Jules Verne and the Black Sea
International Forum 2000, Sochi, Russia
Hüseyin traveled with his friends Ahmet Senkart and Yildirim Arici to Sochi in 2000 to present the Sea Elephant Travel Agency to a group of interested people.
In a video directed by Yildirim Arici Hüseyin explains the Travel Agency. He takes us to the beach and describes his art works he did within the frame of the Sea Elephant Travel Agency.
excerpt of a video by Yildirim Arici
Guardians of the Threshold
Notes by Hüseyin Alptekin, on Guardians of the Threshold, (Odessa – Istanbul) 1999: Image on the right (Storyteller) is appropriated from a found postcard: Serie 778. Orientalisches Volksleben. No.4. Der Märchen-Erzähler – The story-teller. This orientalist image is a postcard from the beginning of the century. The storyteller is the symbol of power in nomadic cultures. For them, the story is the reality and the representation of the world. For that reason the storyteller is power in oral tradition, he is standing, the rest of the people, nomads are all seated.- Image on the left (Cossacks) is appropriated from a cigarette package cover from Ukraine: The brand name Zaporozhtsky and the image of the cigarette package cover is appropriated from a painting by Ilya Repin, titled Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, 1880-91 . Zaporozhtsky means “over the threshold,” and is a region where these nomads live. They are called Zaporozhtsky Cossacks. The image in the collage has been reappropriated by myself. Originally, it was appropriated from Ilya Repin’s painting entitled Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to Sultan Mehmed IV of the Ottoman Empire, 1880- 91. The tobacco company took the cental composition of the painting (the section with the Cossacks or nomads), which shows nomadic people, riding horses and moving. They are in a state of rebellion and ride for independence; they are even willing to write a letter to the Sultan, even though they don’t know how to read write. Only one person, the one sitting in the center of the table and in the center of the painting knows how to write. He claims the power. Almost all the Cossacks are standing or leaning over the table in a state of conflict and hesitation. This is a moment of passage or a threshold that shows the shift from oral tradition to the law of the scriptum.
Image and text from SALT Research Hüseyin-Alptekin-Archive, Courtesy of the Estate of Huseyin Bahri Alptekin and Rampa Istanbul