CEREN  SELMANPAKOĞLU

My artistic and academic research is on the alterability of our way of existence and the social order. For this reason, in my Ph.D. thesis, which is in a philosophical and psychoanalytic context, I introduced Agent Art. This proposition is based on deciphering our resistance to accepting that freedom is not a still to come phenomenon, but it is already here and now. Since we try to reject our freedom, we always choose to transfer the responsibility of our choices elsewhere. Although we all know that the social reality is us humans’ construction, the reason why we choose to be stuck under the hegemony of this reality is based on the fact that we want to evade the responsibility of our freedom. For the same reason, we accept our identity as unalterable. We deny our nothingness, in other words, our freedom to be anything –everything-. Even so, as Sartre states, "we are condemned to be free." Thus, my artistic and academic work focuses on depicting and unfolding the resistance of spectators, readers and my students to their freedom.