul (exhibition: Memories of a Solitary Cruise)

Transnational pride, global closets and regional formations of screen activism: documentary LGBTQ narratives from Turkey

This study explores three documentary projects from Turkey, namely Proudly Trans in Turkey (by Gabrielle Le Roux, 2012), My Child (by Can Candan, 2013), and Trans X Istanbul (by Maria Binder, 2014). Attempting to make visible various spaces and formations of LGBTQ activism in Turkey, these collaborative projects can be considered as practices of screen activism that critically reflect on their own circulation, spectatorial address, ethnographic accent, and documentary aesthetic. Attempting to contest modes of the transnational gaze which reifies the saviour discourses of the Gay International and its globalised imperatives of liberation and pride, this discussion examines the extent to which the regional complexities of intersectional LGBTQ activism are compromised by the investment in these activist subjects’ global humanitarian value and international intelligibility. Questioning the ways in which these documentaries tackle their spectatorial address as well as the global and local complexities of sexual politics, this study aims to demonstrate how various forms/styles of documentary could contest, negotiate, and reinvent a transnational gaze that critically engages with the ethnographic constructions of sexuality, community, identity, and nation

The evolution of animal husbandry in Neolithic central­west Anatolia: the zooarchaeological record from Ulucak Höyük (c. 7040–5660 cal. BC, Izmir, Turkey)

Research into the emergence of animal husbandry west of the Taurus mountains has been primarily confined to central Anatolia, the Lake District and the Marmara region in Anatolia, leaving a c. 85,000km area in western Anatolia largely unexplored. This vast region is crucial to understand the developmental trajectories of early farming practices in Anatolia and to explain the expansion of Neolithic agro-pastoralist lifeways into southeast Europe. The hand-collected faunal assemblage from Ulucak Höyük near Izmir provides a first opportunity to examine the beginnings and the evolution of Neolithic animal husbandry practices in this region across an uninterrupted cultural sequence dating between c. 7040–5660 cal. BC. Taxonomic, osteometric and demographic analyses suggest that all four initial food animals (sheep, goat, cattle and pig) appeared simultaneously at the beginning of the seventh millennium BC. The relative proportions of the domestic food animals indicate that beef was as significant a resource as sheep and goat meat. Fusion data for cattle and combined tootheruption and wear data for sheep and goat suggest that milk exploitation may have begun towards the end of the seventh millennium BC and intensified during the first quarter of the sixth. Evidence for post-adult caprines and cattle is thought to represent a strategy employed to maximise herd size and buffer risk. No clear evidence for cattle traction was found. Fallow deer seems to have become an increasingly important resource throughout the period. Small amounts of fish remains and substantial amounts of marine molluscs demonstrate that coastal environments were also exploited. These results indicate that central-west Anatolia played an essential role in the expansion of animal husbandry technologies into southeast Europe