Mirre Yayla Séur: Process during Manifestation #8 To Be Determined

Rust is a signifier of decay, of neglect.

Allow to rust

allow to decay

allow to wither

allow to change

allow to leak

allow to be unstable

allow to

For now the work is to do rather than to understand. To move rather than to capture. To question rather than answer. To be uncertain rather than correct.

The different movements acted out on/with the objects and the bacteria bring up questions of gestationality, mothering, and care. It’s about the destructiveness of unconditional love, the impossibility of unconditional love. How do we care for the messy, the un-contained, and the ugly? Something that changes all the time, that is in decay, that might leave, that is not yours to own? How to care for these installaties, the slippery, the dirty? Calling on gestational labour, the intricate relationship between vitalism and work, biopolitics, mothering and its imagination in a different kinder world. A world where the ugly becomes beauty and livelihood in decay.
What are the structures of ownership and hyachries within care-relationships and what are the antagonists of care and mothering? Do we claim something ours in order to love or care for it? What are the colonial implications that shape ownership and care?

In the work, there is an attempt at moving the captured by intervening with my body or my collaborator, that is, the iron bacteria that I have been meticulous providing conditions for their growth and decay.

I’m trying to expose the workings of these questions, not answer them directly. This is slowly shaping into a performance piece where the actions/movements/moments in the studio are becoming the work by daily repetition.

text by the artist